The Claim Jumpers - Stewart Edward White
The conversation, of which he was the eavesdropper, was carried on by
fits and starts. First a sentence would be delivered by one of the
Leslies; then would ensue a pause as though for a reply, inaudible to
any but the interlocutors themselves; then another sentence; and so on,
like a man at a telephone. After a moment's puzzling over it,
Bennington understood that Jim Leslie was talking to one of the
prisoners down the shaft.
"You have the true sporting spirit, sir," cried the voice of Jeems. "I
honour you for it. But so philosophical a resignation, while it
inclines our souls to know more of you personally, nevertheless renders
you much less interesting in such a juncture as the present. I would
like to hear from Mr. Davidson."
Pause.
"That was a performance, Mr. Davidson, which I can not entirely
commend. It is fluent, to be sure, but it lacks variety. A true artist
would have interspersed those finer shades and gradations of meaning
which go to express the numerous and clashing emotions which must
necessarily agitate your venerable bosom. You surely mean more than
_damn_. _Damn_ is expressive and forceful, because capable of being
enunciated at one explosive effort of the breath, but it is monotonous
when too freely employed. To be sure, you might with some justice reply
that you had qualified said adjective strongly--but the qualification
was trite though blasphemous. And you limited it very nicely--but the
limitation to myself is unjust, as it overlooks my brother's equitable
claims to notice."
Pause.
"I _beg_ pardon! Kindly repeat!"
Pause.
"Delicious! Mr. Davidson, you have redeemed yourself. Bertie, did you
hear Mr. Davidson's last remark?"
"No!" replied another voice. "Couldn't be bothered. What was it?"
"Mr. Davidson, with a polished sarcasm that amounted to genius, advised
me in his picturesque vernacular 't' set thet jaw of mine goin', and
then go away an' leave it!'"
Pause.
"I beg you, Mr. Slayton, do not think of such a thing. I would not have
him repressed for anything in the world. As you value our future
acquaintanceship, do not end our interview. Thank you! I appreciate
your compliment, and in return will repeat that, though in a pretty
sharp game, you are a true sport. Our friend Arthur is strangely
silent. I have never met Mr. Arthur. I have heard that either his face
or his hat looks like a fried egg, but I forget for the moment which
was so characterized."
Pause.
"Fie, fie! Mr. Arthur. Addison, in his most intoxicated moments, would
never have used such language."
And then the man in the cabin, lying on the bed, began to laugh in a
low tone. His laugh was not pleasant to hear. He was realizing how
funny things were to other people--things that had not been funny to
him at all. For the first time he caught a focus on his father, with
his pompous pride and his stilted diction; on his mother's social
creed. He cared as much for them as ever and his respect was as great,
but now he realized that outsiders could never understand them as he
did, and that always to others they must appear ridiculous. So he
laughed. And, too, he perceived that the world would see something
grimly humorous in his insistence on the girl's parentage, when all the
time, in the home to which he was to bring her, dwelt these unlovable,
snobbish old parents of his own. So he laughed. And he thought of how
he had been fooled, and played with, and duped, and cheated, and all
but disgraced by the very people on whom he had looked down from a
fancied superiority. And so he laughed. And as he laughed his hands
swelled up to the size of pillows, and he thought that he was dressed
in a loose garment spotted all over with great spots, and that he was
standing on a stage before these grave, silent hillmen. The light came
in through a golden-yellow square just behind them. In the front row
sat Mary, looking at him with wide-open, trusting eyes. And he was
revolving these hands like pillows around each other, trying to make
the sombre men and the wistful girl laugh with him, while over and
over certain words slipped in between his cachinnations, like stray
bird-notes through a rattle of drums.
"I have no fresh motley for my lady's amusement," he was saying to her,
"no new philosophies to spread out for my lady's inspection, no bright
pictures to display for my lady's pleasure, and so I, like a poor
poverty-stricken minstrel whose harp has been broken, yet dare beg at
the castle gate for a crumb of my lady's bounty." At which he would
have wept, but could only laugh louder and louder.
Then dimly he knew again he was in his own room, and he felt that
several people were moving back and forth quickly. He tried to rise,
but could not, and he knew that he was slipping back to the hall and
the solemn crowd of men. He did not want to go. He grasped convulsively
at the blanket with his sound hand, and shrieked aloud.
"I am sick! I am sick! I am sick!" he cried louder and louder.
Some one laid a cool hand on his forehead, and he lay quiet and smiled
contentedly. The room and the people became wraithlike. He saw them
still, but he saw through them to a reality of soft meadows and summer
skies, from which Mary leaned, resting her hand on his brow. Voices
spoke, but muffled, as though by many veils. They talked of various
things.
"It's the mountain fever," he heard one say. "It's a wonder he escaped
it so long."
Then the cool hand was withdrawn from his brow, and inexorably he was
hurried back into the land of visions.
CHAPTER XXII
FLOWER O' THE WORLD
Bennington de Laney found himself lying comfortably in bed, listening
with closed eyes to a number of sounds. Of these there most impressed
him two. They were a certain rhythmical muffled beat, punctuated at
intervals by a slight rustling of paper; and a series of metallic
clicks, softened somewhat by distance. After a time it occurred to him
to open his eyes. At once he noticed two things more--that he had some
way acquired fresh white sheets for his bed, and that on a little table
near the foot of his bunk stood a vase of flowers. These two new
impressions satisfied him for some time. He brooded over them slowly,
for his brain was weak. Then he allowed his gaze to wander to the
window. From above its upper sash depended two long white curtains of
some lacelike material, freshly starched and with deep edges, ruffled
slightly in a pleasing fashion. They stirred slowly in the warm air
from the window. Bennington watched them lazily, breathing with
pleasure the balmy smell of pine, and listening to the sounds. The
clinking noises came through the open window. He knew now that they
meant the impact of sledge on drill. Some one was drilling somewhere.
His glance roved on, and rested without surprise on a girl in a rocking
chair swaying softly to and fro, and reading a book, the turning of
whose leaves had caused the rustling of paper which he had noticed
first.
For a long time he lay silent and contented. Her fine brown hair had
been drawn back smoothly away from her forehead into a loose knot. She
was dressed in a simple gown of white--soft, and resting on the curves
of her slender figure as lightly as down on the surface of the warm
meadows. From beneath the full skirt peeped a little slippered foot,
which tapped the floor rhythmically as the chair rocked to and fro.
Finally she glanced up and discovered him locking at her. She arose and
came to the bedside, her finger on her lips.
"You mustn't talk," she said sweetly, a great joy in her eyes. "I'm so
glad you're better."
She left the room, and returned in a little time with a bowl of chicken
broth, which she fed him with a spoon. It tasted very good to him, and
he felt the stronger for it, but as yet his voice seemed a long
distance away. When she turned to leave the room, however, he murmured
inarticulately and attempted to stir. She came back to the bed at once.
"I'll be back in a minute," she said gently, but seeing some look of
pleading in his eyes, she put the empty bowl and spoon on the little
table and sat down on the floor near the bed. He smiled, and then,
closing his eyes, fell asleep--outside the borders of the land of
visions, and with the music of a woman's voice haunting the last
moments of his consciousness.
After the fever had once broken, his return to strength was rapid.
Although accompanied by delirium, and though running its full course of
weeks, the "mountain fever" is not as intense as typhoid. The
exhaustion of the vital forces is not as great, and recuperation is
easier. In two days Bennington was sitting up in bed, possessed of an
appetite that threatened to depopulate entirely the little log chicken
coop. He found that the tenancy of the camp had materially changed.
Mrs. Lawton and Miss Fay had moved in, bag and baggage--but without the
inquisitive Maude, Bennington was glad to observe.
Mrs. Lawton, in the presence of an emergency, turned out to be helpful
in every way. She knew all about mountain fevers for one thing, and as
the country was not yet blessed with a doctor, this was not an
unimportant item. Then, too, she was a most capable housekeeper--she
cooked, marketed, swept, dusted, and tyrannized over the mere men in a
manner to be envied even by a New England dame. Fay and the Leslies had
also taken up their quarters in the camp. Old Mizzou and the Arthurs
had gone. The old "bunk house" now accommodated a good-sized gang of
miners, who had been engaged by Fay to do the necessary assessment
work. Altogether the camp was very populous and lively.
After a little Bennington learned of everything that had happened
during the three weeks of his sickness. It all came out in a series of
charming conversations, when, in the evening twilight, they gathered in
the room where the sick man lay. Mary--as Bennington still liked to
name her--occupied the rocking chair, and the three young men
distributed themselves as best suited them. It was most homelike and
resting. Bennington had never before experienced the delight of seeing
a young girl about a house, and he enjoyed to the utmost the deft
little touches by which is imparted that airily feminine appearance to
a room; or, more subtly, the mere spirit of daintiness which breathes
always from a woman of the right sort. He felt there was added a newer
and calmer element of joy to his love.
During the first period of his illness, then, Jim Fay and the Leslie
brothers had worked energetically relocating the claims, while Mrs.
Lawton and Miss Fay had taken charge of the house. By the end of the
first day the job was finished. The question then came up as to the
disposition of the prisoners.
"We didn't want the nuisance of a prosecution," said Fay, "because that
would mean that these mossbacks could drag us off to Rapid City any
old time as witnesses, and keep us there indefinitely. Neither did we
want to let them off scot-free. They'd made us altogether too much
trouble for that! Bert here suggested a very simple way out. I went
down to Spanish Gulch and told the boys the whole story from start to
finish. Well, it isn't hard to handle a Western crowd if you go at it
right. The boys always thought you had good stuff in you since you rode
the horse and smashed Leary's face that night. It would have been easy
to have cooked up all kinds of trouble for our precious gang, but I
managed to get the boys in a frivolous mood, so they merely came up and
had fun."
"I should say they did!" Bert interjected. "They dragged the crowd out
of the shaft--and they were a tough-looking proposition, I can tell
you!--and stood them up in a row. They shaved half of Davidson's head
and half his beard, on opposite sides. They left tufts of hair all over
Arthur. They made a six-pointed star on the top of Slayton's crown.
Then they put the men's clothes on wrong side before, and tied them
facing the rear on three scrubby little burros. Then the whole outfit
was started toward Deadwood. The boys took them as far as Blue Lead,
where they delivered them over to the gang there, with instructions to
pass them along. They probably got to Deadwood. I don't know what's
become of them since."
"I think it was cruel!" put in Miss Fay decidedly.
"Perhaps. But it was better than hanging them."
"What became of Mrs. Arthur?" asked the invalid.
"I shipped her to Deadwood with a little money. Poor creature! It would
be a good thing for her if her husband never did show up. She'd get
along better without him."
The claims located and the sharpers got rid of, Fay proceeded at once
to put the assessment work under way. In this, his long Western
experience, and his intimate acquaintance with the men, stood him in
such good stead that he was enabled to contract the work at a cheaper
rate than Bishop's estimate.
"I wrote to Bishop," he said, "and told him all about it. In his
answer, which I'll show you, he took all the blame to himself, just as
I anticipated he would, and he's so tickled to death over the showing
made by the assays that he's coming out here himself to see about
development. So I'm afraid you're going to lose your job."
"I'm not sorry to go home. But I'm sorry to leave the Hills." He looked
wistfully through the twilight toward Mary's slender figure, outlined
against the window. The three men caught the glance, and began at once
to talk in low tones to each other. In a moment they went out. Somehow,
on returning from the land of visions, Ben found that the world had
moved, and that one of the results of the movement was that many things
were taken for granted by the little community of four who surrounded
him. It was as though the tangle had unravelled quietly while he slept.
She leaned toward him shyly, and whispered something to his ear. He
smiled contentedly.
They talked then long and comfortably in the dusk--about how the
Leslies had written the letter, how much trouble she had taken to
conceal her real identity, and all the rest.
"I sent Bill Lawton up to warn your camp the first day I met you," said
she.
"Why, I remember!" he cried. "He was there when I got back."
And they talked on of their many experiences, in the fashion of lovers,
and how they had come to care for each other, and when.
"I made up my mind it was so foolish a joke," she confessed, "that I
determined to tell you all about it. You remember I had something to
tell you at the Pioneer's Picnic? That was it. But then you remember
the girl in the train, and how, when she looked at us, you turned
away?"
"I remember that well enough," replied Bennington. "But what has that
to do with it?"
"It was a perfectly natural thing to do, dearest. I see that plainly
enough now. But it hurt me a little that you should be ashamed of me as
a Western girl, and I made up my mind to test you."
"Why, I wasn't thinking of that at all," cried Bennington. "I was just
ashamed of my clothes. I never thought of you!"
She reached out and patted his hand. "I'm glad to hear that, Ben dear,
after all. It did hurt. And I was so foolish. I thought if you were
ashamed of me, you would never stand the thought of the Lawtons. So I
did not tell you the truth then, but resolved to test you in that way."
"Foolish little girl!" said he tenderly. "But it came out all right,
didn't it?"
"Yes," she sighed, with a happy gesture of the hands. They fell silent.
"I want you to tell me something, dear," said Bennington after a while.
"You needn't unless you want to, but I've thought about it a great
deal."
"I will tell you, Ben, anything in the world. We ought to be frank with
each other now, don't you think so?"
"I don't know as I ought to say anything about it, after all," he
hesitated, evidently embarrassed. "But, Mary, you know you have hinted
a little at it yourself. You remember you said something once about
losing faith, and being made hard, and----"
She took both his hands in hers and drew them closely to her breast.
Although he could not see her eyes against the dusk, he knew that she
was looking at him steadily.
"Listen quietly, Ben dear, and I will tell you. Before I came out here
I thought I loved a man, and he--well, he did not treat me well. I had
trusted him and every one else implicitly until the very moment
when----I felt it very much, and I came West with Jim to get away from
the old scenes. Now I know that it was only fascination, but it was
very real then. You do not like that, Ben, do you? The memory is not
pleasant to me, and yet," she said, with a wistful little break of the
voice, "if it hadn't been for that I would not have been the woman I
am, and I could not love you, dearest, as I do. It is never in the same
way twice, but each time something better and higher is added to it.
Oh, my darling, I _do_ love you, I do love you so much, and you must be
always my generous, poetic _boy_, as you are now."
She strained his hands to her as though afraid he would slip from her
clasp. "All that is ideal so soon hardens. I can not bear to think of
your changing."
Bennington leaned forward and their lips met. "We will forgive him," he
murmured.
And what that remark had to do with it only our gentler readers will be
able to say.
Ah, the delicious throbbing silence after the first kiss!
"What was your decision that afternoon on the Rock, Ben? You never told
me." She asked presently, in a lighter tone, "Would you have taken me
in spite of my family?"
He laughed with faint mischief.
"Before I tell you, I want to ask _you_ something," he said in his
turn. "Supposing I had decided that, even though I loved you, I must
give you up because of my duty to my family--suppose that, I say--what
would _you_ have done? Would your love for me have been so strong that
you would have finally confessed to me the fact that the Lawtons were
not your parents? Or would you have thrown me over entirely because you
thought I did not love you enough to take you for yourself?"
She considered the matter seriously for some little time.
"Ben, I don't know," she confessed at last frankly. "I can't tell."
"No more can I, sweetheart. I hadn't decided."
She puckered her brows in the darkness with genuine distress. Women
worry more than men over past intangibilities. He smiled comfortably to
himself, for in his grasp he held, unresisting, the dearest little hand
in the world. Outside, the ever-charming, ever-mysterious night of the
Hills was stealing here and there in sighs and silences. From the
darkness came the high sweet tenor of Bert Leslie's voice in the words
of a song:
"A Sailor to the Sea, a Hunter to the Pines,
And Sea and Pines alike to joy the Rover,
The Wood-smells to the nostrils of the Lover of the Trail,
And Hearts to Hearts the whole World over!"
Through and through the words of the song, like a fine silver wire
through richer cloth of gold, twined the long-drawn, tremulous notes
of the white-throated sparrow, the nightingale of the North.
"The dear old Hills," he murmured tenderly. "We must come back to them
often, sweetheart."
"I wish, I _wish_ I knew!" she cried, holding his hand tighter.
"Knew what?" he asked, surprised.
"What you'd have done, and what I'd have done!"
"Well," he replied, with a happy sigh, "I know what I'm _going_ to do,
and that's quite enough for me."
THE END