Chapter 10

SEEKERS AFTER GOLD

There had been only three loitering men and one woman enjoying Joe's hospitality as they went out. The men were Lemarc, Sefton and Ramon Garcia, the woman Ernestine Dumont. Drennen saw that Ygerne made cool pretence of seeing none of them; Lemarc and Sefton had no doubt lingered to watch her leave and she did not take kindly to such espionage. She was busy with the careful buttoning of a glove, the left glove. The right hand she left bare.

Not fifty steps from Marquette's Drennen laid his hand upon her arm.

"Kiss me, Ygerne," he commanded quietly.

There was little light, but he saw the glint of it upon the pistol in her hand.

"You know what you would have to pay," she said coolly. "Is it worth it?"

For answer he threw out his arms to draw her lithe body close up to his. But as her gloved hand struck him across the face she had sprung back, twisting a little, avoiding him, putting a quick two yards between them. He felt, rather than saw, that her pistol, levelled across the short space separating them, bore full upon his chest.

"Wait! Listen to me. You must listen."

She was no longer calm. He could hear her panting, whether from the exertion of snatching herself away from him or from the tense grip of whatever emotion was playing upon her nerves he could not tell.

"Don't you know that I mean what I say? That I can kill you, that I will kill you if you dare insult me further?"

"I know only one thing," he told her, his voice sterner than she had heard it before. "The King of Fools has put a mad desire into my brain. And you have helped him. I am always ready to pay for whatever I get and I am not used to haggling over the price."

"I have told you that I would kill you if you dared!" she flashed the words at him.

"And I," he retorted coolly, "told you that I'd kiss you if you dared come with me. Were we both bluffing? Or neither, Ygerne?"

"Coward!" she panted, and he knew how the red lips curled to the words. Even that picture but made madder the mad longing upon him. With his ugly laugh at the odd twist of feminine logic which had applied such an epithet at such a time, he came swiftly toward her.

As he came on Ygerne fired. The darkness was thick, but it seemed to her frowning eyes that he had foreseen the shot at the second before it was fired and had swung his shoulders to the side so that it cut by him without touching him. Again she fired; but now he was upon her and his hand had struck the pistol aside so that the questing bullet sped skywards. His arms were about her, drawing her tighter until they hurt her; she heard his breathing as his lips sought hers. Her right arm was held down at her side but her left hand struck at his face, tore at him, thrust him each possible quarter of an inch away, shielded her face. Again and again she struck, an unthinkable strength in her tense body.

The door at Marquette's was thrown open and half a dozen men rushed out into the road. The girl felt Drennen's arm relax, the right arm about her shoulders. With a quick movement she slipped free of it.

"Who shot?" called one of the men. "What's wrong?"

Ygerne, two paces from Drennen's side, answered very quietly, her coolness amazing him.

"I fired. It was a wager with Mr. Drennen. I shot at a wolf. I think I missed. Didn't I, Mr. Drennen?"

Drennen did not answer. The men in the road muttered among themselves, guessed something of the truth, laughed and went back into the house. Drennen walked with Ygerne to her own door. As he lifted his hat she threw open the door and the light streamed across his face. She saw that it was white and that his lips were set tight. Her eyes went quickly to the white silk shirt he had that day bought of Marquette. There was a widening splotch of red at the side, below the shoulder.

"Are you badly hurt?" she asked coolly.

"I don't know. I guess not. Good night, Ygerne."

"I thought that somewhere in you there was the soul of a gentleman," she said, her voice rising in clear scorn. "You are nothing but brute!"

"Nothing but brute," he repeated after her harshly. "You are quite right."

She looked at him fixedly a moment. Meeting her eyes he saw a swift change come. She was smiling at him now quite as though nothing unpleasant had arisen during a commonplace evening; she even put out her hand, the ungloved one which had shot him two minutes ago, and said lightly:

"I haven't thanked you for a very pleasant evening, Mr. Drennen. It is one I shall not forget soon. Good night."

For a moment he made no answer. Instead he stood looking steadily, curiously at her. Then suddenly he stooped a little, caught up her hand and brushed it lightly with his lips; the right, ungloved hand. Then he turned away.

She saw that he steadied himself by the fence about Marquette's yard and now was moving slowly toward his dugout. He had forgotten to put on his hat and still held it crumpled in his hand. She stood for a little while staring after him. Then she went into the house, closing the door softly.

Drennen, making his slow way homeward, met the men Lemarc and Sefton in a place where the light from an open door streamed across the road. Before Lemarc cried out Drennen had seen the working muscles of his face; the man was in the grip of a terrible rage.

"Damn you," cried Lemarc wildly. "What have you done? That was Ygerne's gun; I know it. If you have laid a hand on her . . ."

"Stand aside, you fool," snapped Drennen, less angry at Lemarc than at himself for his own physical weakness.

"I tell you," shouted Lemarc, his hand whipping out from under his coat and upward, the lamp rays from the house running down the keen two-edged steel, "if you . . ."

"Shut up, Marc." It was Captain Sefton's voice, sharp and threatening and steady with its cold anger. Drennen, looking to him, saw in his face a fury no less than Lemarc's but held under control. "Things are bad enough as they are."

"What do I care?" snarled Lemarc, wrenching at the hand Sefton had shot out to his arm. "If you think I'll stand for everything . . ."

"You'll stand for anything I say stand for," Sefton said coolly. "Remember that, Lemarc. Besides, Ygerne's all right. She can take care of herself, my boy. Come on."

Grumbling, Lemarc allowed himself to be led away. Drennen passed on and to his dugout. He found his bunk in the darkness and sat down upon the edge of it, resting, breathing heavily, his weakness grown already into giddy nausea. Finally, feeling the blood hot against his flesh and knowing that he must get it stopped, he struck a match and lighted a candle. With fingers shaking a little he tore his shirt away at the side and found the hurt. A little, contemptuous grunt escaped him as he made out just how bad it was. The bullet had merely ripped along his side, inflicting a shallow surface wound, coming the nearest thing in the world to missing him altogether. Had he not been pitifully nerveless from another wound not ten days old and his strength exhausted from his first active day since it had been given to him, he could have laughed at this and at the girl who had fired it. He stopped the bleeding as best he might, drew a rude bandage about his body, and sank back on his bunk dizzy and sick.

"And now," he muttered disgustedly, "because I have been a damned fool over a pretty cat with a red mouth and poisonous claws I've got another week of hell before I can go out on the trail again."

The knowledge that he was a fool was no new knowledge to Drennen. He sneered at himself for staking his life against a chance woman's lips, and, snarling, put out his candle. He drew the tumbled covers of his bed about him, of neither strength nor will to undress or to go and close the door he had left open. He wanted to sleep; to wipe out the memory of this day's folly as he sought to lose the memory of all other days. He wanted his strength back because of the mere animal instinct of life, not because life was a pretty thing.

But he did not sleep. His was that state of weakness and exhaustion of a battered body which fends off immediate, utter restfulness. He had shut the gates of his mind to the girl, Ygerne. But it was as though his hands, holding the gates shut, were powerless, and her hands, dragging at them that she might enter, were strong. With weariness and faintness came a light fever.

Through his fever the girl passed and repassed all night. He saw her as she had stood yonder on the mountain side, at the foot of the rainbow. He saw her as she had stepped out to meet him when he had gone to Marquette's for her, as she had sat across the table from him. Her white arms flashed at him, her white throat and bare shoulders shone through a blur of wandering fancies. Her red mouth was before him through the long hours, luring him now, the lips blossoming into a kiss; mocking him now; laughing with him, her cheeks dimpling as she laughed; laughing at him, hard as carved coral. All night the grey mystery of her eyes was upon him, their expression ever shifting, now filled with promise like dawn skies, now vague with threats like grey depths of ocean over hidden rocks.

When his will broke down in his utter weakness and he gave over trying to sleep, he drew himself up against the wall which was head-board for his bunk, lighted his candle and filled his pipe. Smoking slowly, the candle light in his eyes, the objects of his dugout brought into sudden harsh reality, he drove his mind away from the girl and sent it to the gold which he had discovered in its hidden place in the mountains. Now he could tell himself calmly that a few days of inactivity didn't matter. A few more days and he would be himself again; and then he might follow what path of life he chose, because he would be a rich man. And then he grew drowsy and dozed, only to have Ygerne Bellaire slip back into his befogged imaginings with her white shoulders, her grey eyes and her red mouth.

When in the faint light before the dawn the sick yellow flame of the second candle was dying out Drennen was making his way to Joe's. He drank his coffee and then drove himself to eat two bowls of mush. His face was so bloodless and drawn that Joe stared at him as at a ghost. Each time that Drennen moved he felt a burning pain in his side as though the wound were tearing open afresh.

The forenoon he spent in his dugout, dozing a little, but for the most part staring moodily out of his open door at the muddy waters of the Little MacLeod. He was aware, toward noon, of an unusual bustle and stir in the Settlement. Men were arriving, almost in a steady stream, a few on horseback, the major part on foot. There floated out to him loud voices from Père Marquette's store; they were drinking there. He wondered idly what lay back of this human influx. He was too sick to care greatly.

He had left word with Joe to send the boy with lunch at noon. The boy came in shortly after one o'clock, explaining that there had been such a rush at the counter that Joe couldn't let him go sooner. Drennen cursed him and drove him out, asking no questions.

The human tide sweeping into the Settlement rose steadily during the afternoon. A street which had been deserted twenty-four hours ago was now jammed from side to side. Drennen came to understand dully as the day wore on that there could be but one explanation; a rush like this meant that some fool had dropped his pick into a vein of gold and word of it had flashed across the mountains. Even then, his pain and exhaustion and giddy sickness were such that he did not realise that he himself was to thank for the pouring of hundreds of men into MacLeod's.

When at last the true explanation did dawn upon him he reached out for his pipe, stuffed the bowl full of his tobacco and leaned back upon his bunk, his eyes frowning, his lips hard about his pipe stem. So, silent and brooding, he waited, knowing that it was to expect too much of human endurance to think that they would let him alone much longer.

The first man to visit him thrust through the doorway unceremoniously and coming straight to Drennen's side said bluntly, "I am Madden, Charles Madden of the Canadian Mining Company. Maybe you've heard of me?"

Drennen eyed him insolently, taking stock of the fresh cheeks, the keen blue eyes, the square, massive, masterly jaw, the assertive air, the clothing which was civilisation's conventional garb and which in the matter alone of heavy laced boots made concession to the mountains. The man was young, perhaps had not yet gotten into his thirties, and none the less had already that dominance of personality belonging to a seasoned captain of industry. Drennen, drawing at his pipe, maintained his silence.

"Well?" demanded Charlie Madden.

He whipped at one gloved hand with the gauntlet he held in the other and stared at Drennen impatiently. He had just arrived and had made no delay in coming to the dugout; Drennen noted the dust of his ride upon his face, the spurs still upon his boots. The atmosphere he bore with him was one of business urgency.

"Damn it, man," snapped Madden, "I've got something else to do besides smother in your hovel. I'm here to talk business."

He flung himself into the solitary chair in the one-room place, jerked his head about, saw that the door was open, got up and closed it, and came back to his chair. Drennen, eyeing him with steady hostility, did not open his lips.

"Now," and Madden had tossed gauntlets and hat to the floor beside him, "I'm anxious to get this thing over with. You've struck gold, they tell me? Let's see the colour of it."

"What's your proposition?" Drennen asked carelessly.

Madden laughed his stock-in-trade laugh; it was intended to make the other man feel vaguely that he was talking nonsense to a seer.

"Do you think I run around with a proposition to make every prospector who thinks he's found a bonanza? Before I know where the claim is or see the dirt out of it?"

Drennen lay back a little, his hands clasped behind his head.

"I know something of your company and your methods," he said coolly. "You're a pack of damned thieves. And, since you ask it, I do think that you run around all loaded with your proposition. Your game is to pay a man enough to get him drunk and keep him drunk for a spell; that's his cash bonus; he gets the rest in stocks. Then you break him with assessments and kick him out. I'm not talking business to-day, thank you," he ended drily.

Madden looked at him keenly, making a swift appraisal which had in it something of the nature of a readjustment. Then he laughed again.

"Look here, Mr. Drennen," he said confidentially, leaning close to the man on the bunk, "my company has a bigger financial backing than any other in the country. We are willing to take what we can get as cheap as we can get it, of course I'll admit that. At the same time if you've got a gold mine we're ready and we're able to pay all it's worth. You've got the brains to know that the day has passed for a man to work his own claim if there's anything in it. You've got to sell out to somebody. Why not to the Canadian?"

Now, Madden, having heard the tale of Drennen's dice game with a canvas bag of virgin gold backing his play and of a fight in which Drennen had gone down from a bullet fired by Ernestine Dumont, had made up his mind that in the dugout he would come upon a certain type of man which he knew well. He expected to find Drennen half sodden with liquor, garrulous, boastful and withal easy to handle. His estimate changed swiftly, but he altered merely in slight detail his plan of attack. After a keen glance about the dugout his words came smoothly. Drennen was no illiterate miner but he was sorely ridden by poverty, just the same.

"Give me your word that you've really found the real stuff," Madden said, "and we'll talk business. Oh, that isn't the ordinary course, to be sure, but I'm willing to make an exception after seeing you; you are not the ordinary man. Come out with me to Lebarge; we'll pick up a lawyer and sign some papers. For your protection and mine, understand. Then we'll have a look at your claim. Incidentally," his hand coming suddenly from his pocket with a roll of bills in it, "you can put in your own expense account, and," with a wink, "you can go as far as you like. I'm a generous cuss with the company's money when they give me full swing."

Drennen put out his hand; Madden urbanely stripped off one of the bills and handed it to him. It was for fifty dollars. Drennen struck a match, set fire to a corner of the bill and used the lighter to get his pipe going. Madden, upon his feet in pink-faced wrath, was silenced by Drennen's voice booming out angrily:

"So you think you can bait me into your lawyer trap with jingling pennies in a tin cup! Look at that, man; look at that!"

With a sudden gesture he had caught out his canvas bag and had poured the heavy contents upon the bunk beside him. Madden bent forward quickly, and a little gasp came into his throat, a new, more vivid tide of pink into his cheeks as he saw. Drennen shoved fifty dollars in minted gold to one side.

"There's your change," he said crisply. And when Madden's fingers had reluctantly dropped the nuggets back to the quilt, "And as for propositions, I'm the man who's making them. I'm to be left alone to file on my claims and protect myself first. Then, if you're on hand, you can look my property over. I'm going to sell; if you're the first company to take up my offer it might be that I'd sell to you."

"And your proposition?" demanded Madden sharply.

"An assurance that the mine will be worked; ten per cent of the total number of shares in my name; a further assurance of exemption from assessment for ten years; and a little bonus."

Madden used his stock-in-trade laugh again. It was well that he made use of it when he did; else he would not have been able to summon it up from his paralysed throat. For he put a question and got a brief, direct answer, and the answer affected him much as a fist in the pit of the stomach might have done.

"What sort of cash bonus?" was the question.

"One hundred thousand dollars!" was the cool rejoinder.