Part 9

It lay there in a cañon where once men came in search of precious metals; and in that cleft of the mountains they built their homes. Along the cañon sides, from end to end, there trailed a double line of houses, now all in ruins--fallen walls of adobe or stone. Roofless and floorless, with empty casements and doorways, the houses stood mute witnesses of the false hopes which once led men to squander money, and youth, and strength of purpose there in the long-ago, when the State was new.

Almost a double score of years had gone since the place knew human voice or human movement, save when some lone prospector passed along the brush-grown street that crept upward with the cañon’s slope. The dead town’s very stillness and desolation were full of charm, albeit tempered with that sadness a ruin always has for the beholder. For through the empty doorways came the whisperings of those who were gone; and looking through the sashless windows as you rode by, you saw wraithlike figures pass and repass within. It might have been only the wind’s breath as it rustled the dark leaves of branches overhanging the crumbling walls, and the ghosts, mayhap, were but the waving boughs which tremulously moved over the gray adobes; but when you were there--in that stillness and amid all that mystery--you felt it was true. You hushed your quickening breath to listen for the breath of some other. You moved through the silence with wide-lidded eyes looking for--you knew not what. You felt yourself out of place there--an alien. Only the lizards on the decaying walls, and the little brown birds that pecked at berries growing on the bushes along the creek, and the cottontails that scurried away to hide in the brush, seemed to have honest claim there.

On a level with the dead camp’s one street, the short tunnel of the Spencer mine ran into the cliff which pushed itself forward from the cañon’s general contour--the mouth itself being all but hidden by the falling walls of what had once been an adobe dwelling, its rear wall but a few feet from the limestone bluffs. To it, old Zeke brought Sherwood and showed him the tunnel below and the croppings of white quartz on the cliff top. It looked barren and worthless; but an assay certificate, in which the values were marked in four figures, held before Sherwood’s astonished eyes, sent his hopes up to fever mark, and left him eager to begin the work whereby he might reach the precious stuff hidden well away within the dull-colored bluffs. If the croppings promised such wealth, what might not the mine itself yield when he extended the tunnel, and had tapped the ledge at a greater depth? He felt his heart beating the faster for his dreams. A fortune! His, and--hers! All that was needed to bring it about were pick strokes, powder and patience. It all seemed very simple to Hume Sherwood. Without doubt he was a “tenderfoot.”

So the Summer found him putting every pulse-throb into his labor. Was it not for her that he wanted it? For what other end was he working, than to win the maid who had come into this land of enchantment? To him, it was as Paradise--these great broad levels of alkali, and sand (blotches of white on a blur of gray) and the sagebrush and greasewood-covered foothills that lay, fold upon fold, against the base of grim mountains--prickly with splintered and uncovered rocks.

Each day he blessed the fate which had called her from her home by the Western sea and placed her under the same roof that sheltered him in the rough little Nevada camp that called itself a town since a railroad had found it, and given it a name.

Here Judge Blaine and his daughter settled themselves for the Summer. That is, an array of suit-cases and handbags, great and small, and a trunk or two, proclaimed the hotel their headquarters. That was all. Every day saw the Judge up near the top of the mountain, getting the Monarch’s new machinery into running order; while trails, and roads--old and new--and even the jack-rabbit paths that lay like a network over the land, saw more of the young woman in khaki than ever the hotel did, so long as daylight lasted--the light which she grudged to have go.

It was Evaleen herself who had suggested coming to Nevada with her father, instead of spending the season in the usual way with Mrs. Blaine and the other girls at whatsoever place fashion might dictate as the Summer’s especial (and expensive) favorite for the time.

“Daddy, dear,” she had said, standing behind his chair, with both arms tight clasped around his neck, “I’ve made up my mind to do something that is going to surprise you. Listen; I’m not going with Mamma and the girls when she shuts up the house for the Summer. But, I--am--going--with--you! Oh, yes, I am! No, no! Not a word! I’ve always wanted to know what a mining camp was like; and this is my golden opportunity. You know you do want me there. Say so! While you are putting up the new works, I can go roaming over the country in old clothes. Listen to that, Daddy--old clothes! A lovely Summer; and not a cent spent on gowns!”

Ways and means at just that time being matters of difficult solution with the Judge, her argument had force and bore fruit. Midsummer found them where the alkali plains stretched away to distant ranges, and the duns and drabs of valleys reached across to the blended purples and blues. Such distances! And such silence! She had never dreamed of their like before.

On the levels or on the heights, she was day by day finding life a new and a beautiful thing. It was all so good; so fresh, and sweet, and strong! How easily she had fitted into her new surroundings and the new order of things--crude though they were, beyond any of her preconceived ideas. And now how far away seemed all the other Summers she had ever known. She felt that, after all, this was the real life. The other (that which Jean and Lili had their part in) was to her, now, as something known only in a dream. She was learning a grander, fuller sense of living since all that other world was shut away. So (companioned by her would-be lovers, Hume Sherwood and Elwyn Cadwallader, through a Summer of glad, free, full indrawn breaths) she rode the days away, while under the campaign hat she wore her face was being browned by the desert winds. Hot winds. But, oh, how she had learned to love their ardent touch! No sun was ever too hot, nor road too rough or long, to keep her back from this life in the open; and in the saddle she had come to know the valleys and mountains as one born to them.

The cañon which held the ruined walls had for her an especial charm, and toward it she often turned her horse’s head. It lay but a short distance from the road leading to her father’s mines. So, turning aside, she often took this short cut through the deserted town. There, one day she heard from Cadwallader the story of Crazy Dan, whose home had once been within the walls that hid the entrance to the tunnel of the Spencer--the mine which had been a gift to Sherwood.

Daniel Spencer--Crazy Dan (for whom old Zeke named the claim he had given away, because on the very ground there Dan had made his home) had worked in the creek for placer gold during all the long gone years when others worked the higher ground for silver lodes. An ill-featured, ill-natured old man, having no friends, and seeking none; he had burrowed the cañon’s length for gold as persistently as a gopher does the ground for roots, and--as all had prophesied--with as little showing of the yellow metal. Only a crazy man, they said, would ever have prospected that cañon for gold. It was a cañon for ledges, not placers; for silver, not gold. So the miserly, morose old man followed a phantom to the last; working alone from day-dawn till dusk with rocker and pan, in ground that pitying neighbors vainly tried to lead him away from. Admitting he had never found gold, yet working day after day, Crazy Dan could be seen there for twelve long years. Twelve years of toil that showed no reward for his labor. Then he died. One morning they saw there was no smoke issuing from the cabin chimney; and guessing what they would find, they pushed the door open.

Death had come when he was alone; there had been none to close the staring eyes. He had been near to starvation; there was scarcely any food within the cabin; there were no comforts. Years of toiling for something that was always just beyond; and a lonely death at the end--that was the story.

As she heard, Miss Blaine was stirred with a profound pity. When Cadwallader ceased speaking, her thoughts went straying to those far days, in wonder of the man who made up the sum of the town’s life. Dead, or scattered to the four corners of the earth. Crazy Dan’s death was no more pathetic, perhaps, than that of many another of their number. She rode on in silence, saddened by the recital.

Suddenly Cadwallader’s ringing laugh startled her. But as quickly he checked himself, saying:

“I beg of you, Miss Blaine, don’t misjudge me. I wasn’t thinking then of poor old Dan’s tragic death, or more than tragic life. I happened to remember the sequel to this story; and which, I’m sure, you’ve never heard. Let me tell you----” He hesitated. “Or, no; you’ve heard enough for today, and its humor would jar now on what you’ve just heard. I’ll tell you some other time.”

Nothing more was said about it by either; but she felt confident it related in some way to Hume Sherwood and the Spencer mine.

The latter had kept men continuously at work on his newly acquired property since coming into possession of them; but the faith that was his in the beginning, grew fainter with the waning of Summer. Autumn brought decided doubt. With the coming of Winter came a certainty of their worthlessness, he knew he had been befooled by a sharp trickster, but how far his ignorance had been played upon he did not yet know. Nevertheless, he felt he had well earned the titles the camp had bestowed on him, for the claims, he found, were but relocations that had been abandoned years before as utterly worthless. He had simply thrown his dollars into the deep sea.

If only that had been all!

* * * * *

Evaleen Blaine and her father, contrary to all their earlier plans for a return to San Francisco at the beginning of Autumn, were still in Nevada, and there Winter found them, though the machinery was all placed and the big reservoir and dam completed. But an offer to buy the Monarch property--mines, mill, and all that went with them--had come from a New York syndicate, and the Judge was now detained by their agents. He must stay yet a few days more--then home to “mother and the girls.” Nor would Evaleen leave without him; so for the first time in all his married life he was to be away from home on Christmas. Thus matters stood when the greater half of December had gone.

* * * * *

A storm was brewing. There had been scarcely any rain or snow thus far, but a damp wind from the south had shut away the mountain behind dark and threatening clouds. The Judge found he was needed at the mine that morning, but had promised Evaleen he would be back the next night, to make Christmas eve as merry as possible for them both--separated from the others. By staying one night at the mine he could, without doubt, return on the morrow. He had kissed her good-bye and left her looking out of the window in the gloom of the early day. Fifteen minutes later she heard his heavy tread again on the stairs, and he stormed into the room.

“See here, daughter!” he panted in indignation, “I’ve just heard of the ---- ---- (I beg your pardon, child); I mean the shameful trick that that cur of a Zeke Runkle played on young Sherwood. Sherwood has just told me--just heard of it himself. Have you heard anything about it? No? Well, I thought not--I thought not! It seems everybody around the place, though, has known of it all along--but us. Why didn’t anybody tell me? Hey? What? Yes; but why didn’t anybody tell me, I want to know! Ah, they knew better. I’d have told Sherwood that he’d been played for a sucker! Yes, sir!” (forgetting his audience again) “and a ---- shame it is, too! There I go again--but I don’t know when anything has so worked me up!”

“But, Daddy, what is it?” faltered Evaleen. “What has happened? I don’t understand.”

“What has happened?” shouted the Judge. “Everything has happened--everything. Of course, you don’t understand. I don’t, myself--all of it. Somebody (I haven’t found out yet who, but I will!) put up that miserable old rascal--that drunken thief of a Zeke Runkle--to palming off on Sherwood as a bona fide mine, the worst fake I ever heard of. Hey? What? Why! a dug-out, I tell you--a hole in the cliff--a tunnel-like cellar-above-ground, if you want, that Crazy Dan, it seems, used to store away bacon, and flour, and potatoes in, more than thirty years ago. Just an old store-room, nothing else. That’s what! Made him a present of it (the foxy old rascal) so the law couldn’t touch him. Oh, he’s a clever swindler! I’m sorry for Sherwood--mighty sorry for him. I like the fellow; there’s good stuff in him. It’s a ---- A--hum! But, for the life of me I can’t see old Zeke’s object; for he made nothing by it. Somebody must have put him up to it--mark my words. And I’d like to know who.”

Who had done it? Evaleen was again hearing Cadwallader’s laugh, and the words, “An amusing sequel to the story.” And “I’ll tell you some day.” He need not tell her now. She knew; and she knew why.

All that day she stayed within her room. She felt she couldn’t see Sherwood in his humiliation; and Cadwallader she wouldn’t see.

That evening when she went down to dinner she was purposely late that she might avoid both men. Elwyn Cadwallader was out of town, she learned, called away unexpectedly on business. Hume Sherwood, after having been with her father all day, up on the mountain, had just returned--going directly to his room. He had declined dinner.

Almost any man can bear censure, but it takes a giant to brave ridicule.

When Miss Blaine went back to her room she found two letters awaiting her. She read the first with the angry blood mounting to her forehead, and lips tightened into a straight, hard line. It was from Cadwallader. He closed by saying:

“Give me the one thing I most want in all the world! I will go to you Christmas morning for it--for your ‘yes!’”

Miss Blaine’s face was very stern as with quick, firm steps she walked across the floor to the stove in which a fire was burning cheerily. She opened the door and flung the letter into the flames.

The letter from her father was hurriedly scrawled, “so that Sherwood can take it down to you,” it said. There were but a dozen brief sentences: He couldn’t be with her, after all, on Christmas eve--he had about closed the deal with Akerman, and there was much business to settle up. She was to pack their suit-cases and trunks at once; to be ready to start home any day. He hoped (didn’t know--but hoped) to leave the evening of Christmas day, etc. There was a postscript: “Akerman (acting on my advice) bought Sherwood’s little group today for seven hundred and fifty dollars; which is just seven hundred and fifty dollars more than they are worth--as mining claims. But Akerman wants the ground for other purposes, and will use it in connection with his other property. I’m glad for the boy’s sake he got it, for I guess Sherwood needed the money. Of course he hasn’t said so (he’s too much of a thoroughbred to whimper) but I don’t believe he has a nickel left.”

Evaleen Blaine laid the letter down with a tender smile on her face. “Dear old Daddy!” she murmured. She understood the sympathetic heart which had been the factor in bringing about the sale of Sherwood’s claims. “Oh, Daddy, you’re good--good! I love you!”

Four or five hours after, she had finished packing and got up from where she had been kneeling, and looked about the room. Everything was folded away in place and awaiting the turning of the key, except the khaki suit and the wide-brimmed hat. She would soon be miles and miles away from Nevada and its joys. A very sober face looked out at her from the mirror, making her force her thoughts into other channels.

“Not spend Christmas eve with you, Daddy? ’Deed, an’ I will! I’ll just astonish you tomorrow morning!”

She laughed to herself in anticipation of his surprise. Then her face sobered, remembering that--for the first time--she would make the trip alone. She knew every inch of the way. She wasn’t afraid; there was nothing to harm her. And by taking her coffee and toast by lamplight, she would be with him by nine o’clock. As she fell asleep that night she was wishing some good fortune might come to Hume Sherwood, making his Christmas eve less lonely.

When day broke, though as yet no rain was falling, a storm was already gathering itself for the onslaught. Fine dust filled the air, and the wind was racing up the valley with the swiftness of a prairie fire, where, on the alkali flats, great breakers of white dust rose from the sea of dry storm that ran ahead of the rain. Dead branches of greasewood, tumble-weeds light as sea-spume on the waves of the wind, rabbit-brush wrenched from the roots--these (the drift-wood of desert seas), were swept on and away!

In the gray early dawn Miss Blaine’s horse had been saddled under protest.

“We’re a-goin’ to hev a Nevady zephyr, I’m a-thinkin’, an’ th’ house is a mighty good place f’r wimmin-folks ’bout now!” were the words she heard through the whistling wind as she mounted.

There was something electric in the strange storm that drew her into its midst--some kinship that called her away! She was sure she could reach shelter before the rain reached her. “Then, hurrah for the ring of the bridle-rein--away, brave steed, away!”

Mountain Boy snuffed at the dust-laden air and broke into the long stride that soon carried them into the foothills. At times the wind nearly swept her from the saddle, but she loped on and on. Then she gained the high ground; and the dust that had smarted her eyes and nostrils lay far below. It was misty, and the wind came in strong buffetings. Up, and still up they climbed. The rain-clouds were surely keeping their burden back for her! But, nay! she had almost reached the mill--was almost under shelter, when the storm swept down upon her and the waters fell in a flood. Drenched and disheveled she reached the mill. Disappointment and consternation awaited her--her father was not there! Nearly two hours before--just the time she was leaving the valley--the Judge, with Mr. Akerman, had driven away by the north road to take the morning express from the station above, and were now at the county seat thirty miles away, if they had met with no mishap.

Evaleen was aghast! What to do? Her father believed her to be at the hotel, to which place she must return at once--there was nothing else for her to do. Back through the wind and the wet! She heard the foreman’s voice in warning and entreaty swept away by the gale as she turned; but--shaking her head--she plunged down the road and back into the storm. Away and away! The road ran with many a curve and turn--easy grades, made for wagon use--; so, though steep it was for such riding, she loped down the mountain, while the wind, and the rain, and the roar of the storm shut the world away.

A feeling of numbness came over her, a something that was neither terror nor awe, yet which held something of each. As time went on she seemed to have been riding hours innumerable--it seemed days since she had seen a human face. Down, farther down must she go. She was becoming exhausted, and the sleet was chilling her to the very center of her being. It was terrible--terrible! To reach the valley and shelter! There on the mountain the wind shrieked and howled about her; the air was filled with voices that were deafening, dizzying, frightful. The horse himself was half mad with fright. Twice he had almost thrown her as thunder claps and flashes of lightning had seemed to surround them on all sides. Three miles yet to shelter! Could she stand it? But where--where was there nearer relief? Ah! the Spencer tunnel---- There would be safety there till the worst of the storm was over. A turn of the rein, and Mountain Boy was running straight for the old tunnel under the cliffs.

* * * * *

Hark! What was that? There came to her ears a great roaring that was neither the howling of the wind, nor the rush of the rain, nor the mingled awful sounds of the storm as she tore along the cañon. She could see nothing of the thing she heard, for the wet slap of the rain blinded her. Closer and closer it came! As she slipped from the saddle at the tunnel’s mouth, the horse--terrified at the roaring which rose above the voice of the storm, and which was coming nearer--broke from her, and was off and away, with a ten-foot wall of water racing at his heels. The overtaxed dam had bursted its bounds, and the flood was cutting a waterway down the center of the cañon, but below the level of the old tunnel! She was safe! But----alone, and her horse was gone!

When, more than two hours afterward, Hume Sherwood found her, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should take her in his arms, and her head should lie on his breast, while she told him how it had happened. Without question he claimed her as his own; without a word she gave him her troth.

“I knew you would come, Hume--I knew you would find me,” she said, softly.

“Dear!”

* * * * *

So simply were they plighted to one another; so easily does a great danger sweep away all disguises.

* * * * *

When the riderless bay had come into camp, Sherwood (half mad with an awful fear) had hurried away to the hills, lashing his span without mercy over the storm-washed road--or out through the open country where the road was gullied out. When in the up-piled drift where the flood had left it--he found the gray campaign hat he knew so well, a sickening fear fell upon him as though he had already looked upon the face of the dead. At length he thought of the tunnel, after fruitless search elsewhere; and there--in the dug-out that had been palmed off on him as a joke on his credulity, he found his heart’s desire. After all, Spencer’s old store-room--his cellar-above-ground--was worth a king’s ransom--when valued by this man and this maid.

The waters had gone down, but left the tunnel entrance flooded; for the fallen walls of the old adobe created a small dam which the flood overflowed. To get past this--without wading knee-deep in the mud--was a problem. The whirling waters had eaten away the earth which formed the front part of the tunnel--wider now by two feet--and in the place where the earth had melted away stood a small box. Sherwood put his foot against it, to pry it out of the mud.

“I’ll get this out for you to stand on, dear; then you can jump across I think, with my help.”

But, deep settled into the mud and debris, it resisted him. He went back in the tunnel and got a pick from among the tools he had used in extending the “cellar” to strike the ledge that wasn’t there; for the “croppings” that had been shown him had been hauled there--salted, to deceive the “tenderfoot.”

The box refused to move, even when Sherwood’s pick--used as a lever--was applied; so, swinging it over his head, he brought the pick down into the box, shattering the lid into pieces. It was more than half filled with small rusty tin cans, bearing soiled and torn labels, on which were the printed words in colors still bright: “Preston & Merrill’s Yeast Powder.” A case of baking powder of a sort popular five-and-thirty years before. Strange!