Part 15

"A fool for luck, a fool for luck," he got into the habit of saying to himself, but with somewhat of a congratulatory ring to it, as though he were a little inclined to attribute fortune's favors to that lady's appreciation of his shrewdness. If luck had not favored him, he would have had to accomplish the same results himself. It was a labor-saving device. Nevertheless, as time went on, the strong underlying mysticism in his nature came to make of this luck of his a fetish of no small power. Lafond went about in a continual state of elation. Things were coming his way. Nothing could stop them. They were fore-ordained. All he had to do was to stay awake so as to take advantage of the circumstances which chance so nicely arranged for him. He had such confidence in the fortuitous moment that he almost ceased to plan ahead, sure that the crisis would bring its own solution.

Fifty thousand dollars stood between Billy's credit and Billy's downfall. Lafond had those fifty thousand dollars to get rid of. The sum was not great, but neither was it small; and to induce another to spend fifty thousand, in a few months, without any encouraging return, might have seemed, to an ordinary man, a project worthy of careful foresight. Not so Lafond. "A fool for luck," he repeated and awaited Billy's reappearance.

There was Molly's affair with Cheyenne Harry, for instance. What could be better? Lafond had known Mortimer by reputation for a great many years. He was acquainted with the details of the transaction of Mulberry Gulch, and how he and a man named Dutch Pete had swindled all Custer City; he knew too of Harry's various wild escapades in the early Indian skirmishes--on both sides some men said; of his wonderful fortitude in enduring hardship, and his equally wonderful periods of relaxation when back again in the towns; and he knew, best of all from his point of view, Harry's reputation as a man among women. Since this flirtation had lasted so long, to Lafond's mind it must already have passed the limits. The natural sequence would be followed out. In time Cheyenne Harry would have a mistress the more.

In other words, without the slightest trouble or encouragement on his part, the girl would be debauched. Then, through artfully colored vague hints, he would let slip the real facts of her breeding. He was student enough of character to know that she would gnaw her heart out with a passionate remorse, the more intense because of that very innate purity of instinct which now made Harry's task a difficult one. Lafond had absolutely nothing to do but congratulate himself, smoke his pipe, and spend long hours with his friend the entomologist.

After the first flutter over the Easterners' visit had subsided, the camp settled back with wonderful celerity into its accustomed habits. At first it expected Billy's reappearance within a few days. The return was postponed to the end of the week. The end of the week gave Copper Creek to understand that it would have to wait a short time longer. Then came another postponement. And so on, until the little community had taken up its usual prospecting, work o' day, play o' night existence, and the return of Billy was looked upon as an inevitable event, but hazily in the future, not imminent enough immoderately to disturb the current of men's thoughts.

Then all at once Billy was among them, splendid, powerful, energetic, in a hurry, whirling the stagnant waters this way and that, until the spirit of enterprise awoke within them, and a nervous atmosphere of progress replaced the old monotony.

Billy had credited to him fifty thousand dollars; Billy sported a new hat and new clothes; Billy had vast enterprises to accomplish before the ground froze up; Billy drew a salary; Billy possessed an engraved certificate of shares, which he displayed; Billy had a new watch; Billy was looking for men; Billy was deep in complicated plans which required above all things haste, haste, haste; until the narrow little canyon rang with the name of Billy, which was esteemed great in the land.

The new superintendent entered at once into the discharge of his duties. His first care was to sink the shafts mentioned at the first informal meeting in his own shack. There were ten claims, on which eleven shafts were planned. The very evening of his return, eleven of the handiest prospectors in the camp were summoned to Billy's cabin, where they found awaiting their signatures eleven contracts to sink on the various claims a specific number of feet at a specified price. Next morning they looked the ground over. Next noon they signed. Next afternoon they hired two helpers each, bought powder and fuse, and sharpened drills. The day after, thirty-five men were busily at work on the new company's group of claims. It looked like business.

The same noon, Billy's effects began to come in from the East. He had received a liberal advance on the account of his salary, and the results were various. Among them were new saddles, a new buckboard, a new rifle, silver-mounted harness, and a quantity of clothes of rather loud pattern. But most marvellous was a clean-limbed, deep-chested, slender running horse, accompanied by a sawed-off English groom. Billy spent a good share of the next week with this individual, constructing a corral of small timber in which the new horse might roll about. Each morning the groom led the animal, astonishingly hooded, blanketed, and leather-banded, up and down the hundred yards or so of level road which was all that strip of rugged country offered fit for such delicate hoofs and fine limbs. The beast always progressed teetering a little sideways, nearly dragging the groom from his feet. The camp speculated that Billy had designs on the next great prairie "fair" in the spring, but the truth is the Westerner had little idea of what his designs were. He had been pleased with the horse, and had bought it, without bestowing a thought on expediency. After the novelty of possessing so thoroughbred a creature had somewhat worn away, he confessed to himself a slight bewilderment as to what to do with it.

Other interests claimed his attention now. The work on the mines themselves no longer needed his care. After the hundred feet of shaft had been quite finished and timbered, he would inspect them in his official capacity. If the job came up to specifications, he would sign its acceptance; if it did not, the contractor would have to remedy the defect. In the meantime he had on hand the building of the camp itself, for which he had already planned largely.

Lafond climbed the gulch and the knoll, after activity had been well under way for about a week. He found Billy paying the freight-bills on several loads of heavy red-painted machinery, while the teamsters spat and swore just outside the little shack, which he now used as an office. Billy was signing slips from his new check book. Until he should have finished, Lafond strolled about examining the grounds.

Around the mouths of the shafts themselves the debris had accumulated astoundingly, showing that the contractors too had been industrious, but Lafond paid little attention to them. He was more interested in the clearing, levelling, trimming and digging which seemed to indicate the undertaking of rather extensive works above ground. Perhaps a dozen men were at work. Some were engaged in "trueing" the four great foundation beams of what was evidently to be a large building. Others squared smaller timbers near at hand. The remainder were measuring and indicating with a shovel the outlines of other and less pretentious structures. In a moment Billy came out ready to dissertate at length.

"That thar is the boardin' house," he explained, "I thought at first I'd only make her big enough for thirty, 'cause that's as big a gang as I starts with; but then I figgers it out, an' it won't be long before I takes on more, so I thinks it jest as well to start where I ends. So she's goin' to accommodate sixty, two-story, you know. Then yere's the cookee's shack. I aims to have th' kitchen separate yere--don't like that Prairie Dog game nohow." (The "Prairie Dog" was the hotel; and the "game" was the inclusion of the kitchen and the dining-room in the same apartment.) "Then yere's to be the office. I uses my old shack for an office now. I aims to have three sleepin'-rooms, an' a dinin'-room and kitchen."

"What for?" asked Lafond, a little puzzled.

"For me."

"For----?"

"I don't aim to eat with the men. And over yander 'll be th' stables; and thar th' blacksmith's shop; and then the powder house is on th' other side of the gulch. The chicken house is beyond th' blacksmith's shop."

"The what?" asked Mike.

"The chicken house."

"Oh," said Mike.

"I ain't got the ground all broke yet," pursued Billy; "but the plans is all ready, and it ain't takin' long when once we git started. The stuff fer th' mill is comin' along slow," he observed, pointing to the red-painted machinery; "but I ain't aimin' to put her up till nex' spring. Can't do much with her till I gets th' shafts sunk."

"No," agreed Lafond.

"But I got th' plans fer that too. Come on in an' I shows them to you."

He led the way into the little shack, and began to rummage in a valise full of papers. Lafond found the place in a litter of confusion. Scattered about in the wildest disorder were clothes, weapons, saddles, harness, knick-knacks and mining tools. Among the latter the half-breed noticed the sections of a pump--an expensive machine used only after a shaft has penetrated below the water level, but which Billy had already purchased. Lying half open among the dusty quartz specimens, empty ink bottles, rusty pens and old pipes, which cumbered the table, Mike perceived a large wooden box.

"What's this?" he asked.

Billy looked up red-faced from his search.

"That?" he replied. "Oh, that's a stamper," and dived back into the valise.

Lafond drew the box toward him. He found it to contain a vast quantity of rubber types of all sizes and styles, figures, ornaments and ornamental rulings. The box itself was perhaps some thirty inches square. It was a most elaborate outfit, whose use is confined almost entirely to large department stores where there is much marking of prices.

Billy now stood upright, having found his roll of plans.

"What did you say this is?" asked Lafond again.

"A stamper."

"What do you do with it?"

"You sticks the types in this rule this way." Billy took out the rule and some of the types, fumbled unskilfully with them for a moment, and threw them impatiently down. "Anyway, they goes in; and then that keeps them in a straight line."

"Yes," persisted Lafond, "but what's it for?"

"Why, to stamp things with, of course."

"What things?"

Billy hadn't thought of that.

But his discomfiture was only momentary. He spread the plans out on the rapidly cleared table, and discoursed concerning them. Lafond lent an attentive ear, but said little. Billy's ideas were comprehensive. They included every adjunct of use or expediency which the prospector remembered to have seen in any of the numerous successful camps which had fallen under his observation. In fact, when finished, the external Great Snake would be a composite of the desirable features of many other camps, including the great "Homestake" itself. It was evident that before Billy's mind's eye, the Great Snake was already as prosperous and as well entitled to its graces of mining luxury as any of the older enterprises. After a little appeared a man who had some horses to sell, so Lafond took his leave and retraced his steps to town. Near the foot of the knoll he happened across still further evidence of Billy's wandering activity in the shape of an ivory-handled clasp knife of five-inch blade. Mike remembered that Billy had shown it about in the Little Nugget the evening before as another example of the Easterners' generosity; and he remembered further the Westerner's delighted laugh over the inscription, "William Knapp."

"Don't know myself that way," he had cried. "I clean forgets that 'Billy' does stand for 'William.'"

Lafond's first impulse was to reclimb the knoll for the purpose of returning his find to its owner, but on second thoughts it hardly seemed worth the trouble. He slipped it into the side pocket of his canvas coat, where, of course, he speedily forgot all about it.

When he reached the Little Nugget, empty at this time of day, he sat down in his chair and laughed aloud, peal on peal, wagging his head and rubbing his eyes. Frosty, happening in, withdrew with celerity, firmly convinced that his master had gone crazy.

"A fool for luck, a fool for luck!" cried Lafond, "Why, the idiot is playing right into my hands!"

XXV

JACK GRAHAM SPEAKS OUT

The morning when the hunting party had so unhappily terminated on the slope of Tom Custer, proved to be the turning point in Molly's relations with the camp.

The Kid forgave her in two hours, but her troubled conscience would not let her forgive herself. Therefore she was irritated with the Kid. Therefore her old innocent joyful trips into the hills in his company suddenly came to an end. That is good psychology; not good sense.

With the first realization of evil, slight though it was, her moral nature began the inevitable two-sided argument. She was no longer naive, but responsible. As a consequence her old careless, thoughtless manner of life completely changed. In the beginning she had come full of confidence to subdue a camp. Speedily she had discovered that it was not worth the trouble, and that she infinitely preferred to play out in the open with the winds and sunshine and the diverse influences of nature. Now a subtle, quite unrealized sense of unworthiness, drove her back to a desire for human sympathy, the personal relation. This personal relation took the outward form of an entanglement with Cheyenne Harry, complicated by her intellectual admiration of Graham.

From the first, Cheyenne Harry had possessed for her a certain fascination which had distinguished him from the rest of the men by whom she was surrounded. It had dated from the evening when he had kissed her. At the time he had been shown his place swiftly and decisively enough, but it was a forceful deed, such as women like, and its impression had remained. Besides this, Molly's spirit was independent; she respected independence in others; and he, with the exception of Graham, was now the only man in camp who was to some slight extent indifferent. He showed frankly enough, with the rest, that he liked her company and her good opinion; and yet he showed, too, that if her presence and regard were not freely offered as he demanded them, he could wait, secure in their ultimate possession.

At first this fascination had been weak and unimportant. Now, however, it rapidly took the ascendancy over everything else. The mere chance that its influence had been the one first to touch the girl's moral nature counted for much; as did, curiously enough, the fact that, in her relations with Cheyenne Harry, Molly always felt a little guilty. She resented her imperceptible retrogression, and the resentment took the reckless form of a desire to go a step further. This was mainly because she did not understand herself. She had done nothing wrong, as she saw it; and yet They had put this heavy uneasy feeling into her heart. Very well! If They, the mysterious unthoughtout They, were bound to make her unhappy without her fault, she would enjoy the sweets as well as the bitter of it!

Harry had such a way of forcing her to act against her conscience.

"But I can't do that!" she would object to some proposition of his. "I'd like to. I think it would be great fun. But you know very well I've promised Dave Kelly to go up with him this afternoon to look at his claim."

"That doesn't matter," replied Harry cavalierly.

"But it _does_ matter," she persisted. "I've promised."

"Oh, shake him. Tell him some yarn. _Do_ something. It isn't every day I get an afternoon off this way." Though why he did not, it would be difficult to say.

"I know, but I've _promised_."

"Oh, very well," said Cheyenne Harry, with cold finality, and began to whistle as if the question were quite disposed of. This did not suit Molly at all.

"There isn't anything I can do, is there?" she asked after a moment.

"You know best."

"Oh, dear, I don't _want_ you to feel like that."

"Why shouldn't I feel like that?" cried Harry in sudden heat. "Here I look forward to a whole afternoon with you, and I'm thrown down just because of a kid. I suppose you'd rather trot around with him than with me. All right. Go ahead."

He began to whistle again. He never said what the result would be if she did "go ahead," and this very mysterious indifference had its effect. Molly, genuinely distressed, knit her brows, not knowing what to do.

"Now look here!" commanded Harry, after a minute, with great decision; "you go find that Kid, and send him up to Kelly's claim to say you can't come this afternoon. You can fix it to suit yourself next time you see him," and then he would himself find the Kid and despatch him.

Molly always acquiesced, but with inward misgivings. She must now do her best to conceal from Dave Kelly the real state of affairs; he must not by any chance see her with Harry; he must not hear from outside sources of her afternoon's excursion with that individual. An element of the clandestine had crept into it. The idea oppressed her, for, in spite of her store of spirits and her independent temper, she was not of a combative nature when she felt herself at all in the wrong. The necessity saddened her, brought to her that guilty feeling against which she so sullenly rebelled. She was uneasy during all the afternoon, and yet she was conscious of an added delicious thrill in her relations with Harry--a thrill that first tingled pleasantly through all her veins, then struck her heart numb with vague culpability. In due course, she came to transfer the emotion from the circumstances to the man. She experienced the same thrill, the same numb culpability, at the sight of his figure approaching her on the street.

This tendency was emphasized, perhaps, by the fact that their walks together--projected so suddenly, undertaken with so strong a feeling of blame on her part--consisted always of continual skirmishes as to whether or not Cheyenne Harry should kiss her. The interest of the argument was heightened by the fact that the girl wanted him to do so. This he was never allowed for a moment to suspect--in fact, by all means in her power she gave him to understand quite the contrary--but he could not help feeling subtly the subconscious encouragement, and so grew always the more insistent. She held him off because her instincts had told her the act would cheapen her. Molly always obeyed her instincts. They were strong, insistent, not to be denied. They came to her suddenly with a great conviction of truth, which she never dreamed of questioning. Among other things they taught her that without love each kiss adds to the woman's regard for the man, but takes away from his desire for her.

Cheyenne Harry used all his arts. He tried force only once, for he found it unsatisfactory and productive of most disagreeable results. Diplomacy and argument in themselves, as eclectics, contained much of the joy of debate. The arguments in such cases were always deliciously ingenuous.

"Now, what harm is there in my just putting my arm around you?" he urged.

"There just is, that's all."

"I'll have it around you when we dance."

"That's different; there's people about then."

"It's just a question of people, then?"

"I s'pose so."

"Will you let me put my arm around you to-night in the Little Nugget?"

"Of course not."

"But there's people there," triumphantly. "Now what's the harm? It's different with us. Of course you ought not to let anyone else, but we're different."

They were sitting near together, and all this time the Westerner's arm was moving inch by inch along the rock behind Molly. As he talked he clasped her waist, gingerly, in order not to alarm. She shivered as she became conscious of the touch, and for one instant gave herself up. Then she sternly ordered Cheyenne Harry to take his distance. The latter tried to temporize by opening an argument. The half-playful struggle always ended in Molly's gaining her point, but the victory was laughing, and so Cheyenne Harry was encouraged to reopen the attack on new grounds.

As one of the inevitable results, the emotion which Molly experienced in at once denying herself and combating Harry was gradually translated into a fascinated sort of passion for him. Then, too, since naturally the interest of these indecisive encounters increased with each, the two came to see each other oftener and oftener, until the habit of companionship was well established. This habit is very real. The approach of the accustomed hour for meeting causes the heart to beat faster, the breath to come quicker, the imagination to kindle; while the foregoing of a single appointment is a dull loss difficult to bear with patience. It counterfeits well many of the symptoms of love, and for a short time is nearly as burning a passion.

Sometimes the attack would be more direct. Cheyenne Harry's stock of sophistry would give out, as well as his stock of patience.

"Oh, come on, Molly," he would cry, "just one! I've been real good, now haven't I? Oh, come on!"

"You've been nothing but a great big brute, Mr. Cheyenne Harry!" she cried in a tone that implied he had not.

Harry advanced a little, holding out his hands, much as one would approach a timid setter dog. She put one finger on her lips, and watched him, bright-eyed. When he was near enough, she boxed his ears, and twisted her slender young body out of reach, laughing mockingly, and wrinkling her nose at him.

But then when they had returned to camp, and once more she found herself alone, the delicious questions always came up; how far did he intend to go? Did he see through such and such a stratagem? Was he really vexed at such and such a speech, or was he merely feigning? In what manner would he dare accost her when next they met? And so another meeting became necessary soon--at once. They saw more and more of each other, to the neglect of many real duties.

For a time the influence of Jack Graham did something to stem the drift of this affair, but that lasted only until he himself fell in love with her.

With him her first emotion had been of eager intellectual awakening; her second, that of piqued curiosity; her third, of reactionary dulness. As time went on she came to pass and repass through those three phases with ever increased rapidity, until at the last their constant reiteration might almost have relegated them to the category of whims. She liked to be with him, because he made her aware of new possibilities in herself. She could not understand him, because his attitude toward her was never that of the lover. She experienced moments of revolt, when she cried out passionately but ineffectually against an influence which would compel her to elevations rarer than the atmosphere of her everyday, easy-going pleasure-taking life. Ineffectually, I say, for something always forced her back.