Chapter 9

HALLAM'S CONFEDERATE

It was about the middle of the afternoon of the day following Alton's affray with the workman when the cook came limping into the verandah of the Somasco ranch, where Deringham leaned, cigar in hand, against a pillar talking to his daughter. She lay in a hide chair Alton had found for her, listening more to the drowsy roar of the river than to her father, but she lifted her head when the man appeared. He carried a tray whereon were displayed a badly dinted metal teapot of considerable size, two large, flat cakes of bread, a can of condensed milk, and a saucer swimming with partially melted butter, which had resolved itself into little lumps of whitish grease and a thin golden fluid under the afternoon sun. He laid them on the table, and after deftly picking out one or two dead flies from the butter turned to the girl with a grin in which pride was evident, though it was apparently meant to be deprecatory.

"I guess this is the kind of thing you were used to in the old country, Miss," he said. "You have only got to tell me if you would fancy a piece of cold pork or other fixings."

Alice Deringham dared not glance at her father, who seemed to be gazing fixedly down the valley, but her lips quivered a little as she turned towards the man.

"I do not think we shall want anything else," she said with a serenity that cost her an effort, though it was excellently assumed.

The man limped away with the tray, though he stopped again at the foot of the stairway. "If you take a notion of that pork after all, hammer on the iron roofing sheet there, and I'll bring it right away," he said.

Alice Deringham waited until he was out of sight, and then lay back in her chair and laughed when her father glanced at her with a little grim smile.

"Savages, my dear!" he said. "Still, their intentions are evidently kindly, which is unfortunate because it involves us in a difficulty."

"A difficulty?"

Deringham nodded. "I have a suspicion that our estimable kinsman, who seems to consider that what is good enough for Somasco should content anybody, might be offended if we slighted his hospitality, and that teapot apparently contains at least three pints of strong green tea," he said. "I do not know whether you feel equal to consuming half of it, but if it is the same as I had at breakfast I must be excused. One could also fancy from their solidity that those cups had been intended for breaking stones with."

"I can at least pour the tea over the balustrade," said the girl. "It is the bread that presents the difficulty. It would crumble in your pocket, and you will presumably have to eat a little to save appearances."

Deringham made a gesture of resignation. "On condition that you do as much. I am not going to be the only victim, though I fancy you could not crumble that bread in a stamp battery. This meal, and what we have otherwise seen at Somasco, confirms my theory that the folks who make money in the Colonies could save as much, or more, in England if they lived in a similar fashion."

"Would it be worth while?" asked the girl with a little smile.

"It is a question of temperament," said Deringham. "Personally, I do not think it would. Indeed, one could fancy that a man of taste would sooner be interred decently, which is why I will take a very little of the tea. You see, our mode of life in England, unfortunately, depends to some extent upon my retaining the good will of Mr. Alton of Somasco. He will, however, have to excuse me from tasting his butter."

The girl poured a little of the tea into the cups, and then emptied the pot over the balustrade, which was, as it happened, a blunder, because while she endeavoured to crumble a small portion of the bread so as to convey the impression that she had been eating it, Alton and Seaforth came into the verandah.

The latter glanced at her, and, for he could not help it, a little smile flickered in his eyes.

"It is a very long while since I had afternoon tea, and I am not sure that Harry ever indulged in it in his life," he said. "I will bring some more cups if you will give us some."

Deringham looked at his daughter reproachfully, though his eyes twinkled, and for just a moment a flush crept into the girl's face, but she laughed as she said, "Then I must trouble to ask the cook for more water."

Alton hammered upon the suspended iron sheet, and in a minute or two the cook appeared again with a large plateful of sliced pork which he laid down before Miss Deringham.

"I was figuring you would change your mind, and if you want any more you have only to ask for it," he said.

It cost the girl an effort to repress a shiver of disgust, but though she succeeded Alton saw her face, and she noticed that the bronze grew a trifle darker in his forehead. It seemed that he guessed her thoughts, but the fact that he offered no explanation and made no excuse for the uninviting fare pleased her. She fancied she understood his reticence, and that it became him.

"Take that pork away, and bring more water!" he said, and there was a faint ring in his voice, as he turned to the cook.

The man, who took up the teapot, shook it, and then, as though still incredulous, lifted the lid and gazed inside it.

"More water?" he said.

"Yes," said Alton, a trifle harshly. "Get it right now!"

The man went away, and there was for almost a minute a somewhat unpleasant silence. Even Seaforth did not seem to know what to say, though he felt an absurd desire to laugh, and Alice Deringham was at once relieved and somewhat astonished when Alton put an end to it by a whimsical story of a raw Englishman's camp cookery. Seaforth followed it with a better one, and the whole four were laughing when the cook came back again. He smiled at them reassuringly as he put the teapot down.

"I guess there's enough this time," he said. "It's that full I could scarcely get the lid on."

The tea was strong, and acrid with the sting of the wood smoke, but there was no avoiding another cupful, and Deringham drank determinedly, while his daughter felt that she had made full atonement when she set her cup down half empty. Then Alton, who explained that he had something to attend to, went away, and Seaforth smiled at the girl when Deringham went in for another cigar.

"I wonder if one might venture to congratulate you on your resolution?" he said.

"If I knew exactly what you meant I could answer more readily," said Alice Deringham.

"Well," said Seaforth reflectively, "I fancy you do, and, if it's any comfort to you, I think Harry does too. He is considerably less of a fool than folks who do not understand this country might suppose him to be; but the point is, that if he can prevent it you will not suffer an infliction of this kind again."

"I wonder why you thought it worth while to tell me," said Alice Deringham. "Have I admitted that it was an affliction, or do you suppose I am very frightened of a little indifferent tea?"

Seaforth laughed. "I can't fancy you so fond of it as the cook seems to conclude, and I don't think indifferent was exactly the word. A stronger one would have been appropriate. Still, though I am not sure that you will understand me, I told you because I felt it was due to Harry. You see, his attitude was really the correct one, and taking him all round I am rather proud of him."

"Hasn't that an appearance of unnecessary patronage?" asked Miss Deringham, who was slightly nettled.

Seaforth nodded. "It has," he said. "Only that the feeling is shared by everybody in this district, it would be sheer presumption. Good wine, you know, needs no bush."

He went away because he had a suspicion that Alton would be wanting him, which was borne out when he found his comrade saddling a horse.

"Where are you going, Harry? We are not half way through with the sawlogs," he said.

"No," said Alton dryly. "Still, if you work hard enough, you and Tom should get them into the water before it's dark to-night. I'm going right down to Horton's."

Seaforth laughed. "I thought you would. Horton has, however, as much taste in china as the average mule. Don't leave it to him."

"How did you guess that?" and Alton stared at him.

"That," said Seaforth, "was delightfully simple. It is a little more difficult to decide what Miss Deringham, who is a quick-witted young woman, did with the tea. As you are quite aware, she did not drink it. Still, that is not the question. I'll write you out a little list of what is wanted--I used to know a little about china once, you see, and you tell Horton to send it on to Vancouver. How much would you care to spend, Harry?"

"Just whatever is necessary, but get the best," said Alton. "Write another list of cakes and jellies and things of that kind, too. Put down plenty."

Seaforth returned by the time the horse was saddled, with an envelope, and Alton, who took it, rode out at a gallop, for it was a long way to the settlement, and the evenings at the ranch had of late become very pleasant to him. He did not wish to lose a minute of one of them. He drew bridle, however, when he came up with two men standing in the narrow trail, one of whom signed to him. He was a small rancher, but it was not until the impatient horse plunged that Alton recognized the other, who moved aside, as the man he had thrown into the river. The rancher saw the glance that passed between them.

"Hallo!" he said. "Then you two had trouble when you split? Now, Damer was telling me he'd got kind of tired of saw milling."

Alton laughed. "That's quite likely," he said. "He showed it by breaking up my planer in a fit of temper, and I fired him."

Then he touched the horse with his heel, and Damer's gaze grew venomous as he watched him ride away down the shadowy trail. The rancher evidently noticed it.

"Now I begin to understand how you got your jacket tore up and that lump on your forehead," he said. "I wasn't quite sure about your tale, anyway, and if Harry fired you it was for something mean. You'll get no horse from me."

The other man said nothing as he turned away, but his face was not pleasant as he plodded down the trail, and those words of Alton's were to cost him dear, for if Damer had obtained the horse he wanted to carry him to the railroad he would in all probability have left the country, which would have prevented a good deal of trouble. As it was, however, he restrapped the roll of blankets on his back, and trudged on with bitterness in his heart under the heat of the afternoon. He had when he left the Somasco mill headed in the direction of the Tyee mine, and passed the night in the woods; but with the morning reflection came, and he had doubled on his trail and was then making for the railroad, stiff with fatigue. Each time he stumbled into a rut and the jolt shook him he remembered his last grievance against Alton, who had sent him on foot, and his frame of mind was not an enviable one when he limped into sight of the settlement as dusk was closing down.

He had made a long journey that day, and a good deal depended on the fact that he was weary and his boots galled him, because it had been his intention to push on to a ranch beyond the settlement before he slept, and hire a horse there. Damer was not especially sensitive, but he felt no great desire to encounter the badinage of the men generally to be found about the store, who, he surmised, would have heard by this time what had happened at the Somasco mill. Still, he was hungry and weary, and stopped a moment when he caught a blink of light between the trees. The bush behind him was very black and still, the dampness of the dew was on his dusty garments, and he shivered a little in the faint cold breeze that came down from the snow. Then more lights twinkled into brightness, a cheerful murmur of voices and a burst of laughter came out of the shadows, and the glow that broke out from the windows of Horton's store seemed curiously inviting. Damer, however, dallied still, and fumbled for his tobacco. He would sit down where he was and smoke, he said, and then attempt that last toilsome league.

As it happened, he could not find the tobacco, and having a hazy recollection of laying it on the ground the last time he filled his pipe, he shook his aching shoulders and trudged on. The loss of the tobacco decided him, and with a malediction on Alton he made for Horton's. It was also a fateful decision with far-reaching results he made just then. Supper had long been cleared away when he entered the general room of the hotel, and then stopped a moment with his hand on the door, for the one man who sat under the big lamp was the last person he desired to meet. He had, however, some papers spread out in front of him, and Damer decided to slip away quietly, but as he moved the blankets on his shoulders struck the door, which rattled, and the man looked up sharply. He had a fleshy face, and black beady eyes, which he fixed on Damer, who stood still, with a little, unpleasant smile.

"Come right in!" he said.

Damer smothered an anathema as he recognized the command in the tone. "No," he said. "If you don't mind, Mr. Hallam, I'll be getting on again."

"Come in!" said Hallam, a trifle more sharply, but for just a moment Damer remained motionless. A few steps would take him down the verandah stairway, and then the shadowy bush lay before him. Had he had a horse, he would have obeyed the impulse which prompted him to avoid the encounter; but, as it happened, owing to the fact that Alton had met the rancher who would otherwise have lent him one, he had none. So with evident unwillingness he came slowly forward, and dropping his bundles on the floor flung himself into a chair.

"Well," he said, "I'm here."

Hallam, who had been watching him, nodded reflectively. "I guess you didn't expect to find me, or you wouldn't have come," he said. "Where were you going?"

"To the railroad," said Damer. "Out of the country!"

"Without telling me? That was kind of foolish of you. Still, you haven't much sense, anyway. You had quite a well-paid job at Somasco."

"Well," said Damer dryly, "I haven't got it now."

Hallam laughed, though the glint in his eyes did not express good will. "You have got a temper that will be the ruin of you, and don't know when a man's too big for you, while, now I come to look at you, there's a lump on your forehead that makes the thing quite plain. You have been fooling with Alton, and he has 'most pounded the life out of you. Still, what do you want to leave the country for, anyway?"

Damer set his lips, and drummed with his fingers on the table. Then he made a little deprecatory gesture, and glanced at Hallam.

"You'll hear it all by and by, but there's one point where you're wrong," he said. "Now, I'm not scared too easily, but I kind of feel it in me I'll make nothing but trouble for myself by worrying Alton. Still, it's not the man himself I'm afraid of. I've met tougher ones, and come out ahead of them."

Hallam sat silent a moment, for he knew the prospectors and survey packers who passed their lives amidst the desolate ranges and in the shadowy bush and their superstitions.

"You have had trouble with him before?" he said.

"Yes," said Damer, "I have. He cut my partner down with an axe back there in Washington. It was in the big rush in the Baker foothills, and we had a hard crowd standing in with us; but I had to pull out, and Alton and another man made most of five thousand dollars out of the claim I left."

"The Bluebird?" said Hallam reflectively. "I remember that rush. Alton did himself well. Wasn't there a man called Nailer mixed up in the affair?"

"There was," said Damer, who seemed to shiver a little. "He was my partner. We'd have had the claim, and Alton wouldn't have worried anybody again, if Nailer had kept his nerve that night. Something went wrong with the spring of his Winchester.--and Alton didn't give him another chance."

The silence that followed was, somewhat impressive. Hallam was trying to remember what he had read about the affray in question in a Tacoma paper, while Damer once more saw in fancy a man spring half-dressed through the wisp of smoke that drifted about a little tent. He remembered with an unpleasant distinctness the crash of the rifle shot that rang amidst the shadowy pines, and the grim face of the man who whirled an axe that glinted in the moonlight about his head. He saw the flash of its descent--and then brushing the memories from him stretched out a hand that shook a little towards the whisky on the table.

"Well," he said, "I owe Alton a good deal, and that's why I went up to Somasco when you told me, but he has been too much for me again, and now I feel it in me that if I'm wise I'll let that man alone."

He drank a little whisky, and sat still, staring vacantly before him with a vague apprehension in his eyes, while the strained tenseness of his expression and attitude was not without its effect on Hallam, and it was unfortunate he did not yield to the impulse which prompted him to let Damer go. He, however, shook off the fancy with a little, impatient laugh.

"It's not going to suit me to have you slipping out of the country," he said. "I want you right here, though it would be quite easy to find a man with twice the grit you have in you. You let Alton whip you off your claim in Washington, and--for I've a notion of what has happened--'most pound the head off you yesterday. Now you want to light out, leaving him to laugh at you?"

Damer flushed a little, and a look of vindictive malice crept into his eyes as he rose.

"That's about enough!" he said. "You're quite a different man from Alton. I'm going on."

"Sit down!" said Hallam sharply. "I'm quite as dangerous to you. Take some more whisky, and listen to me, though I didn't think it would be necessary to go into the thing again. I was with the men who found Gordon at the bottom of his shaft on the Quatchigan."

Damer appeared irresolute, but he sat down. "Nobody knows how he got there."

"No? Well, I have a notion, and I guess Tom Winstanley and one other man could tell."

"Winstanley's dead."

Hallam laughed. "Still, the other man is on my pay-roll, but where you can't get at him unless I want you to. Now, are you going to gain anything by kicking against me?"

Damer was evidently astonished, and sat for almost a minute as though lost in reflection. Then he made a little gesture as one who abandons a struggle.

"I guess that takes me. What do you want?" he said.

"Nothing very much in the meanwhile. They'll start you rock-drilling at the Tyee, but it's quite likely I'll send you up into the ranges prospecting by and by. Still, I don't want any of the folks down here to know you're with me, and you'll start out by the railroad trail to-morrow, and wait at the lake until I come up with you. There's somebody coming now!"

Damer moved abruptly, for there was a step on the stairway, and as he reached the verandah a man brushed past him. He stopped, and for a moment Damer and Alton stood face to face. The latter, however, passed on, and swept his glance round the room, seeing only a man he did not recognize sitting at the opposite end with his back to him. Then he swung round again, and went down the stairway shouting, "Horton!" until a man came out from a shed at the back of the store.

"Well," he said, "I'm here. You needn't raise the whole place, Harry."

Alton laughed. "I've been up to Grantly's, and he's going in to the railroad to-morrow. You can send that order for the crockery along with him. Dollars are no object so long as it's pretty. The tea is to be the best they keep in Vancouver, too."

He swung himself into the saddle, and shook the bridle, while Damer leaned on the verandah balustrade gazing up the dusky trail he had taken until the last faint beat of horsehoofs sank into the silence of the bush. It was now very black and solemn, but away beyond it the snow still shone faintly cold and white against the sky, and once more Damer shivered a little as he turned towards the lighted store. He had meant to leave the country, but fate had been too strong for him, and remembering what Hallam had told him about the prospecting he wondered if he and Alton would meet again under that cold gleam of snow amidst the great desolation of the ranges.