CHAPTER XXVIII

Doss Umpey’s Excuses

GOAT’S GULCH was a narrow valley, or deep slit in the hills, much higher up than Camp’s Gulch or the Settlement, and so inaccessible that Nell was continually wondering as she toiled up the rocky slopes, how the cart in which the boy and the two men made their home, had been brought to such a place.

Trees there were in plenty, some growing out from the crevices in big rock-boulders, others struggling for root-hold on jutting shelves, where the soil was thin and poor.

Of level ground there was absolutely none. It was all uphill, or it was down, or strewn with boulders so big that they looked like mountains in miniature.

Even the inexperienced eyes of Nell could see how rich in ores of iron and copper some of this rugged ground was, but she did not know that in places veins of silver ran in and out among the other ores.

It would have been a fearsome place to get lost in, for there was no road or trail of any kind, and one gloomy valley only led to another of the same description.

“Is it much farther?” asked Nell, who was so tired that she felt ready to drop, while the buzzing at her ear had recommenced in a most uncomfortable fashion, as it invariably did whenever she was overdone.

“Just round the corner of the next block,” said the boy, with a chuckle, as he pointed to a towering mass of rock as big as a Winnipeg sky-scraper, which had a ragged fringe of trees growing at the top and extending down one side.

Now at last a faint trail showed, which deepened into a well-worn path, when at last the corner was turned.

Then Nell saw, standing in a sunny angle of the rock, an old tilted cart, thatched over the top and down the most exposed side with rushes, and so she knew the end of the journey was reached at last.

“Go and see if he is awake; tell him some one has come to see him,” she said brusquely, as she sat down to wait on a log of wood which stood near the cooking place, while a queer feeling of faintness attacked her.

The boy nodded, then quickly disappeared into the cart, while Nell sat with her eyes shut, trying to master her uncomfortable sensations.

In a couple of minutes the boy emerged, calling out, “Come along, miss, he’s wide awake, and spoiling for a pie!” This last he said with a chuckle of mischief, because he believed that Nell had walked all the way from Camp’s Gulch just to see if the sick man were in a fit condition to eat pies.

She rose to her feet with an effort, and carrying the little basket of soup, eggs, and custard which she had brought with her, climbed up as the boy had done, and entered the cart.

Considering the small space at their disposal, the owners of that peculiar abode had done their very best with it. One side had two shelves or bunks, while on the other was a seat that served as sitting-room.

On the lower shelf lay a wasted figure wrapped in an old coat and a tattered red blanket. At the first sight of the bleached, yellow face Nell gave a start of dismay.

“Poor granfer, do you feel very bad?” she murmured, stooping forward so that her face could be plainly seen by the wasted figure on the shelf.

“Nell, is it you?” he asked, in feeble surprise, staring at her as if he could not believe the evidence of his sunken eyes.

“Yes, it is Nell,” she said, with a nervous laugh that ended in something like a sob.

Perhaps he was thinking of their last meeting and his fierce brutality, for the surprise still lingered on his face as he asked—

“What made you come?”

“The boy—Joe, he said his name was—told me that their lodger was sick; he came to buy a pie, you know, and when he said the lodger’s name was Doss, I thought it must be you, only——” but she broke off abruptly.

“Only what?” he demanded suspiciously, for, judged from the standpoint of how he himself would have behaved under the circumstances, Nell’s coming was wholly inexplicable.

“Only I thought that you were dead, wiped out by the Skeena crowd, or the Tacla Indians,” she said, unconsciously quoting from Ike.

“You heard of that, did you? Well, I wished then, as I’ve wished a good many times since, that they had finished me off, for I should have been spared a good many hours of suffering; but I suppose it wasn’t to be,” he said, with a groan. Nell watched him with a great pity in her heart.

“I made you a small custard; can you eat a little?” she asked, coaxingly, producing a basin and a teaspoon from the basket, which had weighed so heavy during the long hot walk over the hills.

“Food sort of turns me sick,” he said, in feeble protest. But by gentle persuasion she induced him to swallow a few spoonfuls.

“Have you had a doctor?” she asked, with a quick thought to Dr. Russell.

“No; I guess all the doctors in the world could not put me on my feet again,” he answered, listlessly.

“But medicine might ease you a little,” she said, looking at the hard wooden shelf on which he was lying, and thinking how he must suffer from hardship and privation.

“It don’t matter so much now the weather is warm, and I sleep a good bit,” he replied, in a dull tone.

“If you have been ill long, how have you managed to live?” she asked, wondering if it were starvation which had helped to bring him to such a pass.

“It’s real curious, but it’s true, I’ve just been kept alive the last few months by a fluke, as you may say, a mistake that you made a goodish bit ago,” he replied.

“What do you mean?” she asked, in great surprise. She would have believed his mind to be wandering but for the sanity in his eyes.

“Do you remember sending a letter with thirty dollars and a picture in it to young Dick Brunsen, back in last summer?” he asked.

A hot colour surged over Nell’s face, and a dizzy sensation seized her, but gripping the hard wood of the seat until it hurt her hand, she kept herself steady enough to answer calmly—

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, it’s that thirty dollars what kept me from starving, but there ain’t much of it left now,” he answered.

“But I don’t understand. You said I had made a mistake; what did you mean?” she demanded.

“You thought young Dick Brunsen was the man what I took to Button End that time when I didn’t come back?” he asked.

But she replied with another question, “Was he not?”

“Bless you, no; and the two were no more alike than chalk is like cheese. Young Dick was always seeing if he couldn’t do somebody out of something, and live by scheming instead of work. But the other one, the man that I took to Button End on Blossom, he was as straight-laced as a parson, and he read me a reg’lar moral lecture, all the way to Joe Lipton’s, on how I wasn’t treating you fair by keeping you on Blue Bird Ridge, with no advantages except fresh air. But he paid me well, so I ain’t going to complain about him, nor yet to say that I didn’t deserve the lecture,” Doss Umpey remarked, with another groan, as he gave himself a twist round on the wooden shelf, in the vain hope of finding a more comfortable spot for his aching bones.

“Did the other one, this man Dick Brunsen, I mean, give you the money that I sent to him?” asked Nell. And now there was such a flood of gladness in her heart, that her weariness was momentarily forgotten, and her eyes were shining like two stars.

The man whom she had succoured at the Lone House had been, according to Doss Umpey, straight-laced as a parson, and so her instincts had been right; she had felt that he was a good man as well as a kind one, and it had been absolute torture to her when circumstances seemed to point to his being a rogue.

“Dick wouldn’t have given away that money nor yet spent it to save himself from starvation, I believe,” said Doss Umpey, with a chuckle. “He was a desperately superstitious fellow, and he’d got an idea that money sent to him like that by a mistake would bring him luck, so he always used to carry the case with him in a belt round his waist. His father and I used to laugh at him about it, but it didn’t make no difference. They didn’t know who had sent the money; but I did directly, only I wasn’t going to let on to them that I knew anything about it. But I’d seen you on the depot at Bratley, that day when we went through to Roseneath, so it didn’t take long to figure things out that you had sent the money, because you’d somehow got mixed up into thinking that young Dick was the party that had to be taken in and done for.”

“So they never knew who sent it?” asked Nell, drawing a long breath of relief.

“Not they! But we was dreadful hard up after that business of trying to clear out the big shed at the depot, and we had to lie low too, for between the police and the Syndicate it was rather warm for us. Then old Brunsen won a lot of money at poker, and we cleared out while we’d got the chance. We meant to go to Klondike, but we hadn’t got enough money, and it was the wrong time of the year; so we pulled up at Skeena, and looked about to see how we could make things last out until the spring. Then one day, as luck would have it, young Dick was prospecting round a bit, and he came upon a poor fellow who was dying from some wounds he’d had from getting mixed up with Indians. This chap had some nuggets in his pocket what he’d picked up in the Babine country, and he asked Dick to send them to his sweetheart in Quebec.”

“Have a little more custard, then lie quiet awhile; so much talking cannot be good for you,” said Nell, anxiously, for the old man’s appearance rather frightened her.

“Oh, I’m glad to talk, if it’s only to myself; it sort of whiles away the time,” said the old man; but he consented to swallow the custard, which was so much better than anything he had tasted through the weary months of his sickness. Then he went on with his story as if eager to get it told, “The poor chap pegged out when he had finished telling Dick about the gold in the Babine country, and Dick he came back to us in high feather, saying that our fortunes were made at last. And so for a time it seemed as if they were going to be; but there’s mostly something awkward turns up just as you think you’ve got to plain sailing, and somehow the crowd we had got to help us got hold of the wrong end of the story of the man with the nuggets. Then came trouble, for they were as ugly a lot as I had ever had to do with. They set upon us like a pack of wolves, and we should have been wiped out in about five minutes if it hadn’t been for Dick. He fought like ten men, and we might have pulled through even then, only one coward of a fellow shot him from behind, and so he died.” The old man’s voice broke in an irrepressible sob; but Nell’s face was white and stern.

She was thinking to herself that the way of transgressors is hard, for if Dick Brunsen had only told the truth about how he had come to know of the find of gold in the Babine country, his life need not have been forfeit, and so her pity for him dwindled and died, there seemed no limit to his meanness, so really he deserved the fate which had come to him.

“How did you escape?” she asked.

“The crowd made tracks in no time at all, when they saw that Dick was dead, for no one could say how near the mounted police might be, and law is law in Canada, I can tell you. Old Brunsen had got hurt in the head, sort of knocked silly, so he was no good. We couldn’t take the body back to the town, for we were three days out, and the crowd had made off with all the horses and mules that we had had loaded with provisions, tents, and diggers’ outfits. So, while old Brunsen lay on the ground moaning, I dug a grave for poor Dick; only, before I dragged him into it, I took off his belt with the thirty dollars in it that you sent, and I’ve had to make it last ever since, for I’ve sort of been too sick to earn anything.”

“What became of old Brunsen?” Nell asked.

“He was sort of struck silly, I think, with that blow on the head, for he didn’t come to his senses, and next morning, when I woke, meaning to start back for the town, he was missing. I spent all that day and part of the next looking for him, and at last I came on his trail, only to find that he must have pitched over a bluff in the dark, for he was lying stone dead at the bottom with a broken neck. I buried him where I found him, just as I had buried Dick, then I sat down and felt pretty sick.”

“Poor granfer!” exclaimed Nell, and then she stroked his withered face with gentle fingers, trying to forget all his unkindness and brutality, remembering only that he was poor, sick, and aged, an object of compassion to anyone whose heart held a spark of tenderness. Then, after a little pause, she asked, “What did you do after that?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I must have got to Port Simpson somehow, for I seem to remember having been there, and I know I got to Vancouver City by boat, for I was dreadful sick and ill. But it seems as if there have been holes knocked in my memory in places; I can remember parts, but not the whole. It was at New Westminster that I fell in with Fred Higgins and the boy Joe, and I’ve lived along with them ever since. I lent him some money when he was hard up, and he’s been sort of kind to me ever since,” Doss Umpey said feebly. Then he dropped to sleep without any warning, and Nell sat silently watching him, noting the grey shadow which had gathered in the hollows of his eyes, and wondering how best she could bring help and comfort to soothe his dying hours.

He awoke as suddenly as he had gone to sleep, seeming so bright and alert from the brief rest, that Nell began to think she must be mistaken, and that he could not be so low down as she had imagined.

“Had a nap, have I? It’s real curious how I go to sleep all of a sudden; but it’s comforting too, and passes the time wonderful.”

“Granfer, do you think you could be moved? I’ve got a house now, at least, I live with the Lorimers, and we could nurse you until you are better,” said Nell, seeing that to care for the sick man was her duty, and deciding that the plan of having summer boarders must be held over, at least, for a time.

“No; I don’t want to be moved. I’m as comfortable here as I should be anywhere, and I don’t want no bother,” he said weakly.

“But it is such a long way for me to come every day, and if I had you at home I could look after you so much better,” she said coaxingly.

“I should only die on the way. I know what that road is, and the shaking is more than I could stand. Besides, I don’t want the police coming poking round, asking questions by the dozen, and they’d be sure to do that, if I came down to the Settlement.”

“I don’t live at the Settlement, but at the depot,” said Nell, quickly.

“It’s all the same, and I ain’t coming down there not to please nobody,” he said, setting his weak jaw into obstinate lines.

“Granfer, what sort of hold was it that Mr. Brunsen had over you, that you didn’t come back to the Lone House that time, but left me to get on as best I could with that horrid Mrs. Gunnage?” asked Nell.

The old man winced visibly, stirring uneasily on his hard shelf.

“That’s an old story now, and too long for the telling, seeing that I’m tired,” he answered.

But Nell meant to know if possible. “Was it anything about that old business between you and Logan and Mr. Brunsen?” she asked.

He gave a little start of surprise, and wriggled again.

“How did you know about that?” he demanded.

“Some one told me, and then I found a letter in your pocket from Mr. Brunsen, ordering you to pay him some money or he would expose you,” she said, not choosing to tell him that she had found some of Brunsen’s writing in her mother’s box also.

Doss Umpey wriggled, and his voice took on a protesting whine.

“The fact is, Brunsen thought I knew where Logan’s hoard was, but I didn’t, though I guessed it should be on Blue Bird Ridge somewhere, because his old mother lived there so long. I used to pay Brunsen money to keep quiet, because he’d got black-and-white evidence against me over a bit of business what happened a good few years before you were born. I’d got no money to pay, and I was obliged to raise a few dollars on the bits of things in your mother’s box. After that I couldn’t pay interest on the mortgage Joe Gunnage held on the Lone House, so he foreclosed, and I went to Brunsen to explain matters a bit, only to find that he’d just been made a fraudulent bankrupt, and had got to clear in a hurry. So we went together.”

“Leaving me to manage as best I could,” said Nell, bitterly.

“Well, you did a sight better for yourself than I could have done for you, so there’s no need to cast that up at me,” he said, with another wriggle. “I promised to send you some money if I had any to send, or if I knew where you were. But luck has been against me all the time. Think of the years I lived at the Lone House, a pokin’ and pryin’ round to find the things Logan had most likely buried there, yet never came across anything. But directly Joe Gunnage gets there, and begins to dig for a root-cellar, he turns up a whole lot of things, and instead of keeping quiet about them, he must needs go flying with the whole story to the police, stirring up no end of mud. I’ve had to keep pretty quiet ever since, I can tell you, though there wasn’t a shred of evidence against me, and I was as innercent as a babe about them things, for if I had known where they were I should have dug them up and sold them a long time ago.”

Nell shivered, and, leaning closer, said gently, “Don’t talk like that, granfer. You are old and feeble now, and perhaps there is not much more life left for you.”

“A good thing too,” he burst in. “I’ve had about enough of it, one way and another, and I’m that tired, it is as much as I can do to lie here without lifting a finger.”

“Poor granfer!” she murmured, and a mist of tears came into her eyes as she realized how little she could do for him.

“Can you give me a little money, Nell?” he asked presently, with the whine coming into his voice again.

She shook her head. “I will see that you don’t want for food, and I’ll send a doctor to you; but I haven’t much money to spare, granfer.”

“Well, you’ll come again and see me, won’t you? Real interesting it has been, having you drop in for a chat to-day. Fred said he’d send Joe down to a food-shop as there was at Camp’s Gulch, just to get me a bit of something tasty, but I hadn’t no idea as you were there still, and would come to see me.”

“I must go now. I’ve been here such a long while, and I have got to walk back, but I will come again to-morrow or the day after, if I can,” she said, wondering how she would manage to find her way home unaided.

“I gave you good advice, Nell, when I told you to get over the border,” he said, with a feeble laugh, when she bade him good-bye. “I’ve always tried to do my duty by you, and I should have sent you some money if I hadn’t wanted it myself.”