XXI
The End of a Honeymoon
Our high-noon wedding was in all respects as quiet and unostentatiousas we had planned it. The little brown box of a church, bare ofdecorations because there was neither time nor the group of vicariouslyinterested young people to trim it, was only a few doors from theEverton cottage, and we walked to it; Phineas Everton and I on eachside of the plank walk, and Polly between us with an arm for each.
Barrett had told a few of his friends, so there were enough people inthe pews to make it look a little less than clandestine. Barrett actedas usher in one aisle and Gifford, very much out of his element butdoggedly faithful, did his part in the other. There was even a bit ofmusic; the Wagner as we went in, and a few bars of the Mendelssohn tospeed us as we went out. The good-byes were said at the church-door,and the only abnormal thing about the leave-taking was Barrett's giftto the bride, pressed into her hand as we were getting into thecarriage to go to the railroad station--a silver filigree hand-bagstuffed heavy with five- and ten-dollar gold pieces, "to be blown in onthe wedding journey," as he phrased it.
We had agreed not to tell anybody where we were going; for that matter,I didn't even tell Polly until after we had started. Turning southwardfrom Colorado Springs and stopping overnight in Trinidad, we took amorning train on the Santa Fe and vanished into the westward void. Aday and a night beyond this we were debarking at Williams, Arizona, andin due time reached our real hiding-place; a comfortable ranch housewithin easy riding distance of that most majestic of immensities, theGrand Canyon of the Colorado. It was Polly's idea; the choice of aquiet retreat as against the social attractions of the great hotel onthe canyon's brink. We had each other, and that was sufficient.
Of that heavenly month, spent in a world far removed from all theturmoil and distractions of modern civilization, there is nothing to behere written down. For those who have drained a similar cup ofblissful happiness for themselves there is no need; and those who havenot would not understand. What I recall most vividly now is a singleunnerving incident; unnerving, I say, though at the time it was quicklydrowned in the flowing tide of joy.
It chanced upon a day toward the month's end when we had broken theheavenly sequence of quiet days by riding a pair of our host'swell-broken cow ponies over to El Tovar for dinner. Since it was notthe tourist season there were not many guests in the great inn; butone, a man who sat by himself in a far corner of the dining-room, gaveme a turn that made me sick and faint at my first sight of him. Theman was big and swarthy of face, and he wore a pair of droopingmustaches. For one heart-stopping instant I made sure it was WilliamCummings, the deputy prison warden who had so miraculously missedseeing me in the dining-car of my train of escape. But since nothinghappened and he paid no manner of attention to us, I decided gratefullythat it was only a resemblance. There was no such name as Cummings onthe hotel register, which I examined after we left the dining-room, andI saw no more of the man with the drooping mustaches.
Momentary as the shock had been, I found that Polly had remarked it.She spoke of it on the ride back to our retreat at Carter's.
"Are you feeling entirely well, Jimmie, dear?" she asked; and before Icould reply: "You had a bad turn of some sort while we were at table.I saw it in your face and eyes."
I hastened to assure her that there was nothing the matter with me;that there couldn't be anything the matter with a man who had died andgone to heaven nearly a month previous to the dinner at El Tovar.
"But the man has got to go back to earth again pretty soon, and takethe woman with him," she retorted, laughing. "Just think, Jimmie; ithas been nearly a month, as you say, and we haven't had a letter or atelegram in all that time! Not that I'm regretting anything; I'mhappy, dearest--as happy as an angel with wings; but I want to see mydaddy."
The heavenly path was leading back into the old world again, thefighting world, and I knew it, and presently we were taking all thesteps of the delightful vanishing in reverse; boarding the throughtrain at Williams, catching glimpses of the stupendous majesty ofmountain and plain as the powerful locomotives towed us up the gradesof the Raton, doing a brisk walk on the platform at Albuquerque whilethe train paused, and all the rest of it.
From Trinidad I wired Barrett, telling him that we were on our wayhome; that we should go in by way of Colorado Springs instead ofFlorence, with a stop-over between trains for dinner at the Antlers. Ihalf-expected he would run down to the Springs to meet us, and so hedid, bringing Father Phineas with him. Polly's love for her father wasalways very sweet and touching, and Barrett and I left them tothemselves at the meeting.
"I'm mighty glad to see you back, Jimmie, old man," Barrett declared,when we had found a quiet corner in the rotunda. "You are looking likea new man, and I guess you are one. And you are on your feet againfinancially, too. We declared a dividend yesterday, and you've got abank account that will warm the cockles of your silly old heart."
"How is Gifford? and how are things at the mine?" I asked.
"Gifford is all right; only he's got too much money--doesn't know whatto do with it now that he has built all the new houses the camp willstand for. And the Little Clean-Up is all right, too; though we aredigging into a small mystery just now."
"A mystery?" I queried.
"Yes. You remember how the branch vein in the two-hundred-foot levelwas bearing off to the east?"
"I do."
"Well, three weeks ago the sloping carried us over into the MaryMattock ground, and I tell you what, Jimmie, I was more than glad wehad bought that claim outright while we could. The ore is richer thananything we have found since we made the big strike at grass-roots, andwe'd be up against it good and hard if we hadn't paid those Nebraskafarmers what they asked and taken a clear title to the ground."
"But the mystery," I reminded him.
"It is a little trick of acoustics, I guess; it has happened in othermines, so Hicks tells me. Some peculiar geological structure of theporphyry in particular localities makes it carry sound like a telephonewire. In that eastern adit of ours you can hear them working in theLawrenceburg as plainly as if they were only a few feet away."
"That is odd," I mused; "especially as the Lawrenceburg workings areall in exactly the opposite direction--down the hill on their side ofthe spur."
Barrett thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
"I have often wondered, Jimmie, if they really _are_ downhill. Nobody,outside of the men on their own pay-roll, knows anything about itdefinitely; and Blackwell wouldn't let an outside engineer go down hisshaft for a king's ransom. I know it, because I have tried to sendone. If the downhill story that we've been hearing should happen to bea fake; if he should be under-cutting us, instead; it would explain aheap of things."
"The stubborn lawsuit among others," I offered.
"Yes; the lawsuit. By the way, we've been up to our necks in thatwhile you've been hiding out. Blackwell's lawyers succeeded inpersuading the Federal court to grant a temporary injunction, in spiteof everything we could do, and we are operating now under an indemnitybond big enough to make your head swim. The hearing to determinewhether the injunction shall be dissolved or made permanent is timedfor next Monday."
"Heavens!" I ejaculated. "We can't let them tie us up!"
"I don't think they are going to be able to. Benedict is feeling alittle better now and he thinks he has them sewed up in a blanket, onlyhe won't tell me how, and you never can tell what's going to happenwhen the lawyers get at you. There are lots of holes in the legalskimmer: for example, at the preliminary hearing Blackwell had threesurveyors who went on the stand and swore flat-footed that the lines onour side of the spur were all wrong; that the Lawrenceburg group ofclaims covered not only our original triangle, but the Mary Mattock aswell. Paid-for perjury, of course, but we couldn't prove it; so thereyou are."
At my urging Barrett would have gone into this phase of the troublemore deeply, but just then Polly and her father came across the rotundaand we all w
ent to the dining-room together. I shall never forget, thelongest day I live, just where our table for four stood, and how agroup of gabbling tourists had the three or four tables nearest to us,and how the lights, due to some trouble with the electric current,winked now and then, like the stage lights in a theater ticking off thecues.
We had got as far as the black coffees, and Barrett was joking Pollyand telling her that she shouldn't take sugar, when I saw, through avista of the tourists, a square-shouldered, dark-faced man rising fromhis place at a distant table. There was no mistaking him. He was theman I had seen in the dining-room of the hotel at the Grand Canyon.
As he came toward us between the tables the resemblance, which I had soconfidently assured myself was only a resemblance, transformed itselfslowly into the breath-cutting reality, and I was staring up, wild-eyedand speechless, into the face of the deputy warden, Cummings, when hetapped me on the shoulder and said, loud enough for the others to hear:
"You've led us a pretty long chase, Weyburn, but we don't often miss,and it's ended at last. I guess you'll have to come with me, now."
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