Chapter 16

THE LOST GOLDEN GIRL PAYS AN OLD DEBT

Drennen, presenting himself early upon the second morning in the offices of the Northwestern Mining Company, found that he was expected. A clerk, arranging papers of the day's work upon his desk, came forward quickly, a look of interest in his eyes.

"Mr. Drennen?" he asked.

"Yes."

"This way, sir. You come early but they are looking for you."

Drennen followed him through a second office, unoccupied, and to a glazed door upon which was the inscription, "Local Manager." The sound of voices coming through the door fell off abruptly at the clerk's discreet knock.

Drennen entered and the clerk, closing the door, went back to his own office. Fronting Drennen, at his flat-topped desk, sat old Marshall Sothern, the muscles of his face tense, his eyes grim with the purpose in them. A second man, small, square, strong-faced, a little reckless-eyed, sat close to Sothern. The third man of the group, standing fronting the two, was a young looking fellow, tall and with the carriage of a soldier, wearing the uniform of an officer of the mounted police.

Sothern rose, putting out his hand across the table.

"Good morning, Mr. Drennen," he said evenly. "I am glad that you have come so soon. This is Mr. McCall," nodding toward the strong-faced, middle-aged man with the young eyes. "You've heard of him, no doubt? Our chief over the Western Division. And this is Lieutenant Max of the Northwest Mounted, one of 'my boys.' Be seated, Mr. Drennen. And if you will pardon us a second?"

He turned toward Lieutenant Max. Drennen, having gripped Sothern's hand, having bestowed upon him a sharp look which seemed to seek to pierce through the hard shell which is the outer man and into the soul of him where the real self is hidden, acknowledged the two introductions and sat down.

"I think that that is all, isn't it, Lieutenant?" Sothern was saying as he picked up the thread of conversation which Drennen's entrance had snapped. "Those are the people you want?"

"Yes." Max's words, though very quiet and low toned, had in them something of the precision and finality of pistol shots. "They'll not get away this time, Mr. Sothern."

"_He_ mustn't get away. But remember, Lieutenant, that the time is not ripe yet. I positively can do nothing to help your case until . . . until I am ready!"

"I'll wait."

Max lifted his hand in a sort of salute, turned and went out. Drennen, bringing his eyes back from the departing figure, found that both Marshall Sothern and McCall were studying him intently.

"Mr. Drennen," said Sothern, "I presume you are here to talk business. You have a mine you want us to look at?"

"I am here for two purposes," answered Drennen steadily, his eyes hard upon the older man's. "That is one of them."

"The other can wait. Mr. McCall and myself are at your disposal. From the specimens I have seen I am inclined to think that you have not discovered a new mine at all, but have stumbled on to the old Lost Golden Girl. If so, you are to be congratulated . . . and so are we."

Drennen nodded, waiting for Sothern to go on.

"You made a certain offer to Charlie Madden," continued Sothern. "Was that your bona fide proposition, Mr. Drennen? Or were you merely sparring for time and putting out a bluff?"

"I meant business," returned Drennen. "I know that the property is worth considerably more than I am asking. But I have a use for just that sum."

"A hundred thousand dollars, cash, I believe? And a ten per cent royalty?" put in McCall quietly.

"Exactly." Again Drennen nodded.

"You want me to look it over with you, Sothern?" demanded McCall. "It isn't necessary, you know. Not now."

"I want you to do me the favour, McCall," answered Sothern. "Mr. Drennen, yesterday the only man in the West empowered to do business for the Northwestern upon such a scale as this was Mr. McCall. But things have happened in the East. Our chief, Bruce Elwood, is dead. Mr. McCall goes to-morrow to Montreal, stepping into Mr. Elwood's place. I move on and up into Mr. McCall's."

He paused, his face inscrutable under its dark frown. Suddenly he swung about upon McCall.

"Andy," he said sharply, "you're going to do more than just look at Mr. Drennen's find with us. You're going to act upon his offer as you see fit. As a favour to me, Andy."

Both Drennen and McCall looked at him curiously. Sothern's stern face told nothing.

"As a favour to me, Andy," he repeated. "You bring me word of my promotion. Pigeonhole it until after this deal is made or rejected."

McCall, his hesitation brief, swung about upon Drennen.

"Where is this mine of yours?" he demanded curtly. "How long will it take us to get to it?"

"It's less than forty miles from Lebarge," returned Drennen. "And we can get there in five hours, if we keep on moving."

"You have filed your title, of course?"

"Yes."

"Come ahead then." McCall was upon his feet, his hat on his head and his cigar lighted all in little more than an instant.

In ten minutes the party was formed and had clattered out of Lebarge, back along the MacLeod trail. There were five men in the little group, Drennen, Sothern, McCall and two mining experts in the pay of the Northwestern. As they swept out of Lebarge, rounding into the cañon where the trail twisted ahead of them, Drennen saw two men looking after them. One was Marc Lemarc who had accompanied him to Lebarge; the other Lieutenant Max.

Once in the trail the five men strung out in a line, Drennen in the lead. It was easy to see his impatience in the hot pace he set for them, and they thought that it was no less easy to understand it. But for once they followed a man who thought less of his gold mine than of a girl.

Drennen's gold mine itself plays no part in this story. He was never to see it again after this day, although it was to pour many thousands of dollars into his pockets from a distance. In the _West Canadian Mining and Milling News_, date of _August 9, 1912_, appears a column-and-a-half article upon the subject, readily accessible to any who are not already familiar with the matter which excited so wide an Interest at the time and for many months afterwards. The article is authoritative to the last detail. It explains how the Golden Girl became a lost mine in 1799, and how it happened that while David Drennen had discovered it in 1912 it had been hidden to other eyes than his. A series of earthquakes of which we have record, occurring at the beginning of the nineteenth century, bringing about heavy snowslides and landslides, had thrown the course of one of the tributaries of the Little MacLeod from its bed into a new channel where a sudden depression had sunk the golden vein of the lost mine.

Here, just before the winter of 1911-12 shut down, David Drennen had found a nugget which he had concealed, saying nothing about it. The snows came and he went back to MacLeod's Settlement to wait for the coming of springtime and passable trails. The first man to pack out of the Settlement prospecting, he had come to the spot which last year he had marked under the cliffs known locally as Hell's Lace. The trail had been rotten underfoot and he had slipped and fallen into one of the black pools. Clambering out he had found the thing he sought; where the trail had broken away was gold, much gold. In the bed of the stream itself, nicely hidden for a hundred years by the cold, black water, swept into deep pools, jammed into sunken crevices, was the old lost gold of the Golden Girl.

The _West Canadian Mining and Milling News_ of the same date goes on to mention that the last official act of Mr. Andrew McCall as Local Agent for the Northwestern, had been the purchasing of his claim from David Drennen at the latter's figure, namely one hundred thousand dollars in cash, and an agreement of a royalty upon the mine's output.

Despite Drennen's impatience to be riding trail again it was a week before the deal was consummated. Half a mile above his claim it was possible for the engineers to throw the stream again into its old bed, a score of men and three days' work accomplishing the conditions which had obtained before the period of seismic disturbance. Then followed days of keen expert investigation. Even when they were sure these men who know as most men do not the value of caution when they are allowed to take time for caution, postponed their final verdict. But at last the thing was done and McCall, taking his train for the East, left Lebarge with a conscious glow of satisfaction over the last work done as superintendent of the Western Division.

Marshall Sothern, returning from the railroad station, found Drennen waiting for him in his private office.

"Well, Mr. Drennen," he said quietly, going about the table and to his chair, "how does it feel to be worth a cool hundred thousand?"

"It feels," cried the younger man sharply, his voice ringing with a hint of excitement which had been oddly lacking in him throughout the whole transaction, "like power! Like a power I've been hungering for for ten years! May I have your stenographer for a few moments, sir?"

Sothern touched the buzzer and the clerk came in from the outer office.

"Take Mr. Drennen's dictation," said Sothern. "I'll go into the other room. . . ."

Drennen lifted his hand.

"It's nothing private, sir," he said. "I'd rather you stayed. I'd like a word with you afterwards."

The clerk took pencil and notebook. And Drennen, his eyes never leaving Sothern's face, dictated:

"Harley W. Judson, Esq., President Eastern Mines, Inc., New York.

DEAR SIR:--In compliance with the last request of my father, John Harper Drennen, before his departure for Europe in 1901, I am forwarding draft on the Merchants' & Citizens' National Bank of New York for $40,000. John Harper Drennen's original indebtedness to your company was, you will remember, $75,000. Of this amount some $50,000 was paid from the sales of such properties belonging to him at that time. The remaining $25,000 at an interest of 6% for the ten years during which the obligation has continued, amounts to the $40,000 which I enclose.

Respectfully,"

"That is all, Mr. Drennen?" asked the clerk.

"That is all," answered Drennen. The clerk went out. Drennen turned toward the man at the desk whose stern set face had gone strangely white.

"The absconding John Harper Drennen made such a request of you?" Marshall Sothern said calmly, though the effort for control was evident.

"No. It's just a little lie told for my father . . . the only thing I have ever done for him!"

Drennen came suddenly about the table, both of his strong hands out.

"When a man is very young he judges sweepingly, he condemns bitterly. Now . . . why, now I don't give a damn what you've done or why!" His voice went hoarse, his hands shook and into the hard eyes of David Drennen, eyes grown unbelievably soft now, the tears stood. "If only you hadn't shut me out that way . . . God! I've missed you, Dad!"

The old man made no answer as his hand grew like rock about his son's. A smile ineffably sweet touched his lips and shone in his eyes. The years had been hard, merciless years to him as they had been to David Drennen. But for a moment the past was forgotten, this brief fragment of time standing supreme in the two lives. At last, in the silence, there fell upon them that little awkwardness which comes to such men when for a second they have let their souls stand naked in their eyes. Almost at the same instant each man sought his pipe, filling it with restless fingers.

"My boy," said the man whose name had been Marshall Sothern through so many weary years that it was now more his name than any other, "there is the tale to tell . . . sometime. I can't do it now. One of these days . . . this has been the only dream I've dreamed since I saw you last, in Manhattan, David . . . you and I are going to pack off into the mountains. We're going alone, David, and we're going far; so far that the smoke of our little camp fire will be for our eyes and nostrils alone. Then I can tell you my story. And . . . David . . ."

"Yes, Dad?"

"That forty thousand . . . You are a gentleman, David! That was like you. I . . . I thank you, my boy!"

Drennen's face, through a rush of emotions, reddened. Reddened for an unreasoning, inexplicable shame no less than for a proud sort of joy that at last he had been able to do some small thing for John Harper Drennen, his old hero.

Again there fell a silence, a little awkward. The two men, with so much to say to each other, found a thousand thoughts stopping the rush of words to be spoken. Drennen realised what his father had had in mind, or rather in that keenly sensitive, intuitive thing which is not mind but soul, when he had spoken of the two of them taking together a trail which must lead them for many days into the solitudes before they could talk to each other of the matters which counted. Something not quite shyness but akin to it was upon them both; it was a relief when the telephone of Sothern's desk rang.

It was Marc Lemarc asking for Drennen. He had hired men, bought tools and dynamite, ordered machinery from the nearest city where machinery was to be had, had spoken to a competent engineer about taking charge of the work to be done. He was quite ready to return to MacLeod's Settlement.

"It's all right, Lemarc," answered Drennen. "I have deposited the money in your name in the Lebarge Bank. You can draw out whatever you please and when you please. No, you needn't wait for me; I'll overtake you, I have no doubt. Oh, that's all right!"

Before Drennen had finished there came the second interruption. The clerk came to announce the arrival of Israel Weyeth, who, upon Sothern's promotion, was to fill the vacant position of Local Manager.

"Mr. Sothern," said Drennen while the clerk was still in the room, "I shall remember your promise of a hunting trip with me. I am going up to MacLeod's Settlement immediately. I trust to see you again very soon."

"Mr. Drennen," answered the old man quietly, "I am honoured in your friendship. You have done me a kindness beyond measure but not beyond my appreciation."

They shook hands gravely, their eyes seeking to disguise the yearning which stood in each soul. Then Drennen went out.

"There, sir," cried Sothern, and the clerk marvelled at the note in his voice which sounded so like pride of ownership, "there goes a man from whom the world shall hear one of these days. His feet are at last in the right path."

The clerk, going to usher in Israel Weyeth, did not hear the last low words:

"For which, thank God . . . and Ygerne Bellaire!"