by Zane Grey
Longstreet went into the cabin. The others followed him. Sanchia did not release his arm, though she saw and understood what lay in Helen’s look and Howard’s. The main issue had arrived and Sanchia meant to make the most of it.
Longstreet put down his short-handled pick. Howard noted the act and observed, though the impression at the time was relegated to the outer fringes of his concentrated thought, that the rough head of the instrument and even a portion of the handle looked rusty. Longstreet removed from his shoulders his canvas specimen-bag. Plainly, it was heavy; there were a number of samples in it, some as small as robins’ eggs, one the size of a man’s two fists. He was lifting the bag to dump its contents out upon the table when suddenly Howard pushed by Sanchia and snatched the thing from Longstreet’s hands. Longstreet stared at him in astonishment; Sanchia caught at his coat.
‘Just a minute,’ said Howard hastily. Even Helen wondered as he turned and bolted out through the door and sped up the trail toward the spring. Longstreet looked from the departing figure to his daughter and then to Sanchia, frankly bewildered. Then all went to the door. In a moment, Howard returned, the bag hanging limp over his arm, his two hands filled with the fragments of rock which glistened in the lamp-light.
‘I washed them off,’ he said lightly. ‘If there really is gold here we can see it better with all the loose dirt off, can’t we?’ He put them down on the table and stood back, watching Sanchia keenly.
The fine restraint which, in her many encounters with the unexpected, Sanchia had been trained so long and so well to maintain, was gone now in a flash. Her eyes shone; a rich colour flooded her face; she could not stop her involuntary action until she had literally thrown herself upon the bits of quartz, snatching them up. For they were streaked and seamed and pitted with gold, such ore as she had never seen. The avarice gleaming in her eyes for that one instant during which she was thrown off her guard was akin to a light of madness.
But she had herself in hand immediately; she was as one who had slipped slightly upon a polished floor but had caught herself gracefully from falling. She thrust the rock into Longstreet’s hands; she smiled upon him; she made use of her old familiar gesture of laying her hand upon his arm, as she hardly more than whispered:
‘Dear friend—and wonderful man—I am glad for your sake, so tremendously glad. For now you have vindicated yourself before the world. Now you have shown them all’—and in her flashing glance Sanchia managed to include both Alan and Helen sweepingly with an invisible horde whose bitter tongues had been as so many dogs yelping at the excellent Longstreet’s heels—‘now you have shown them all that you are the man I have always contended you were.’ She crowded her smile fuller of what she sought to convey than even she had ever risked before as she murmured at the end, her tones dropping away like dying music: ‘This is a happy hour in the life of Sanchia Murray!’
‘There’s truth there, if nowhere else,’ cried Helen pointedly. ‘Papa, if you have stumbled on a real gold mine at last, aren’t you wise enough this time to keep still about it?’
‘That word “stumbled,” my dear,’ Longstreet told her with great dignity, ‘is extremely offensive to me at a moment like this. It is a word which you have employed in this same connexion before to-day, yet it is one to which I have always objected. In that sure progress which marks the path a scientific brain has followed, there are no chance steps. Surely my own daughter, after the evidence I have already given——’
‘That isn’t the point,’ said Helen hurriedly. ‘The only thing that counts now is that you mustn’t go shouting of it from the housetops.’
‘Am I shouting, my dear? Am I seeking the housetops?’ His dignity swelled. Also, it was clearly read in his unusually mild eyes that Helen, in her excitement with her ill-chosen words, had hurt him. Sanchia Murray, for one, who was older and of wider worldly experience than Longstreet’s other companions of the moment, and who surely knew as much of human nature, saw something else in his clouded look. It was an incipient but fast-growing stubbornness. Therefore Sanchia closed her lips and watched keenly for developments.
‘There’s a good old pops,’ Helen cajoled. She slipped between him and Sanchia, sending Howard a meaning look. She made use of certain of the widow’s own sort of weapon, putting her two round arms about her father’s neck. Before he quite understood what was happening to him, she had managed to get him through the door which led to her room at the rear, and to close the door after them and set her back to it. Forthwith her cajolery was done with, and taking him by the two shoulders Helen looked severely into his wondering eyes.
She began speaking to him swiftly, but her voice lowered. She had marked how Sanchia had sought to follow, how Howard had put his hand on her arm and Sanchia had shown her teeth. The woman was in fighting mood, and Helen from the beginning was a little afraid of what she might succeed in doing.
‘Papa,’ she said, ‘anyone can see what that woman is after. She robbed you once, and anyone can see that too. You are a dear old innocent thing and she is artful and deceitful. You are not safe for a minute in her hands; you must stay right in here until Mr. Howard and I can send her away.’
She felt Longstreet’s body stiffen under her hands.
‘If you mean, my dear, that your father is a mere child; that he cannot be trusted to know what is best; that you, a chit of a youngster, know more of human nature than does he, a man of years and experience; that——’
‘Oh, dear!’ cried Helen. ‘You are wonderful, pops, in your way. You are the best papa in the world. But, after all, you are just a baby in the claws—or hands of a designing creature like that hideous Sanchia. And——’
‘And, my dear,’ maintained Longstreet belligerently, the stubbornness now rampant in his soul, ‘you are mistaken, that is all. You and I disagree upon one point; you condemn Mrs. Murray outright, because of certain purely circumstantial evidence against her. That is the way of hot-headed youth. I, being mature, even-minded and clear-eyed, maintain that one accused must be given every opportunity to prove himself innocent. When you say that Mrs. Murray is untrustworthy——’
‘I could pinch you!’ cried Helen. ‘If she robs you again I—I——’ She could think of no threat of punishment sufficient unto the crime. Suddenly she pulled the door open. ‘Come in here,’ she called to Alan. And as he obeyed, leaving the baffled Sanchia without, Helen said swiftly: ‘See if you can’t talk reason into papa. I’ll keep her out there.’ And she in turn passed out, again closing the door.
‘You little vixen!’ Sanchia’s cheeks were red with anger as, Helen’s manoeuvre complete, the girl stood regarding her with defiant eyes. Sanchia’s hands clenched and the resultant impression given forth by her whole demeanour was that upon occasion the little widow might be swept into such passionate rage that she was prone to resort to primal, physical violence. Helen, though her own cheeks burned, smiled loftily and made no answer.
From beyond the closed door came Alan’s eager voice. Sanchia bent forward, straining her ears to hear; Helen, the light of battle flaring steadily higher in her eyes, began suddenly to sing, the same little broken snatches of song which not so long ago had irritated her impatient lover and which now confused the words spoken beyond the door and which made Sanchia furious.
‘Stand aside,’ commanded Sanchia. ‘I am going in.’
Helen stood firm. Then she saw that Sanchia meant what she said. And, on the table near the discarded pick, she saw Longstreet’s big revolver. She made a quick step forward, snatched it up in both hands and pointed it directly at Sanchia’s heaving breast. Now the colour went out of Helen’s face and it grew very white, while her eyes darkened.
‘If you move a step toward that door,’ she threatened, ‘I am going to shoot!’
Sanchia sneered. Then she paused. And finally she laughed contemptuously.
‘You little fool,’ she
whispered back, cautious that no syllable might enter the adjoining room. ‘I don’t need to go rushing in there, after all. And you know it. That stuff,’ and she glanced briefly at the rock on the table, ‘got into my blood for a second. I’ll take my time now; and I’ll get what I want.’
As they stood in silence, Helen making no answer, they heard what the men were saying.
‘—just this if nothing more,’ came the end of Howard’s entreaty. ‘Don’t tell Sanchia.’
Promptly came the angry answer:
‘Mind your own business, young man! And, until you are asked for advice, hold your tongue!’ At the end of the command the door snapped open and Longstreet popped into the room.
Sanchia, her cool poise regained, made no step toward him but contented herself by a slow comprehensive and sympathetic smile. Howard came quickly to Helen, stooped to her and whispered:
‘I can’t do a thing with him. But come outside with me a second; I think I know what to do.’
She flung down the heavy gun and went with him. Ten paces from the cabin they stopped together.
‘Did you glimpse the specimens before I ran out to the spring with them?’ he asked sharply. She shook her head, her eyes round.
‘Do you have any idea,’ he hurried on, ‘just where your father has been prospecting lately?’
‘Yes, I went with him for a walk two or three times during the last week. He——’
But he interrupted.
‘Has he shown any interest in a flat-topped hill about three miles back? Where there is a lot of red dirt? They call it Red Dirt Hill.’
‘Yes!’ Her tone quickened. ‘That is why——’
They had no time for complete sentences.
‘I saw the red dirt on his pick first; then on the rock. That is why I washed it off, hoping that she had not seen. It’s more than a fair gamble, Helen, that your father’s claim is on Red Hill.’
Her hand was on his arm now; she did not know, but through all other considerations to him this fact thrilled pleasurably. He put his own hand over hers.
‘If Sanchia saw, too?’
‘I don’t think that she did. Nor am I half sure that it would mean anything to her. I know every foot of these hills; she doesn’t. We’ll go in now and see what we can do. If your father does give it away—well, then we’ll play our hunch and try to beat her to it.’
But though they had been out so brief a time, already Sanchia met them at the door. Her eyes were on fire; her slight body seemed to dilate with a joy swelling in her heart; she looked the embodiment of all that was triumphant. Behind her, rubbing his two hands together, and looking like a wilful and victorious child, was Longstreet. Sanchia ran by them. In her hands, tight-clutched, was the finest specimen.
‘You haven’t told her, papa! Oh, you haven’t told her!’
‘And what if I have?’ he snapped. ‘Am I not a man grown that I am not to——’
Again no time for more than a broken sentence.
‘Will you tell us?’ demanded Howard.
‘In due time,’ came the cool rejoinder. ‘When I am ready. I should have told you to-night, had you trusted to me. Now I shall not tell you a word about it until to-morrow.’
They knew that Sanchia was going for her horse. Here was no time for one to allow his way to be cluttered up with trifles. Howard turned and ran to his own horse. They lost sight of him in the dark; they heard pounding hoofs as he raced after Sanchia and by her; they heard her scream out angrily at him as she was the first to grasp his purpose. And presently at the cabin door was Howard again, calling to Helen. She ran out. He was mounted and led two horses, her own and Sanchia’s white mare.
‘Hurry!’ he called. ‘We’ll play my hunch and beat her to it yet.’
Helen understood and scrambled wildly into her own saddle. She heard Sanchia calling; she could even hear the woman running back toward them. Then her horse jumped under her, she clutched at the horn of her saddle to save herself from falling, and she and Howard were racing up trail, Sanchia’s mare led after them, Sanchia’s voice screaming behind them.
They skirted the base of the cliffs for half a mile. Then Howard turned Sanchia’s horse loose, driving the animal down into a dark ravine where there would be no finding it in the night-time.
‘It’s only a chance,’ he said, ‘but then that’s better than just sitting and sucking our thumbs. We take the up-trail here.’
They came out upon the tablelands above Bear Valley. There was better light here; the trail was less narrow and steep; they could look down and see the light in the cabin.
Later they were to know just what had been Sanchia Murray’s quick reply to their move. And then they were to know, too, where Jim Courtot’s hang-out had been during these last weeks in which he had seemed to vanish. Sanchia, with a golden labour before her, had promptly turned to her ‘right hand.’ On foot, since there was no other way, and running until she was breathless and spent, she hurried across the narrow valley, climbed the low hills at its eastern edge, and plunged down into the ravine which was the head of Dry Gulch. Up the farther side she clambered, again running, panting and sobbing with the exertion she put upon herself, until she came to another broken cliff-ridge. There she had stood calling. And, from a hidden hole in the rocks, giving entrance to a cave, like a wolf from its lair, there had come at her calling Jim Courtot.
CHAPTER XXVI
When Day Dawned
Upon the flat top of Red Dirt Hill, Howard and Helen drove their stakes. Thereafter they made a little fire in the shelter of a tumble of boulders and camped throughout the night under the blazing desert stars. Were they right? Were they wrong? They did not know. In the darkness they could make out little of the face of the earth about them. Alan thought himself certain of one thing: that only near here could it be likely that Longstreet should have broken off fragments of stone with so plain a marking of red dirt on them. Helen merely knew that her father had more than once climbed up here, though she had laughed at him for seeking gold upon the exalted heights. To know anything beyond this meagre and unsatisfying data, they must await the dawn.
The hours passed and Sanchia Murray did not come. Before now, they estimated, she could have hurried here even though she came on foot; before now, had she thought of it and had the patience, she might have found Longstreet’s horse. Yet she did not come. The fact made their uncertainty the greater. They had ample opportunity to ask themselves a hundred times if they had done the foolish thing in racing off here. Should they have held by Sanchia?
Toward morning it grew chill and they came closer together over their little brush fire. They spoke in lowered voices, and not always of Helen’s father and of his gold. At times they spoke of themselves. To-morrow Helen might be mistress of a bonanza; to-morrow she might be, as she was to-night, a girl but briefly removed from pennilessness. As the stars waxed and began at last to wane and the sky brightened, as the still thin air grew colder at the first promises of another day, they discussed the matter quietly. And it seemed that this was not the only consideration in the world, nor yet even the chiefest. But——
‘I can’t come to you like a beggar-girl,’ she whispered.
‘If I lost everything I had—and I could not lose everything since I would go on loving you—would that make any difference, Helen?’
She hesitated. ‘You know,’ she said quietly at last.
So, when the pallid sky gave way to the rosy tints of the new day, they knew everything, being richly wise in the wisdom of youth. Even it was granted them to see the red earth about them and to know that Alan’s surmise had led them aright. Just yonder in a little hollow to which the shadows clung longest, were the marks left by Longstreet’s pick; there was a tiny pit in which he had toiled exposing a vein of rock from which he had chipped his samples; near the spot his location st
ake and notice. Promptly they removed their own stakes, taking claims on both sides of his.
‘We were right!’ called Alan triumphantly. ‘But how about Sanchia? He told her and——-’
‘Look!’ Helen caught his arm and pointed.
Upon a neighbouring hill, by air-line not over half a mile from their own, but almost twice that distance by the trail one must follow down and up the rugged slopes, were two figures. Clearly limned against the sky, they were like black outlines against a pink curtain.
‘That is Sanchia!’ Helen was positive. ‘There is a man with her. It—— Do you think——’
He did not know why she should think what he knew she did think; what he himself was thinking. It was altogether too far to distinguish one man from another. It might even be Longstreet himself. But he knew that she feared it was Jim Courtot, to whom naturally Sanchia would turn at a moment like this; and never from the first did he doubt that it was Courtot.
‘It’s some one of Sanchia’s crowd,’ he said with high assumption of carelessness. ‘But here is what I can’t understand! Your father told Sanchia; she has raced off and staked; and as sure as fate, they are on the wrong hill! Sanchia wouldn’t make a blunder like that!’
Helen was frowning meditatively. She understood what Howard had in mind, and she, too, was perplexed.
‘Do you know,’ she cried suddenly, ‘I think we have failed to do papa justice!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He never said outright that he had told her; he merely let us think that he had. He never once said positively that he had faith in Sanchia; he just said, over and over, that one accused should be given a chance to prove his innocence! Now, supposing that he had led Sanchia to think that his mine was over yonder on that other hill? He would be risking nothing; and at the same time he would be giving her that chance. No,’ and it was a very thoughtful Helen who spoke, ‘I don’t know that we have ever done dear old pops justice.’