The Claim Jumpers Read online

  "Now," said she at last, "we have nothing more to think of until we go home."

  She was like a child, playing with exhaustless spirits at the most trivial games. Not for a moment would she listen to anything of a serious nature. Bennington, with the heavier pertinacity of men when they have struck a congenial vein, tried to repeat to some extent the experience of the last afternoon at the rock. Mary laughed his sentiment to ridicule and his poetics to scorn. Everything he said she twisted into something funny or ridiculous. He wanted to sit down and enjoy the calm peace of the little ravine in which they had pitched their temporary camp, but she made a quiet life miserable to him. At last in sheer desperation he arose to pursue, whereupon she vanished lightly into the underbrush. A moment later he heard her clear laugh mocking him from some elder thickets a hundred yards away. Bennington pursued with ardour. It was as though a slow-turning ocean liner were to try to run down a lively little yacht.

  Bennington had always considered girls as weak creatures, incapable of swift motion, and needing assistance whenever the country departed from the artificial level of macadam. He had also thought himself fairly active. He revised these ideas. This girl could travel through the thin brush of the creek bottom two feet to his one, because she ran more lightly and surely, and her endurance was not a matter for discussion. The question of second wind did not concern her any more than it does a child, whose ordinary mode of progression is heartbreaking. Bennington found that he was engaged in the most delightful play of his life. He shouted aloud with the fun of it. He had the feeling that he was grasping at a sunbeam, or a mist-shape that always eluded him.

  He would lose her utterly, and would stand quite motionless, listening, for a long time. Suddenly, without warning, an exaggerated leaf crown would fall about his neck, and he would be overwhelmed with ridicule at the outrageous figure he presented. Then for a time she seemed everywhere at once. The mottled sunlight under the trees danced and quivered after her, smiling and darkening as she dimpled or was grave. The little whirlwinds of the gulches seized the leaves and danced with her too, the birches and aspens tossed their hands, and rising ever higher and wilder and more elf-like came the mocking cadences of her laughter.

  After a time she disappeared again. Bennington stood still, waiting for some new prank, but he waited in vain. He instituted a search, but the search was fruitless. He called, but received no reply. At last he made his way again to the dell in which they had lunched, and there he found her, flat on her back, looking at the little summer clouds through wide-open eyes.

  Her mood appeared to have changed. Indeed that seemed to be characteristic of her; that her lightness was not so much the lightness of thistle down, which is ever airy, the sport of every wind, but rather that of the rose vine, mobile and swaying in every breeze, yet at the same time rooted well in the wholesome garden earth. She cared now to be silent. In a little while Bennington saw that she had fallen asleep. For the first time he looked upon her face in absolute repose.

  Feature by feature, line by line, he went over it, and into his heart crept that peculiar yearning which seems, on analysis, half pity for what has past and half fear for what may come. It is bestowed on little children, and on those whose natures, in spite of their years, are essentially childlike. For this girl's face was so pathetically young. Its sensitive lips pouted with a child's pout, its pointed chin was delicate with the delicacy that is lost when the teeth have had often to be clenched in resolve; its cheek was curved so softly, its long eyelashes shaded that cheek so purely. Yet somewhere, like an intangible spirit which dwelt in it, unseen except through its littlest effects, Bennington seemed to trace that subtle sadness, or still more subtle mystery, which at times showed so strongly in her eyes. He caught himself puzzling over it, trying to seize it. It was most like a sorrow, and yet like a sorrow which had been outlived. Or, if a mystery, it was as a mystery which was such only to others, no longer to herself. The whole line of thought was too fine-drawn for Bennington's untrained perceptions. Yet again, all at once, he realized that this very fact was one of the girl's charms to him; that her mere presence stirred in him perceptions, intuitions, thoughts-yes, even powers-which he had never known before. He felt that she developed him. He found that instead of being weak he was merely latent; that now the latent perceptions were unfolding. Since he had known her he had felt himself more of a man, more ready to grapple with facts and conditions on his own behalf, more inclined to take his own view of the world and to act on it. She had given him independence, for she had made him believe in himself, and belief in one's self is the first principle of independence. Bennington de Laney looked back on his old New York self as on a being infinitely remote.

  She awoke and opened her eyes slowly, and looked at him without blinking. The sun had gone nearly to the ridge top, and a Wilson's thrush was celebrating with his hollow notes the artificial twilight of its shadow.

  She smiled at him a little vaguely, the mists of sleep clouding her eyes. It is the unguarded moment, the instant of awakening. At such an instant the mask falls from before the features of the soul. I do not know what Bennington saw.

  "Mary, Mary!" he cried uncontrolledly, "I love you! I love you, girl."

  He had never before seen any one so vexed. She sat up at once.

  "Oh,why did you have to say that!" she cried angrily. "Why did you have to spoil things! Why couldn't you have let it go along as it was without bringing that into it!"

  She arose and began to walk angrily up and down, kicking aside the sticks and stones as she encountered them.

  "I was just beginning to like you, and now you do this.Oh , I am so angry!" She stamped her little foot. "I thought I had found a man for once who could be a good friend to me, whom I could meet unguardedly, and behold! the third day he tells me this!"

  "I am sorry," stammered Bennington, his new tenderness fleeing, frightened, into the inner recesses of his being. "I beg your pardon, I didn't know-Don't! I won't say it again. Please!"

  The declaration had been manly. This was ridiculously boyish. The girl frowned at him in two minds as to what to do.

  "Really, truly," he assured her.

  She laughed a little, scornfully. "Very well, I'll give you one more chance. I like you too well to drop you entirely." (What an air of autocracy she took, to be sure!) "You mustn't speak of that again. And you must forget it entirely." She lowered at him, a delicious picture of wrath.

  They saddled the horses and took their way homeward in silence. The tenderness put out its flower head from the inner sanctuary. Apparently the coast was clear. It ventured a little further. The evening was very shadowy and sweet and musical with birds. The tenderness boldly invaded Bennington's eyes, and spoke, oh, so timidly, from his lips.

  "I will do just as you say," it hesitated, "and I'll be very, very good indeed. But am I to have no hope at all?"

  "Why can't you keep off that standpoint entirely?"

  "Just that one question; then I will."

  "Well," grudgingly, "I suppose nothing on earth could keep the average mortal from hoping; but I can't answer that there is any ground for it."

  "When can I speak of it again?"

  "I don't know-after the Pioneer's Picnic."

  "That is when you cease to be a mystery, isn't it?"

  She sighed. "That is when I become a greater mystery-even to myself, I fear," she added in a murmur too low for him to catch.

  They rode on in silence for a little space more. The night shadows were flowing down between the trees like vapour. The girl of her own accord returned to the subject.

  "You are greatly to be envied," she said a little sadly, "for you are really young. I am old, oh, very, very old! You have trust and confidence. I have not. I can sympathize; I can understand. But that is all. There is something within me that binds all my emotions so fast that I can not give way to them. I want to. I wish I could. But it is getting harder and harder for me to think of absolutely trusting, in the sense of giving out
the self that is my own. Ah, but you are to be envied! You have saved up and accumulated the beautiful in your nature. I have wasted mine, and now I sit by the roadside and cry for it. My only hope and prayer is that a higher and better something will be given me in place of the wasted, and yet I have no right to expect it. Silly, isn't it?" she concluded bitterly.

  Bennington made no reply.

  They drew near the gulch, and could hear the mellow sound of bells as the town herd defiled slowly down it toward town.

  "We part here," the young man broke the long silence. "When do I see you again?"

  "I do not know."

  "To-morrow?"

  "No."

  "Day after?"

  The girl shook herself from a reverie. "If you want me to believe you, come every afternoon to the Rock, and wait. Some day I will meet you there."

  She was gone.

  * * *

  * * *

  Bennington de Laney sat on the pile of rocks at the entrance to the Holy Smoke shaft. Across his knees lay the thirty-calibre rifle. His face was very white and set. Perhaps he was thinking of his return to New York in disgrace, of his interview with Bishop, of his inevitable meeting with a multitude of friends, who would read in the daily papers the accounts of his incompetence-criminal incompetence, they would call it. The shadows were beginning to lengthen across the slope of the hill. Up the gulch cow bells tinkled, up the hill birds sang, and through the little hollows twilight flowed like a vapour. The wild roses on the hillside were blooming-late in this high altitude. The pines were singing their endless song. But Bennington de Laney was looking upon none of these softer beauties of the Hills. Rather he watched intently the lower gulch with its flood-wracked, water-twisted skeleton laid bare. Could it be that in the destruction there figured forth he caught the symbol of his own condition? That the dreary gloom of that ruin typified the chaos of sombre thoughts that occupied his own remorseful mind? If so, the fancy must have absorbed him. The moments slipped by one by one, the shadows grew longer, the bird songs louder, and still the figure with the rifle sat motionless, his face white and still, watching the lower gulch.

  Or could it be that Bennington de Laney waited for some one, and that therefore his gaze was so fixed? It would seem so. For when the beat of hoofs became audible, the white face quickened into alertness, and the motionless figure stirred somewhat.

  The rider came in sight, rising and falling in a steady, unhesitating lope. He swung rapidly to the left, and ascended the knoll. Opposite the shaft of the Holy Smoke lode he reined in his bronco and dismounted. The rider was Jim Fay.

  Bennington de Laney did not move. He looked up at the newcomer with dull resignation. "He takes it hard, poor fellow!" thought Fay.

  "Well, what's to be done?" asked the Easterner in a strained voice. "I suppose you know all about it, or you wouldn't be here."

  "Yes, I know all about it," said Fay gently. "You mustn't take it so hard. Perhaps we can do something. We'll be able to save one or two claims, any way, if we're quick about it."

  "I've heard something about patenting claims," went on de Laney in the same strange, dull tones; "could that be done?"

  "No. You have to do five hundred dollars' worth of work, and advertise for sixty days. There isn't time."

  "That settles it. I don't know what we can do then."

  "Well, that depends. I've come to help do something. We've got to get an everlasting hustle on us, that's all; and I'm afraid we are beginning a little behindhand in the race. You ought to have hunted me up at once."

  "I don't see what there is to do," repeated Bennington thickly.

  "Don't you? The assessment work hasn't been done-that's the idea, isn't it?-and so the claims have reverted to the Government. They are therefore open to location, as in the beginning, and that is just what Davidson and that crowd are going to do to them. Well, they're just as much open to us. We'll justjump our own claims! "

  "What!" cried the Easterner, excited.

  "Well, relocate them ourselves, if that suits you better."

  Bennington's dull eyes began to light up.

  "So get a move on you," went on Fay; "hustle out some paper so we can make location notices. Under the terms of a relocation, we can use the old stakes and 'discovery,' so all we have to do is to tack up a new notice all round. That's the trouble. That gang's got their notices all written, and I'm afraid they've got ahead of us. Come on!"

  Bennington, who had up to this time remained seated on the pile of stones, seemed filled with a new and great excitement. He tottered to his feet, throwing his hands aloft.

  "Thank God! Thank God!" he cried, catching his breath convulsively.

  Fay turned to look at him curiously. "We aren't that much out of the woods," he remarked; "the other gang'll get in their work, don't you fret."

  "They never will, they never will!" cried the Easterner exultantly. "They can't. We'll locate 'em all!" The tears welled over his eyes and ran down his cheeks.

  "What do you mean?" asked Fay, beginning to fear the excitement had unsettled his companion's wits.

  "Because they're there!" cried Bennington, pointing to the mouth of the shaft near which he had been sitting. "Davidson, Slayton, Arthur-they're all there, and they can't get away! I didn't know what else to do. I had to do something!"

  Fay cast an understanding glance at the young man's rifle, and sprang to the entrance of the shaft. As though in direct corroboration of his speech, Fay could perceive, just emerging from the shadow, the sinister figure of the man Arthur creeping cautiously up the ladder, evidently encouraged to an attempt to escape by the sound of the conversation above. The Westerner snatched his pistol from his holster and presented it down the shaft.

  "Kindly return!" he commanded in a soft voice. The upward motion of the dim figure ceased, and in a moment it had faded from view in the descent. Fay waited a moment. "In five minutes," he announced in louder tones, "I'm going to let loose this six-shooter down that shaft. I should advise you gentlemen to retire to the tunnel." He peered down again intently. A sudden clatter and thud behind him startled him. He looked around. Bennington had fallen at full length across the stones, and his rifle, falling, had clashed against the broken ore.

  Fay, with a slight shrug of contempt at such womanish weakness, ran to his assistance. He straightened the Easterner out and placed his folded coat under his head. "He'll come around in a minute," he muttered. He glanced toward the gulch and then back to the shaft. "Can't leave that lay-out," he went on. He bent over the prostrate figure and began to loosen the band of his shirt. Something about the boy's clothing attracted his attention, so, drawing his knife, he deftly and gently ripped away the coat and shirt. Then he arose softly to his feet and bared his head.

  "I apologize to you," said he, addressing the recumbent form; "you are game."

  In the fleshy part of the naked shoulder was a small round hole, clotted and smeared with blood.

  Jim Fay stooped and examined the wound closely. The bullet had entered near the point of the shoulder, but a little below, so that it had merely cut a secant through the curve of the muscle. If it had struck a quarter of an inch to the left it would have gouged a furrow; a quarter of an inch beyond that would have caused it to miss entirely. Fay saw that the hurt itself was slight, and that the Easterner had fainted more because of loss of blood than from the shock. This determined to his satisfaction, he moved quickly to the mouth of the shaft. "Way below!" he cried in a sharp voice, and discharged his revolver twice down the opening. Then he stole noiselessly away, and ran at speed to the kitchen of the shack, whence he immediately returned with a pail of water and a number of towels. He set these down, and again peered down the shaft. "Way below!" he repeated, and dropped down a sizable chunk of ore. Apparently satisfied that the prisoners were well warned, he gave his whole attention to his patient.

  He washed the wound carefully. Then he made a compress of one of the towels, and bound it with the other two. Looking up, he discovered Benni
ngton watching him intently.

  "It's all right!" he assured the latter in answer to the question in his eyes. "Nothing but a scratch. Lie still a minute till I get this fastened, and you can sit up and watch the rat hole while I get you some clothes."

  In another moment or so the young man was propped up against an empty ore "bucket," his shoulder bound, and his hand slung comfortably in a sling from his neck.

  "There you are," said Jim cheerily. "Now you take my six-shooter and watch that aggregation till I get back. They won't come out any, but you may as well be sure."

  He handed Bennington his revolver, and moved off in the direction of the cabin, whistling cheerfully. The young man looked after him thoughtfully. Nothing could have been more considerate than the Westerner's manner, nothing could have been kinder than his prompt action-Bennington saw that his pony, now cropping the brush near at hand, was black with sweat-nothing could have been more straightforward than his assistance in the matter of the claims. And yet Bennington de Laney was not satisfied. He felt he owed the sudden change of front to a word spoken in his behalf by the girl. This was a strange influence she possessed, thus to alter a man's attitude entirely by the mere voicing of a wish.

  The Westerner returned carrying a loose shirt and a coat, which he drew entire over the injured shoulder, which left one sleeve empty.

  "I guess that fixes you," said he with satisfaction.

  "Look here," put in Bennington suddenly, "you've been mighty good to me in all this. If you hadn't come along as you did, these fellows would have nabbed me sooner or later, and probably I'd have lost the claims any way. I feel I owe you a lot. But I want you to know before you go any further that that don't square us. You've had it in for me ever since I came out here, and you've made it mighty unpleasant for me. I can't forget that all at once. I want to tell you plainly that, although I am grateful enough, I know just why you have done all this. It is becauseshe asked you to. And knowing that, I can't accept what you do for me as from a friend, for I don't feel friendly toward you in the least." His face flushed painfully. "I'm not trying to insult you or be boorish," he said; "I just want you to understand how I feel about it. And now that you know, I suppose you'd better let the matter go, although I'm much obliged to you for fixing me up."