"O' course I'll do whatever you say," he added a second time.
"See you do," advised his chief, an ugly look in his eyes. "Tell him he gets till the next boat. If he's here after that, he'd better go heeled, for I'll shoot on sight wherever we meet."
Selfridge went on his errand with lagging feet. On the way he stopped at the Pay-Streak Saloon to fortify himself with a cocktail. He found Elliot sitting moodily alone on the porch of the hotel.
In Gordon's pocket there was a note to Macdonald explaining that he had nothing to do with the coming of Meteetse. He had expected to send it by the hotel porter that evening, but the curt order to leave town filled him with a chill anger. The dictator of affairs at Kusiak might think what he pleased for all the explanation he would get from him. As for taking the next boat, Elliot did not even give that consideration.
"Tell your master I don't take orders from him," he told Wally quietly. "I'll stay till my work here is done."
They had moved a few yards down the street. Now Gordon turned, lean-loined and active, and trod with crisp, confident step back to the hotel. He had said all that was necessary to say.
Two men standing on the porch nodded a good-evening to him. Gordon, about to pass, glanced at them again. They were Northrup and Trelawney, two of the miners who had had trouble with Macdonald on the boat.
On impulse he stopped. "Found work yet?" he asked.
"Found a job and lost it again," Northrup answered sullenly.
"Too bad."
"Macdonald passed the word along that we weren't to get work. So our boss fired us. The whole district is closed to us. We been blacklisted," explained Trelawney.
"And we're busted," added his mate.
Elliot was always free-handed. Perhaps he felt just now unusually sympathetic towards these victims of the high-handed methods of Macdonald. From his pocket he took a small leather purse and gave a piece of gold to each of them.
"Just as a loan to carry you for a couple of days till you get something to do," he suggested.
Northrup demurred, but after a little pressure accepted the accommodation.
"I pay you soon back," he promised.
Trelawney laughed recklessly. He had been drinking.
"You bet. Me too."
His companion flashed a look of warning at him and explained that they were going down the river to look for work outside of the district.
Suddenly Trelawney broke loose and began to curse Macdonald with a bitterness that surprised the Government agent. What struck him most, though, was the obvious anxiety of Northrup to quiet his partner and to gloss over what he had said. Thinking of it later, Gordon wondered why the Dane, who had as much cause to hate Macdonald as the other, should be at such pains to smooth down the man and explain away his threats.
Elliot bought an automatic revolver next morning and a box of cartridges. He was not looking for trouble, but he intended to be prepared for it when trouble came looking for him. With a rifle he was a fair shot, but he lacked experience with the revolver. In the afternoon he walked out of town and practiced shooting at tin cans for a half an hour. On his way back he met Peter Paget.
The engineer came straight to the subject in his mind.
"Selfridge came to see me last night. He told me about the trouble between you and Macdonald, Gordon. You must leave town till he cools down. Macdonald is a bad man with a gat."
"Is he?"
"You can drop down the river on business for a few weeks. After a while—"
His friend looked at him coolly. "I can, but I'm not going to. Where do you get this stuff about me being a quitter, Pete?"
Peter laid a hand on his shoulder. "Now, look here, Gordon. Don't be a kid and foolhardy. Duck. I'm your friend—"
"You're his, too, aren't you?"
"Yes, of course, but—"
"All right. Tell him to duck. There'll be no trouble of my making. But if he starts any I'll be there. Macdonald doesn't own the earth, you know. I've been sent up here by Uncle Sam on business, and you can bet your last dollar I'll stay on the job till I'm through."
"Of course you've got to finish your job. But it doesn't all have to be done right here. Just for a week or two—"
"Tell your friend something else while you're on the subject. If I drop him, I go scot free because he is interfering with me in my duty. I'll put Selfridge on the stand to prove it. But if he should kill me, his last chance for getting the Macdonald claims patented would be gone. The public would raise such a howl that the Administration would have to throw your friend and the Guttenchilds overboard to save itself. I know that—and Macdonald knows it. So he stands to lose either way."
Paget knew this was true. He knew, too, there was no use in arguing with this young athlete. That close-gripped jaw and salient chin did not belong to a slacker. Gordon would stick and see the thing out. But Peter could not drop the subject without one more appeal.
"He's not sore at you about the claims. You know that. It's because you brought the squaw up the river to see Sheba."
"I didn't bring her—hadn't a thing to do with that. I don't know who brought her, though I could give a good guess."
A gleam of hope showed in the eye of the engineer. "You didn't bring her? Diane said you threatened—"
"Maybe I did say I would. Anyhow, I thought better of it. But I'm glad some one had the sense to tell Miss O'Neill the truth."
"Who do you think brought her?"
"I'm not thinking on that subject out loud."
"But if we could show Mac—"
"That's up to you. I'll not lift a finger. Your king of Kusiak has to learn some time that everybody isn't going to sidestep him and pussyfoot when he's around. I didn't start this war and I'm not making any peace overtures."
"You're as obstinate as the devil," smiled Peter, but in his heart he admired the dourness of his friend.
The engineer went to Macdonald and gave a deleted version of his talk with Elliot. The Scotchman listened, a bitter, incredulous smile on his face.
"Says he didn't bring her, does he? Tell him from me that he lies. Your wife let out to me by accident that he threatened to bring her. Meteetse and he came up on the boat together. He was with her at your house when she told her story. He's trying to save his hide. No chance."
"Elliot isn't a liar. When he says he didn't bring the woman, that satisfies me. I know he didn't do it," insisted Paget stiffly.
"Different here. Who else had any interest in bringing her except him? Nobody. Use your brains, Peter. He takes the first boat down the river. He comes back on the next one. She comes back, too. They couldn't figure I'd be at your house when they showed up there to tell the story. That's where Mr. Elliot slipped up."
Peter was of different stuff from Selfridge. He had something to say. So he said it.
"Times have changed, Mac. You can't shoot down this young fellow without making all kinds of trouble. First thing we'd lose the claims. The Administration would drop you like a hot potato if you did a thing like that. Sheba would never speak to you again. Your friends would know in their hearts it was murder. You can't do it."
Macdonald's jaw clamped. "Then let him get out. That's my last word to him."
CHAPTER XVI
AMBUSHED
Colby Macdonald, in miner's boots and corduroy working suit, stood beside his horse with one arm thrown carelessly across its rump. He was about to start for Seven-Mile Creek Camp with twenty-seven hundred dollars in the saddlebags to pay the men there.
Diane was talking with him. "She's young and fine and spirited. Of course it was a great shock to her. She had been idealizing you. But I think she is beginning to understand things better. At any rate, she does not hate you any more. Give the girl time."
"You think she will—be reasonable?"
Mrs. Paget finished the pattern she was punching in the soft ground beside the board walk with the ferrule of her umbrella. Her eyes met his frankly.
"I don't know. But I'm sure of one thing.
She'll not be reasonable, as you call it, unless you are reasonable."
"You mean—Elliot?"
"Yes. She likes him very much. Do you know that when the Indian woman came he urged Sheba not to listen to her story?"
"Sounds likely—after he had spent his good money bringing her here," sneered the mine-owner.
"He didn't. Gordon is a splendid fellow. He wouldn't lie," answered Diane hotly. "And one thing is sure—if you lay a finger on him for this, it will be fatal with Sheba. She will be through with you."
Macdonald had thought of this before. It had been coming to him from several different angles that he could not afford to gratify his desire to wipe this meddlesome young official from his path. He made a slow, sulky promise.
"All right. I'll let him alone. Peter can tell him."
Swinging to the saddle, he spurred his horse and cantered away. With a little smile Diane watched his flat, muscular back and the arrogant set of his strong shoulders. There was not his match in the territory, she thought, but sometimes a clever woman could manage him.
His mind was full of the problem that had come into his life. He rode abstractedly, so that he was at the lower ford of the creek almost before he knew it. A bilberry thicket straggled down to the opposite bank of the stream on both sides of the road.
The horse splashed through the ford and took the little rise beyond with a rush. Just before reaching the brow of the hill, the animal stumbled and fell. As its rider went headlong, he caught a glimpse of a cord drawn taut across the path.
Macdonald, shaken by the fall, began slowly to rise. From the shadows of the bilberry bushes two stooping figures rushed at him. He threw up an arm to ward off the club aimed at his head, but succeeded only in breaking the force of the blow. As he staggered back, stunned, a bullet glanced along his forehead and ridged a furrow through the thick hair. A second stroke of the club jarred him to the heels.
Though his mind was not clear, his body answered automatically the instinct that told him to close with his assailants. He lurched forward and gripped one, wrestling with him for the revolver. Vaguely he knew by the sharp, jagged shoots of pain that the second man was beating his head with a club. The warm blood dripped through his hair and blinded his eyes. Dazed and shaken, he yet managed to get the revolver from the man who had it. But it was his last effort. He was too far gone to use it. A blow on the forehead brought him unconscious to the ground bleeding from a dozen wounds.
On his way back from Seven-Mile Creek Camp Gordon Elliot rode down to the ford. In the dusk he was almost upon them before the robbers heard him. For a moment the two men stood gazing at him and he at the tragedy before him. One of the men moved toward his horse.
"Stop there!" ordered Gordon sharply, and he reached for his revolver.
The man—it was the miner Northrup—jumped for Elliot and the field agent fired. Another moment, and he was being dragged from the saddle. What happened next was never clear to him. He knew that both of the bandits closed in on him and that he was fighting desperately against odds. The revolver had been knocked from his hand and he fought with bare fists just as they did. Twice he emptied his lungs in a cry for help.
They quartered over the ground, for Gordon would not let either of them get behind him. They were larger than he, heavy, muscle-bound giants of great strength, but he was far more active on his feet. He jabbed and sidestepped and retreated. More than once their heavy blows crashed home on his face. His eyes dared not wander from them for an instant, but he was working toward a definite plan. As he moved, his feet were searching for the automatic he had dropped.
One of his feet, dragging over the ground, came into contact with the steel. With a swift side kick Gordon flung the weapon a dozen feet to the left. Presently, watching his chance, he made a dive for it.
Trelawney, followed by Northrup, turned and ran. One of them caught Macdonald's horse by the bridle. He swung to the saddle and the other man clambered on behind. There was a clatter of hoofs and they were gone.
Elliot stooped over the battered body that lay huddled at the edge of the water. The man was either dead or unconscious, he was not sure which. So badly had the face been beaten and hammered that it was not until he had washed the blood from the wounds that Gordon recognized Macdonald.
Opening the coat of the insensible man, Gordon put his hand against the heart. He could not be sure whether he felt it beating or whether the throbbing came from the pulses in his finger tips. As well as he could he bound up the wounds with handkerchiefs and stanched the bleeding. With ice-cold water from the stream he drenched the bruised face. A faint sigh quivered through the slack, inert body.
Gordon hoisted Macdonald across the saddle and led the horse through the ford. He walked beside the animal to town, and never had two miles seemed to him so far. With one hand he steadied the helpless body that lay like a sack of flour balanced in the trough of the saddle.
Kusiak at last lay below him, and when he descended the hill to the suburbs almost the first house was the one where the Pagets lived.
Elliot threw the body across his shoulder and walked up the walk to the porch. He kicked upon the door with his foot. Sheba answered the knock, and at sight of what he carried the color faded from her face.
"Macdonald has been hurt—badly," he explained quickly.
"This way," the girl cried, and led him to her own room, hurrying in advance to throw back the bedclothes.
"Get Diane—and a doctor," ordered Gordon after he had laid the unconscious man on the white sheet.
While he and Diane undressed the mine-owner Sheba got a doctor on the telephone. The wounded man opened his eyes after a long time, but there was in them the glaze of delirium. He recognized none of them. He did not know that he was in the house of Peter Paget, that Diane and Sheba and his rival were fighting with the help of the doctor to push back the death that was crowding close upon him. All night he raved, and his delirious talk went back to the wild scenes of his earlier life. Sometimes he swore savagely; again he made quiet deadly threats; but always his talk was crisp and clean and vigorous. Nothing foul or slimy came to the surface in those hours of unconscious babbling.
The doctor had shaken his head when he first saw the wounds. He would make no promises.
"He's a mighty sick man. The cuts are deep, and the hammering must have jarred his brain terribly. If it was anybody but Macdonald, I wouldn't give him a chance," he told Diane when he left in the morning to get breakfast. "But Macdonald has tremendous vitality. Of course if he lives it will be because Mr. Elliot brought him in so soon."
Gordon walked with the doctor as far as the hotel. A brown, thin, leathery man undraped himself from a chair in the lobby when Elliot opened the door. He was officially known as the chief of police of Kusiak. Incidentally he constituted the whole police force. Generally he was referred to as Gopher Jones on account of his habit of spasmodic prospecting.
"I got to put you under arrest, Mr. Elliot," he explained.
The loafers in the hotel drew closer.
"What for?" demanded Gordon, surprised.
"Doc thinks it will run to murder, I reckon."
The field agent was startled. "You mean—Macdonald?"
The brown man chewed his quid steadily. "You done guessed it."
"That's absurd, you know. What evidence have you got?"
"First off, you'd had trouble with him. It was common talk that when you and Mac met, guns were going to pop. You bought an automatic revolver at the Seattle & Kusiak Emporium two days ago. You was seen practising with it."
"He had threatened me."
"You want to be careful what you say, Mr. Elliot. It will be used against you." Gopher shot a squirt of tobacco unerringly at the open door of the stove. "You was seen talking with Trelawney and Northrup. Money passed from you to them."
"I gave them a loan of ten dollars each because they were broke. Is that criminal?" demanded Gordon angrily.
"That's your story. You'll git a chance to
tell it to the jury, I shouldn't wonder. Mebbe they'll believe it. You never can tell."
"Believe it! Why, you muttonhead, I found him where he was bleeding to death and brought him in."
"That's what I heard say. Kinder queer, ain't it, you happened to be the man that found him?"
"Nothing queer about it. I was riding in from Seven-Mile Creek Camp." Gordon was exasperated, but not at all alarmed.
"So you was. While you was out at the camp, you asked one of the boys how big the pay-roll would be."
"Does that prove I was planning a hold-up? Isn't that the last thing I would have asked if I had intended robbery?"
"Don't ask me. I ain't no psychologist. All I know is you took an interest in the bank-roll on the way."
"I'm here for the Government investigating Macdonald. I was getting information—earning my pay. Can you understand that?"
Gopher chewed his cud impassively. "Sure I can, and I been earning mine. By the way, howcome you to be beat up so bad, Mr. Elliot?"
"I had a fight with the robbers."
"Sure it wasn't with the robbed. That split lip of yours looks to me plumb like Mac's John Hancock."
Elliot flushed angrily. "Of course if you intend to believe me guilty—"
"Now, there ain't no manner o' use in gettin' het up, young fellow. Mebbe you did it; mebbe you didn't. Anyhow, you'll gimme that gat you been toting these last few days."
Gordon's hand moved toward his hip. Then he remembered.
"I haven't it. I left it—"
"You left it at the ford—with one shell empty. That's where you left it," interrupted the officer.
"Yes. I fired at Northrup as he rushed me."
"Um-hu," assented Jones, impudent unbelief in his eye. "At Northrup or at Macdonald."
"What do you think I did with the money, then? Did I eat it?"
"Not so you could notice it. Since you put it to me flat-foot, you gave it to your pardners. You didn't want it. They did. They have got the horse too—and they're hitting the high spots to make their get-away."
The Yukon Trail Page 12