Chapter 19

THE POINT OF VIEW

She sank back upon the chair, her face completely hidden within her arms. Winston, his hand already grasping the latch of the door, paused and glanced around at her, a sudden revulsion of feeling leaving him unnerved and purposeless. He had been possessed by but one thought, a savage determination to seek out Farnham and kill him. The brute was no more than a mad dog who had bitten one he loved; he was unworthy of mercy. But now, in a revealing burst of light, he realized the utter futility of such an act. Coward, brutal as the man unquestionably was, he yet remained her husband, bound to her by ties she held indissoluble. Any vengeful blow which should make her a widow would as certainly separate the slayer from her forever. Unavoidably though it might occur, the act was one never to be forgiven by Beth Norvell, never to be blotted from her remembrance. Winston appreciated this as though a sudden flash-light had been turned upon his soul. He had looked down into her secret heart, he had had opened before him the religious depth of her nature--this bright-faced, brown-eyed woman would do what was right although she walked a pathway of self-denying agony. Never once did he doubt this truth, and the knowledge gripped him with fingers of steel. Even as he stood there, looking back upon her quivering figure, it was no longer hate of Farnham which controlled; it was love for her. He took a step toward her, hesitant, uncertain, his heart a-throb with sympathy; yet what could he say? What could he do? Utterly helpless to comfort, unable to even suggest a way out, he drew back silently, closed the door behind him, and shut her in. He felt one clear, unalterable conviction--under God, it should not be for long.

He stood there in the brilliant sunlight, bareheaded still; looking dreamily off across the wide reach of the canyon. How peaceful, how sublimely beautiful, it all appeared; how delicately the tints of those distant trees blended and harmonized with the brown rocks beyond! The broad, spreading picture slowly impressed itself upon his brain, effacing and taking the place of personal animosity. In so fair a world Hope is ever a returning angel with healing in his wings; and Winston's face brightened, the black frown deserting his forehead, all sternness gone from his eyes. There surely must be a way somewhere, and he would discover it; only the weakling and the coward can sit down in despair. Out of the prevailing silence he suddenly distinguished voices at hand, and the sound awoke him to partial interest. Just before the door where he stood a thick growth of bushes obstructed the view. The voices he heard indistinctly came from beyond, and he stepped cautiously forward, peering in curiosity between the parted branches.

It was a narrow section of the ledge, hemmed in by walls of rock and thinly carpeted with grass, a small fire burning near its centre. There was an appetizing smell of cookery in the air, and three figures were plainly discernible. The old miner, Mike, sat next the embers, a sizzling frying-pan not far away, his black pipe in one oratorically uplifted hand, a tin plate in his lap, his grouchy, seamed old face screwed up into argumentative ugliness, his angry eyes glaring at the Swede opposite, who was loungingly propped against a convenient stone. The latter looked a huge, ungainly, raw-boned fellow, possessing a red and white complexion, with a perfect shock of blond hair wholly unaccustomed to the ministrations of a comb. He had a long, peculiarly solemn face, rendered yet more lugubrious by unwinking blue eyes and a drooping moustache of straw color. Altogether, he composed a picture of unutterable woe, his wide mouth drawn mournfully down at the corners, his forehead wrinkled in perplexity. Somewhat to the right of these two more central figures, the young Mexican girl contributed a touch of brightness, lolling against the bank in graceful relaxation, her black eyes aglow with scarcely repressed merriment. However the existing controversy may have originated, it had already attained a stage for the display of considerable temper.

"Now, ye see here, Swanska," growled the thoroughly aroused Irishman vehemently. "It's 'bout enough Oi 've heard from ye on that now. Thar 's r'ason in all things, Oi 'm tould, but Oi don't clarely moind iver havin' met any in a Swade, bedad. Oi say ye 're nothin' betther than a dommed foreigner, wid no business in this counthry at all, at all, takin' the bread out o' the mouths of honest min. Look at the Oirish, now; they was here from the very beginnin'; they 've fought, bled, an' died for the counthry, an' the loikes o' ye comes in an' takes their jobs. Be hivins, it 's enough to rile the blood. What's the name of ye, anny how?"

"Ay ban Nels Swanson."

"Huh! Well, it's little the loikes o' ye iver railly knows about names, Oi 'm thinkin'. They tell me ye don't have no proper, dacent names of yer own over in Sweden,--wherever the divil that is, I dunno,--but jist picks up annything handy for to dhraw pay on."

"It ban't true."

"It's a loiar ye are! Bad cess to ye, ain't Oi had to be bunk-mate wid some o' ye dhirty foreigners afore now? Ye 're _sons_, the whole kit and caboodle o' ye--Nelsons, an' Olesons, an' Swansons, an' Andersons. Blissed Mary! an' ye call them things names? If ye have anny other cognomen, it's somethin' ye stole from some Christian all unbeknownst to him. Holy Mother! but ye ought to be 'shamed to be a Swade, ye miserable, slab-sided haythen."

"My name ban Swanson; it ban all right, hey?"

"Swanson! Swanson! Oh, ye poor benighted, ignorant foreigner!" and Mike straightened up, slapping his chest proudly. "Jist ye look at me, now! Oi'm an O'Brien, do ye moind that? An O'Brien! Mother o' God! we was O'Briens whin the Ark first landed; we was O'Briens whin yer ancestors--if iver ye had anny--was wigglin' pollywogs pokin' in the mud. We was kings in ould Oireland, begorry, whin ye was a mollusk, or maybe a poi-faced baboon swingin' by the tail. The gall of the loikes of ye to call yerselves min, and dhraw pay wid that sort of thing ferninst ye for a name! Oi 'll bet ye niver had no grandfather; ye 're nothin' but a it, a son of a say-cook, be the powers! An' ye come over here to work for a thafe--a dhirty, low-down thafe. Do ye moind that, yer lanthern-jawed spalpeen? What was it yer did over beyant?"

"Ay ban shovel-man fer Meester Burke--hard vork."

"Ye don't look that intilligent from here. Work!" with a snort, and waving his pipe in the air. "Work, is it? Sure, an' it's all the loikes of ye are iver good for. It 's not brains ye have at all, or ye 'd take it a bit aisier. Oi had a haythen Swade foreman oncet over at the 'Last Chance.' God forgive me for workin' undher the loikes of him. Sure he near worked me to death, he did that, the ignorant furriner. Work! why, Oi 'm dommed if a green Swade did n't fall the full length of the shaft one day, an' whin we wint over to pick him up, what was it ye think the poor haythen said? He opened his oies an' asked, 'Is the boss mad?' afeared he 'd lose his job! An' so ye was workin' for a thafe, was ye? An' what for?"

"Two tollar saxty cint."

Mike leaped to his feet as though a spring had suddenly uncoiled beneath him, waving his arms in wild excitement, and dancing about on his short legs.

"Two dollars an' sixty cints! Did ye hear that, now? For the love of Hivin! an' the union wages three sixty! Ye 're a dommed scab, an' it's meself that 'll wallup ye just for luck. It's crazy Oi am to do the job. What wud the loikes of ye work for Misther Hicks for?"

Swanson's impassive face remained imperturbable; he stroked the moustaches dangling over the corners of his dejected mouth.

"Two tollar saxty cint."

Mike glared at him, and then at the girl, his own lips puckering.

"Bedad, Oi belave the poor cr'ater do n't know anny betther. Shure, 't is not for an O'Brien to be wastin' his toime thryin' to tache the loikes of him the great sacrets of thrade. It wud be castin' pearls afore swine, as Father Kinny says. Did iver ye hear tell of the Boible, now?"

"Ay ban Lutheran."

"An' what's that? It's a Dimocrat Oi am, an' dom the O'Brien that's annything else. But Oi niver knew thar was anny of thim other things hereabout. It's no prohibitioner ye are, annyhow, fer that stuff in yer bottle wud cook a snake. Sufferin' ages! but it had an edge to it that wud sharpen a saw. What do ye think of ther blatherin' baste annyhow, seeñorita?"

The little Mexican gave sudden vent to her pent-up laughter, clapping her hands in such an ecstasy of delight as to cause the unemotional Swanson to open his mild blue eyes in solemn wonder.

"He all right, I rink," she exclaimed eagerly. "He no so mooch fool as you tink him--no, no. See, señor, he busy eat all de time dat you talk; he has de meal, you has de fin' air. Vich ees de bettair, de air or de meat, señor? _Bueno_, I tink de laugh vas vid him."

Mr. O'Brien, his attention thus suddenly recalled to practical affairs, gazed into the emptied frying-pan, a decided expression of bewildered despair upon his wizened face. For the moment even speech failed him as he confronted that scene of total devastation. Then he dashed forward to face the victim of his righteous wrath.

"Ye dom Swade, ye!" He shook a dirty fist beneath the other's nose. "Shmell o' that! It's now Oi know ye 're a thafe, a low-down haythen thafe. What are ye sittin' thar for, grinnin' at yer betthers?"

"Two tollar saxty cint."

The startled Irishman stared at him with mouth wide open.

"An' begorry, did ye hear that, seeñorita? For the love of Hivin, it's only a poll-parrot sittin' there ferninst us, barrin' the appetite of him. Saints aloive! but Oi 'd love to paste the crature av it was n't a mortal sin to bate a dumb baste. An' he 's a Lutheran! God be marciful an' keep me from iver ketchin' that same dis'ase, av it wud lave me loike this wan. What's that? What was it the haythen said then, seeñorita?"

"Not von vord, señor; he only vink von eye like maybe he flirt vid me."

"The Swade did that! Holy Mother! an' wid an O'Brien here to take the part of any dacent gurl. Wait till I strip the coat off me. It's an O'Brien that'll tache him how to trate a lady. Say, Swanson, ye son of a gun, ye son of a say-cook, ye son--Sure, Oi 'd loike to tell ye what ye are av it was n't for the prisince of the seeñorita. It's Michael O'Brien who 's about to paste ye in the oye fer forgittin' yer manners, an' growin' too gay in good company. Whoop! begorry, it's the grane above the red!"

There was a dull noise of a heavily struck blow. A pair of short legs, waving frantically, traversed a complete semicircle, coming down with a crash at the edge of the bushes. Through a rapidly swelling and badly damaged optic the pessimistic O'Brien gazed up in dazed bewilderment at the man already astride of his prostrate body. It was a regenerated Norseman, the fierce battle-lust of the Vikings glowing in his blue eyes. With fingers like steel claws he gripped the Irishman's shirt collar, driving his head back against the earth with every mad utterance.

"Ay ban Nels Swanson!" he exploded defiantly. "Ay ban Nels Swanson! Ay ban Nels Swanson! Ay ban shovel-man by Meester Burke! Ay ban Lutheran! Ay ban work two tollar saxty cint! You hear dose tings? Tamn the Irish--Ay show you!"

With the swift, noiseless motion of a bird Mercedes flitted across the narrow space, forcing her slender figure in between the two contestants, her white teeth gleaming merrily, the bright sunshine shimmering across her black hair. Like two stars her great eyes flashed up imploringly into the Swede's angry face.

"No, no, señors! You no fight like de dogs vid me here. I not like dat, I not let you. See! you strike him, you strike me. _Dios de Dios_! I not have eet so--nevah."

A strong, compelling hand fell suddenly on Winston's shoulder, and he glanced about into the grave, boyish countenance of Stutter Brown.

"Th-thar 's quite c-c-consid'able of a c-crowd comin' up the t-t-trail t-ter the 'Independence,' an' B-Bill wants yer," he announced, his calm eyes on the controversy being waged beyond in the open. "Th-thar 'll be somethin' d-doin' presently, but I r-reckon I better s-s-straighten out t-this yere i-i-international fracas first."