XXIV
A Little Leaven
The final touch of sunset pink had long since faded from the highwestern sky-line, and the summer-night stars served only to make thedarkness visible along the road which had once been the stage route downthe Timanyoni River and across to the mining-camp of Red Butte. Smith,slackening speed for the first time in the swift valley-crossing flight,twisted the gray roadster sharply to the left out of the road, and easedit across the railroad track to send it lurching and bumping over therotting ties of an old branch-line spur from which the steel had beenremoved, and which ran in a course roughly paralleling theeastward-facing front of a forested mountain.
Four miles from the turn out of the main road, at a point on the spurright of way where a washed-out culvert made farther progress with thecar impossible, he shut off the power and got down to continue hisjourney afoot. Following the line of the abandoned spur, he came, at theend of another mile, to the deserted shacks of the mining plant whichthe short branch railroad had been built to serve; a rooflesspower-house, empty ore platforms dry-rotting in disuse, windowless bunkshanties, and the long, low bulk of a log-built commissary. The mineworkings were tunnel-driven in the mountainside, and a crooked ore trackled out to them. Smith followed the ore track until he came to thebulkheaded entrance flanked by empty storage bins, and to the lock of asmall door framed in the bulkheading he applied a key.
It was pitch dark beyond the door, and the silence was like that of thegrave. Smith had brought a candle on his food-carrying visit of the daybefore, and, groping in its hiding-place just outside of the door, hefound and lighted it, holding it sheltered in his cupped hand as hestepped into the black void beyond the bulkhead. With the feeble flamemaking little more than a dim yellow nimbus in the gloom, he lookedabout him. There was no sign of occupancy save Jibbey's suitcase lyingwhere it had been flung on the night of the assisted disappearance. Butof the man himself there was no trace.
Smith stumbled forward into the black depths and the chill of the placelaid hold upon him and shook him like the premonitory shiver of anapproaching ague. What if the darkness and solitude had been too muchfor Jibbey's untried fortitude and the poor wretch had crawled away intothe dismal labyrinth to lose himself and die? The searcher stopped andlistened. In some far-distant ramification of the mine he could hear the_drip, drip_, of underground water, but when he shouted there was noresponse save that made by the echoes moaning and whispering in thestoped-out caverns overhead.
Shielding the flickering candle again, Smith went on, pausing at eachbranching side-cutting to throw the light into the pockets of darkness.Insensibly he quickened his pace until he was hastening blindly througha maze of tunnels and cross driftings, deeper and still deeper into thebowels of the great mountain. Coming suddenly at the last into thechamber of the dripping water, he found what he was searching for, andagain the ague chill shook him. There were no apparent signs of life inthe sodden, muck-begrimed figure lying in a crumpled heap among thewater pools.
"Jibbey!" he called: and then again, ignoring the unnerving,awe-inspiring echoes rustling like flying bats in the cavernousoverspaces: "_Jibbey!_"
The sodden heap bestirred itself slowly and became a man sitting up toblink helplessly at the light and supporting himself on one hand.
"Is that you, Monty?" said a voice tremulous and broken; and then: "Ican't see. The light blinds me. Have you come to fi-finish the job?"
"I have come to take you out of this; to take you back with me toBrewster. Get up and come on."
The victim of Smith's ruthlessness struggled stiffly to his feet. Nevermuch more than a physical weakling, and with his natural strength wastedby a life of dissipation, the blow on the head with the pistol butt andthe forty-eight hours of sharp hardship and privation had cut deeplyinto his scanty reserves.
"Did--did Verda send you to do it?" he queried.
"No; she doesn't know where you are. She thinks you stopped oversomewhere on your way west. Come along, if you want to go back with me."
Jibbey stumbled away a step or two and flattened himself against thecavern wall. His eyes were still staring and his lips were drawn back toshow his teeth.
"Hold on a minute," he jerked out. "You're not--not going to wipe itall out as easy as that. You've taken my gun away from me, but I've gotmy two hands yet. Stick that candle in a hole in the wall and look outfor yourself. I'm telling you, right now, that one or the other of us isgoing to stay here--and stay dead!"
"Don't be a fool!" Smith broke in. "I didn't come here to scrap withyou."
"You'd better--and you'd better make a job of it while you're about it!"shrieked the castaway, lost now to everything save the biting sense ofhis wrongs. "You've put it all over me--knocked my chances with VerdaRichlander and shut me up here in this hell-hole to go mad-dog crazy! Ifyou let me get out of here alive I'll pay you back, if it's the lastthing I ever do on top of God's green earth! You'll go back toLawrenceville with the bracelets on! You'll--" red rage could go nofarther in mere words and he flung himself in feeble fierceness uponSmith, clutching and struggling and waking the grewsome echoes againwith frantic, meaningless maledictions.
Smith dropped the candle to defend himself, but he did not strike back;wrapping the madman in a pinioning grip, he held him helpless until thevengeful ecstasy had exhausted itself. When it was over, and Jibbey hadbeen released, gasping and sobbing, to stagger back against the tunnelwall, Smith groped for the candle and found and relighted it.
"Tucker," he said gently, "you are more of a man than I took you tobe--a good bit more. And you needn't break your heart because you can'thandle a fellow who is perfectly fit, and who weighs half as much againas you do. Now that you're giving me a chance to say it, I can tell youthat Verda Richlander doesn't figure in this at all. I'm not going tomarry her, and she didn't come out here in the expectation of findingme."
"Then what does figure in it?" was the dry-lipped query.
"It was merely a matter of self-preservation. There are men in Brewsterwho would pay high for the information you might give them about me."
"You might have given me a hint and a chance, Monty. I'm not _all_ dog!"
"That's all past and gone. I didn't give you your chance, but I'm goingto give it to you now. Let's go--if you're fit to try it."
"Wait a minute. If you think, because you didn't pull your gun just nowand drop me and leave me to rot in this hole, if you think that squaresthe deal----"
"I'm not making any conditions," Smith interposed. "There are a numberof telegraph offices in Brewster, and for at least two days longer Ishall always be within easy reach."
Jibbey's anger flared up once more.
"You think I won't do it? You think I'll be so danged glad to get tosome place where they sell whiskey that I'll forget all about it and letyou off? Don't you make any mistake, Monty Smith! You can't knock me onthe head and lock me up as if I were a yellow dog. I'll fix you!"
Smith made no reply. Linking his free arm in Jibbey's, he led the waythrough the mazes, stopping at the tunnel mouth to blow out the candleand to pick up Jibbey's suitcase. In the open air the freed captiveflung his arms abroad and drank in a deep breath of the clean, sweet,outdoor air. "God!" he gasped; "how good it is!" and after that hetramped in sober silence at Smith's heels until they reached theautomobile.
It took some little careful manoeuvring to get the roadstersuccessfully turned on the railroad embankment, and Jibbey stood asidewhile Smith worked with the controls. Past this, he climbed into thespare seat, still without a word, and the rough four miles over therotting cross-ties were soon left behind. At the crossing of therailroad main track and the turn into the highway, the river, bassooningdeep-toned among its bowlders, was near at hand, and Jibbey spoke forthe first time since they had left the mine mouth.
"I'm horribly thirsty, Monty. That water in the mine had copper orsomething in it, and I couldn't drink it. You didn't know that, didyou?--when you put me in there, I mean? Won't you stop the car and letme go
stick my face in that river?"
The car was brought to a stand and Jibbey got out to scramble down theriver bank in the starlight. Obeying some inner prompting which he didnot stop to analyze, Smith left his seat behind the wheel and walkedover to the edge of the embankment where Jibbey had descended. The pathto the river's margin was down the steep slope of a rock fill made inwidening the highway to keep it clear of the railroad track. With theglare of the roadster's acetylenes turned the other way, Smith could seeJibbey at the foot of the slope lowering himself face downward on hispropped arms to reach the water. Then, for a single instant, themurderous underman rose up and laughed. For in that instant, Jibbey,careless in his thirst, lost his balance and went headlong into thetorrent.
A battling eon had passed before Smith, battered, beaten, andhalf-strangled, succeeded in landing the unconscious thirst-quencher ona shelving bank three hundred yards below the stopped automobile. Afterthat there was another eon in which he completely forgot his ownbruisings while he worked desperately over the drowned man, raising andlowering the limp arms while he strove to recall more of theresuscitative directions given in the Lawrenceville Athletic Club'sfirst-aid drills.
In good time, after an interval so long that it seemed endless to thedespairing first-aider, the breath came back into the reluctant lungs.Jibbey coughed, choked, gasped, and sat up. His teeth were chattering,and he was chilled to the bone by the sudden plunge into the cold snowwater, but he was unmistakably alive.
"What--what happened to me, Monty?" he shuddered. "Did I lose my gripand tumble in?"
"You did, for a fact."
"And you went in after me?"
"Of course."
"No, by Gad! It wasn't 'of course'--not by a long shot! All you had todo was to let me go, and the score--your score--would have been wipedout for good and all. Why didn't you do it?"
"Because I should have lost my bet."
"Your bet?"
"Well, yes. It wasn't exactly a bet; but I promised somebody that Iwould bring you back to Brewster to-night, alive and well, and able tosend a telegram. And if I had let you drown yourself, I should have lostout."
"You promised somebody?--not Verda?"
"No; somebody else."
Jibbey tried to get upon his feet, couldn't quite compass it, and satdown again.
"I don't believe a word of it," he mumbled, loose-lipped. "You did itbecause you're not so danged tough and hard-hearted as you thought youwere." And then: "Give me a lift, Monty, and get me to the auto. Iguess--I'm about--all in."
Smith half led, half carried his charge up to the road and then left himto go and back the car over the three hundred-odd yards of theinterspace. A final heave lifted Jibbey into his place, and it is safeto say that Colonel Dexter Baldwin's roadster never made better timethan it did on the race which finally brought the glow of the Brewstertown lights reddening against the eastern sky.
At the hotel Smith helped his dripping passenger out of the car, made aquick rush with him to an elevator, and so up to his own rooms on thefourth floor.
"Strip!" he commanded; "get out of those wet rags and tumble into thebath. Make it as hot as you can stand it. I'll go down and register youand have your trunk sent up from the station. You have a trunk, haven'tyou?"
Jibbey fished a soaked card baggage-check out of his pocket and passedit over.
"You're as bad off as I am, Monty," he protested. "Wait and get some drythings on before you go."
"I'll be up again before you're out of the tub. I suppose you'd like toput yourself outside of a big drink of whiskey, just about now, butthat's one thing I won't buy for you. How would a pot of hot coffee fromthe cafe strike you?"
"You could make it Mellin's Food and I'd drink it if you said so,"chattered the drowned one from the inside of the wet undershirt he wastrying to pull off over his head.
Smith did his various errands quickly. When he reached the fourth-floorsuite again, Jibbey was out of the bath; was sitting on the edge of thebed wrapped in blankets, with the steaming pot of coffee sent up onSmith's hurry order beside him on a tray.
"It's your turn at the tub," he bubbled cheerfully. "I didn't have anyglad rags to put on, so I swiped some of your bedclothes. Go to it, oldman, before you catch cold."
Smith was already pointing for the bath. "Your trunk will be up in a fewminutes, and I've told them to send it here," he said. "When you want toquit me, you'll find your rooms five doors to the right in this samecorridor: suite number four-sixteen."
It was a long half-hour before Smith emerged from his bath-room oncemore clothed and in his right mind. In the interval the reclaimed trunkhad been sent up, and Jibbey was also clothed. He had found one ofSmith's pipes and some tobacco and was smoking with the luxuriousenjoyment of one who had suffered the pangs imposed by two days of totalabstinence.
"Just hangin' around to say good night," he began, when Smith showedhimself in the sitting-room. Then he returned the borrowed pipe to itsplace on the mantel and said his small say to the definite end. "Afterall that's happened to us two to-night, Monty, I hope you're going toforget my crazy yappings and not lose any sleep about that Lawrencevillebusiness. I'm seventeen different kinds of a rotten failure; there's nomanner of doubt about that; and once in a while--just _once_ in awhile--I've got sense enough to know it. You saved my life when it wouldhave been all to the good for you to let me go. I guess the worldwouldn't have been much of a loser if I had gone, and you knew that,too. Will you--er--would you shake hands with me, Monty?"
Smith did it, and lo! a miracle was wrought: in the nervous grasp of thejoined hands a quickening thrill passed from man to man;, a thrillhumanizing, redemptory, heart-mellowing. And, oddly enough, one wouldsay, it was the weaker man who gave and the stronger who received.
The Real Man Page 24