Chapter 22

WHERE TRAILS MEET

A long, narrow valley between snow-capped mountains glistening under the January sun; a cluster of ramshackle, weather-beaten wooden houses elbowing each other on either side of a single straggling street, with here and there a newer concrete building planted firmly like respectable citizens in a disreputable mob. Stray dogs sniffing at heaps of refuse, a group of tethered horses shivering under thin blankets in the hotel shed, a battered jitney or two stalled before shop and saloon. A Chinaman with a huge bundle upon his head, a slatternly woman brushing the dry, powdered snow from the path, a tawdry one pattering along, her rouged face pitiful in the clear merciless light; red-shirted miners crawling like ants to the yawning shaft-mouths half way up the mountainside.--This was Topaz Gulch on a certain wintry morning.

In the office of the Palace Hotel, the proprietor tossed aside his week-old Chicago newspaper and rose with alacrity as a slender, girlish figure, clad in a great fur coat, came lightly down the stairs.

"Everything all right, Ma'am? Did the missus make you comfortable?"

"Yes, thank you." The girl nodded, smiling. Then her face sobered. "I wonder if you could tell me--may I ask how long you have been here in Topaz Gulch?"

"Five years, Ma'am," he returned promptly. "For a boom town that didn't grow as was expected, nor yet peter out entirely, Topaz is holding her own and business ain't so bad; besides, the air is good for the missus. That's why we come in the first place."

The girl had paused at the window, gazing up the western slope.

"That is the Yellow Streak?"

"Yes'm, that's the mine. Folks thought at first that she was going to pan out another bonanza, I guess, but now she's just about profitable enough to make it worth while to keep her going. Great town, this must have been when she was first opened up."

The girl scarcely heard. She was thinking of the weary, consumptive young time-keeper who had struggled up that gray slope with daily weakening tread and of the girl who, with her baby in her arms, watched him perhaps from the door of one of those dilapidated, weather-worn shacks upon which she herself now gazed. With blurred eyes, the erstwhile Willa Murdaugh turned to her informant.

"Have there been many changes since you came?" she asked.

"Well, no," he considered. "Once in a while some hustler from the Coast lands here and runs up a concrete store, but usually he don't stay long; there ain't enough doing. The population's always shifting; there's been a whole new outfit up at the mine since we come, but everything seems to go on just the same, so you couldn't rightly call it much of a change. The moving-picture houses are about all that's marked any difference in things here, I guess."

"I wonder if there is anyone left in the town who was here fifteen years ago." Willa spoke with ill-concealed eagerness. "Who is the oldest inhabitant you know of?"

The proprietor looked his surprise.

"Well," he began at last, "there's Bill Ryder; he come in with the first rush, they tell me, and he still runs the Red Dog Cafe. Then there's Pete Haines, a half-witted old cuss--begging your pardon, Ma'am!--that's got enough dust cached somewhere to keep himself drunk perpetual; and the Widow Atkinson, and Big Olaf, and--and Klondike Kate."

He hesitated at the last name, and a brick-red flush suffused his stolid face, but Willa paid no heed.

"Who are they?"

"The Widow Atkinson runs the eating-house for miners at the end of the street; hard-shell temperance, she is, and they say Atkinson used to wait on table with her apron tied round him and dassent even smoke indoors." He paused. "Big Olaf is a Swede who got hurt in the mine years ago and the company gives him an annuity. Kind of cracked he is, too, but harmless. You see, Ma'am, when the big boom died down gradual and the town settled into a one-horse gait, the young folks naturally pushed on to the next strike that promised a fortune, and the old ones drifted back to where they come from."

"And Klondike Kate; who is she?" Willa persisted.

Her host shifted from one foot to the other in an agony of embarrassment.

"She--she's just a woman that stays on here because there ain't any other place for her to go, Ma'am. She does odd jobs when she can find any to do and the missus helps her out now and then, but she ain't the kind you'd want anything to do with. The missus'll tell you if you ask her."

"I understand," said Willa quickly. "Is that the Red Dog over there, where the man is sweeping sawdust out to the road?"

She had crossed to the door and opened it, and her host approached, peering over her shoulder.

"Yes'm, that's Bill Ryder himself."

"I would like to talk to him," Willa announced. "I want to ask him some questions about the early days here."

"I'll fetch him for you!" her host offered, recovering hastily from his astonishment. "You just wait here, he'll be right pleased to come----"

"No, thank you. I will go over, myself." Willa fastened her cloak with a decisive air. "He came with the first rush, you tell me? Then he should be able to remember what I want to learn."

She picked her way across the hummocks of frozen mud powdered with snow in the road, and approached the rotund, jovial-faced little man who was swinging his worn broom energetically in a cloud of sawdust.

He paused as she neared him, his jaw sagging at the apparition of a dainty, richly dressed, strange female alone on the street of Topaz.

"Good-morning. You're Mr. Ryder, aren't you?" she smiled.

"That's me, Ma'am." He pulled off his soft-brimmed hat, revealing a wide expanse of shining pink scalp, fringed with a scanty growth of grizzled hair.

"The proprietor of the Palace Hotel tells me that you are one of the oldest inhabitants left, Mr. Ryder, and I wonder if you would mind telling me something of the people who used to live in Topaz Gulch years ago. I am trying to locate some lost relatives."

"I'll be glad to tell you anything I can, Ma'am." His round face quickened with interest. "I keep bachelor house, but if you don't object to walking through the bar--it's empty now--there's a room back where we can talk."

He led the way and Willa followed him. Bare and ramshackle as it was, the sight of the bar and the little tables fronting it brought acutely to her memory a like room, larger and more resplendent, with baize-covered tables and flaring oil lamps; a tall, spare figure inexpressibly dear to her memory replaced for a moment the rotund one before her and the veil of the past seemed lifted. She was back once more in the Blue Chip.

The vision was dispelled, however, when she found herself in the little back room, scarcely more than a closet, with room enough only for the rusty stove, table and chairs.

"Private poker-room," Mr. Ryder announced with pride. "Enough coin's changed hands here to buy the greatest gold-mine in Nevada! Make yourself comfortable, Ma'am. Now, who was it you was looking for?"

"Do you recall Jake's place, the dance-hall that was burned down?" Willa began.

"Like as if it was yesterday!" The little man seated himself in the chair opposite and put his hat on the floor beside him. "Topaz was a roaring gehenna in them days and one night Red-Eye Pete started in to shoot out the lamps at Jake's. One of 'em exploded and it was all over in no time. Red-Eye himself and Ray Clancy, the pianner-player, and two o' the girls was lost. I got a busted arm and most o' my hair singed off going in after 'em, but 'twarn't no use."

"You knew the--the girls?" Willa had difficulty in controlling her voice.

"Sure I did! Blonde Annie and Miss Violet. Annie was just a--a girl like you'd expect, Ma'am, but Miss Violet, she was a regular lady. Young widder with a toddling baby and a voice like an angel.--Say, that's funny!" He broke off, staring at her. "It ain't about her that you've come, is it?"

Willa nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"Well, don't that beat--beat everything!" Mr. Ryder recovered himself in some confusion. "Two or three years ago a lawyer shark from New York City--a man named North, I remember--come here asking an all-fired lot o' questions, and only last fall another feller turned up on the same game. I told 'em all I knew, which warn't much. They called themselves Murphy, Miss Vi and her husband did, but I guess that warn't their right name. Nice young feller he was, but quiet and sickly. When he died we wanted to pass round the hat for the widder, like we always do, but she wouldn't have it; she got work instead at Jake's, singing and dancing, but she kept everyone in their place and there warn't a man here that wouldn't have stood up for her till the last gun fired."

"And the baby--do you remember it at all?"

"Little Billie?" Mr. Ryder laughed. "There ain't enough babies around a mining camp to make you forget any one of 'em, and you couldn't rightly forget Billie if you tried. Fat and curly-headed she was, and the spunkiest little critter you ever see, always falling down hard and scrambling up again by herself and laughing to beat four of a kind. Her ma tried to keep her home, but there warn't a chance; she went wherever her little legs would carry her, and the whole town looked out for her. She must be a woman grown, now."

"I don't suppose you would recognize her if you should see her," Willa observed wistfully.

"Me? Lord, no!" he exclaimed. "Babies grow up into most anything, as far as looks go! She was about four when her ma was burned, and Gentleman Geoff, the gambler, adopted her and took her away. The whole town wanted to keep her, but in them days Topaz was no place for a girl to grow up in and there wasn't a woman here of her mother's kind."

"It is possible that a woman might remember her where a man wouldn't." Willa was following her own train of thought. "The proprietor of the Palace spoke of two women left who were here at that time; a Mrs. Atkinson and Klondike Kate. Would they be able to tell me anything more, do you think?"

"Not the widder!" Mr. Ryder responded with emphasis. "She put Miss Vi to work in her hash-house for a week when young Murphy died; starved her, slammed the kid around and drove her till she fainted. She warn't used to hard work, Miss Vi warn't, and the Widder Atkinson would have killed a horse. When Miss Vi took to doing turns at Jake's instead, the Widder 'lowed she was no better than she'd ought to've been, and near got lynched in consequence. You've only got to mention Miss Vi to her even now to have her r'ar right up on her hind legs. She wouldn't tell you nothing if she could."

"The other one, Klondike Kate. Did she know this Miss Violet?"

"Sure. She was one o' the girls at Jake's, like Blonde Annie and the rest. I guess you ain't ever come in contact with that kind, Ma'am, but it wouldn't hurt you to talk to her once and if anyone could help you maybe she could. That kind don't get much forbearance from other women, but Miss Vi was good to her and nursed her through a spell o' sickness and Klondike Kate just about worshiped her and the baby. 'Twas Kate saved little Billie when Jake's burned. She was the first after poor Miss Violet to remember the baby and she turned back and got her."

"She--she saved the child!" Willa's voice trembled, and she rose quickly. "Where can I find her? It is good of you to have told me what you could, Mr. Ryder. You don't remember anything else about this Miss Violet and her baby; she left no papers with anyone?"

"No, not that I know of. The lawyer asked me that, too, and the young feller who came last fall. Riley, his name was, or something like that."

"Starr Wiley?" Willa smiled. "Did he ask you anything else, Mr. Ryder?"

"He was trying most particular to find out Gentleman Geoff's last name, but nobody ever heard it here. You'll find Klondike Kate living in the last shack on the west side o' the street before you come to the coal-yard. She ain't a pleasant sight to look at, poor old Kate! The fire caught her, too, when she rescued the baby, and though she was a fine-appearing girl before then, her own mother wouldn't know her now, or want to, I guess, for that matter. She's square, I'll say that for her; whatever she tells you, you can bank on."

Willa took leave of Mr. Ryder and departed upon her quest. He followed to the café door and stood looking perplexedly after her as she made her way down the rambling street. He was trying to fix in his mind the vagrant, subtle sensation of familiarity which possessed him when he had first caught sight of her face. Stolid and slow of wit as he was, the conviction grew that she or someone very like her had crossed his path before. Then the face of the song-and-dance artiste at Jake's flashed across his memory and the next minute he was pounding heavily after the girl.

"Hey, Ma'am! Wait a second!" he panted.

Willa turned.

"Excuse me, Ma'am, but it come to me that you might be little Billie, yourself! Are you? I'd like powerful well to see her again!"

"Look at me!" commanded Willa. "Could you swear, Mr. Ryder, that I was the child you call 'Billie'? Could you take your oath on it?"

He looked long and searchingly while she waited in breathless suspense. At last he drew back, shaking his head.

"No'm, I couldn't. Meaning no disrespect, there's a look about you of Miss Vi, but fifteen or sixteen years is a long time to trust your memory and I couldn't swear to nothing."

Willa sighed and turned away.

"My name is Abercrombie," she said. "You are right, Mr. Ryder. Fifteen years are a very long time."

The shack next the coal-yard was more forlorn even than the others, though the sagging porch was swept clean, and ineffectual attempts had been made to mend the breaks in roof and walls with fresher slabs of unpainted wood which stood out against the gray weathered boards like patches on an old coat.

There was no bell, but Willa knocked patiently on the panel until there came a slow tread within and the door opened. A thin, angular woman stood there, her dark hair streaked with gray, and Willa glanced at her, then swiftly averted her gaze in pity. The face before her was drawn and scarred as if the hot hand of wrath had clawed it, searing and distorting it to the hideous, grinning semblance of a mask.

"I beg your pardon." Willa's voice was very gentle. "I am looking for someone known as Klondike Kate. If you are she, I have a great favor to ask of you."

She had sounded the right note; the woman, who for so long had been the recipient of grudging, half-contemptuous favor herself, gasped and flung wide the door.

"Come in, Miss. I'm Kate, right enough. Sit down close to the stove; I ain't got much of a fire." The voice was singularly clear and sweet.

Willa glanced about her and then back at the woman who had dropped into a low rocker beside a table heaped with red flannels, which she had evidently been mending. The room was tiny and pitifully bare, but scrubbed clean, and pathetic bows of faded ribbon strove to conceal the worn spots on the coarse snowy curtains. A small pot bubbled on the stove and two cold potatoes and half a stale loaf on the shelf betrayed the meagerness of the larder.

The woman had given an impression of age at first, but Willa saw now that she could be scarcely more than forty and her eyes were rather fine despite their hint of tragedy.

"I'm looking for someone who can tell me about Violet, the girl who used to dance at Jake's." Willa chose her words deliberately. "Mr. Ryder says you were a friend of hers, years ago."

"Bill Ryder said that?" Klondike Kate drew a deep breath. "A friend? She was the best friend a body could ever have! But you could hardly have known her; she died fifteen years past."

"I know. I was wondering if you knew her story; if she left any papers with you?"

"Who are you?" the woman asked suddenly, bending forward. "If I knew Vi's story, would I repay her for all her kindness by telling it to a stranger? Why should I show you her papers if she did leave any with me, when that lawyer could get nothing out of me two years ago, for all his blustering?"

"Would you do it if you could help her baby to claim what is her own?" Willa asked earnestly. "My name is Abercrombie, but I happen to know that the girl your friend left behind her is trying to prove her identity. I thought that you would want to help."

"Oh, if I could!" Klondike Kate clasped her toil-worn hands. "Vi told me about the rich father-in-law who hadn't ever forgiven her. Where is Billie, Miss Abercrombie? Is she well and happy? She was such a pretty thing!"

"She is well," Willa responded slowly. "She never knew that it was you who saved her from the fire."

The scarred face flushed.

"I forgot her first, that was the awful part. She'd been ailing and her mother couldn't leave her home, so while she did her turn I sat in her dressing-room, mending my skirt and talking to the kid. When I heard the shots and the lamp exploded and the blaze flared up, I just made a jump for the door. Then I remembered Billie and went back, and the flames caught us both."

"But--but she isn't scarred!" Willa cried.

"No. I--I tore off my skirt and wrapped her in it. Only her little bare feet stuck out and one of them got burned real bad."

"One--of--her--feet!" repeated Willa breathlessly. "Did it leave a scar? Oh, think--think!"

"Why, I guess it must have, Miss Abercrombie." The woman stared at her. "The right foot it was, and there was a bad burn on the inside of the ankle right up from the heel, like a tongue of flame had licked it. It wasn't hardly well when Gentleman Geoff took her away."

For a moment Willa sat as if stunned, then she bent swiftly, and, whipping off her shoe and stocking, thrust out a slender pink foot. The inner side was seared with a tiny forked red line, slight but unmistakable.

"You!" Klondike Kate rose slowly. "You are Billie!"

With a little sob Willa went to meet her, and in an instant the two were crying in each other's arms.

The older woman was the first to recover herself.

"Oh, my dear, to think that I didn't know you! I ought to have seen from the first--your mother's hair and eyes----"

"But you know me now!" Willa smiled through her tears. "You could swear to me by that scar, couldn't you? You see, there is someone trying to claim I'm not the girl you knew as Billie, and I have no other proof. I never fancied that little scar meant anything; I haven't thought of it in years. You saved my life once, at the risk of your own--will you help me now?"

"Will I?" Klondike Kate wiped her eyes. "I'll go to the last ditch for you! I've lived right for fifteen years, and I guess my word is as good as the next one's. You just take me to whoever says you're not little Billie and I'll prove their lie before any court on earth.--That reminds me; I have something for you. It won't help make good your claim, for they might say an impostor got it from me, but it's yours and you ought to have it."

She mounted the rickety stairs to the loft, and in her absence Willa slowly put on her stocking and shoe once more. Her own inner conviction had been justified and an elation almost solemn in its intensity filled her heart. She was Willa Murdaugh! She could prove her right to the name which had been wrested from her!

When Klondike Kate descended she bore in her hands a folded paper, yellowed and worn, and a tarnished locket on a bit of faded, scorched blue ribbon.

"I was sick when Gentleman Geoff left town with you or I'd have tied the locket on you myself," she said. "It's got both their pictures in it, mother and father. See!"

She opened the case, and Willa gazed through renewed tears at the two young faces vibrant with life which smiled back at her: the man's thin and intellectual with the eyes of a dreamer and the chiseled lips of a poet; the woman's stronger and more practical, her gaze sweet and level, her dark hair in a soft cloud about her low, broad forehead.

Willa pressed the locket convulsively to her breast in the first overwhelming tide of possession which had ever swept over her. These were her own people, flesh of her flesh! They had dared to love against insuperable odds, and, succumbing at last, had left her as the pledge of that love! She would prove worthy of them!

"It was taken from her neck when they found her after the fire," Klondike Kate said softly. "Jake gave it to me to keep for you.--Here's what she prized most of anything she had; she put it in my hands herself to keep for her."

The yellowed paper, unfolded, proved to be the certificate of marriage of Violet Ashton and Ralph Murdaugh, dated January 2, 1896.

The two talked long within the little shack, and when Willa emerged at last the sun had disappeared behind a bank of level, leaden cloud and the still cold which precedes a snowfall had settled down upon the valley.

Since her arrival the night before Willa had fought resolutely against the vague memories which seemed to assail her at every turn, fearing the snare of mental suggestion, but now she strove wistfully to foster a sense of nearness and familiarity with the dreary scene.

The reaction from her triumphant hour had come, and with it a forlorn hopelessness of spirit. What did it matter, after all? Outcast or reinstated in the empty pomp and circumstance of society, no one had really cared save Winnie, and he had not counted.

The tragedy of utter isolation from all human ties descended upon her and in the depths of her desolation she was oblivious to the sound of footsteps approaching on the frosty, hard-packed road. It was only when they halted that she glanced up--and found herself looking into the eyes of Kearn Thode.