"It's quite a good light, and one of them might have a pistol," he explained half aloud.

Devine considered this very probable; and when there was no sign of their opponents during the next few minutes he once more became conscious that his heart was beating unpleasantly fast. The jumpers apparently had vanished altogether, but he fancied that they were considering some plan of attack. By and by, a voice came out of the shadows.

"There's the post close up against the fern," it said.

"That," remarked Saunders, dryly, "is going to put a hustle on to some of them."

He was right, for a moment later a man stepped out into the moonlight.

"Put down your gun. We want to talk," he said.

"Then," replied Saunders, who did not stand up, "go ahead; but you'll stop in the light; and if you feel like sending any of your partners to work a traverse round this bunch of fern, you can remember that I've got the forehead plumb on—you."

The man's gesture indicated that he understood the situation, and, though he had jumped for cover a little earlier, as most men in his place would have done, it was evident that he was a courageous rogue.

"I want to tell you that there are four of us, and we've come up quite a way to shift that post for you," he said. "There's no use making trouble, for it has to be done."

Saunders touched his companion's shoulder.

"Chip in," he said softly. "Talk like a land agent trying to sell a ranch. We've got to keep this crowd quiet. The boys can't be far off."

Devine agreed with his last statement. The moonlight was bright enough for one to travel by, at least in the brulee, and he was sufficiently acquainted with western human nature to feel certain that every man in the settlement would have started when he heard of their discovery, and, what was more to the purpose, would not waste a moment on the journey. Men going up to a new gold strike do not, as a rule, trouble themselves about want of sleep or weariness. On the other hand, he did not think they could possibly arrive before morning, which meant that he must keep the jumpers talking for several hours. It appeared very doubtful whether their patience or his conversational powers would hold out, but he meant to do what he could.

"I'm not quite as sure that you're going to move that post as you seem to be; and, anyway, I don't quite see why you want to do it," he said. "You can't take possession of a duly recorded claim."

The jumper laughed.

"Your record won't hold. You should have made it clearer; given two-point bearings, or blazed your line on trees."

"Why?" asked Devine. "This post fixes the key boundary."

"Trouble is that we're going to move that post," said the other man.

He did not appear impatient, and Devine deduced two things from the fact that he was willing to discuss the matter. One was that the jumper, who evidently had not met the Indian, was unaware that the men from the settlement were then in all probability pushing on as fast as possible through the brulee, and the other that the man had no desire to proceed to extremities. This was reassuring as far as it went, but it must be admitted that the surveyor was afterward a little astonished at his collectedness and perspicacity.

"Why don't you want to move all the posts?" he asked.

"We couldn't square that with your record," was the candid answer. "Moving one will swing you across instead of along the lead, and will let in our new location. I'm telling you this, because you'll probably be reasonable now that you understand the thing. Light out and don't make trouble, and you'll still hold quite a strip on the lead."

"Give us a minute or two to think it over," said Devine.

"In the meanwhile you'll stop just where you are," Saunders broke in.

The man waved his hand as though he conceded that point, and Devine turned to his companion.

"I've only one excuse to make. When I staked off the claims, I was in a feverish hurry to prove the lead and get down and record," he said. "Now, that's not an educated man, but he's got the hang of this thing as clearly as a surveyor could have done. It's evident that the man who hired him has drilled it into him, and, what is more, has warned him that he's to make no unnecessary trouble. We're to be bounced out of rather more than half our claim, but it's to be done as quietly as possible. He explained the matter in the expectation that we'd pull out and leave the field to them."

"You've hit it," said Saunders. "Don't answer. Let him speak again. We've got to gain time."

They waited several minutes in tense anxiety, for, after all, it was conceivable that, diplomacy failing, the jumper would adopt more forcible means. Then the man waved his hand.

"You've got to decide what you're going to do," he said.

Devine proceeded to urge every reason he could think of, and held him in play a little longer, until finally the jumper lost his patience.

"Oh," he said, "you make me tired! Light out and be done with it! We're going to pull up that post."

Saunders thrust forward the rifle barrel so that the moonlight sparkled on it.

"Then," he said grimly, "come right along and shift it."

Instead of doing so, the man jumped back into the shadow, which was perhaps a very natural proceeding. Then there was oppressive silence for a few minutes. Devine, who could not hear anything, felt horribly anxious as to what their opponents might be doing. Suddenly there was a fresh rustling among the undergrowth, and Saunders thrust the rifle into his companion's hands.

"Crawling in at the back of us! Let them see you on the opposite side!" he said.

Devine wriggled through the fern, and, though he knew that this was rash, stood up where the moonlight fell upon him, with the long barrel glinting in front of him. He fancied, though he could not be certain, that he saw a shadowy figure flit back among the trees, and in any case the rustling died away again. After that he crawled back to Saunders, for, as he admitted afterward, he did not like standing on the other side of that thicket alone.

He subsequently repeated the maneuver several times, and Saunders once or twice answered the jumpers' warnings with a sardonic invitation to remove the post. Neither of them afterward was sure how long the horrible tension lasted, though they agreed that a very little more of it would probably have broken down their nerve; but at length a faint sound came out of the shadows down the valley. It rapidly grew louder, and when it resolved itself into such a smashing of undergrowth as might have been made by a body of men, Saunders sprang up and waved his rifle toward where he supposed the jumpers to be.

"You'd better git," he said. "The boys from the settlement will head you off inside five minutes."

There was no answer, and it appeared that the jumpers had already departed as silently as possible. A little later the men from the settlement came limping in, and the foremost of them clustered round Devine, who sat just outside the fern, while Saunders, whose face showed a trifle drawn in the moonlight, stood still clutching the rifle.

"What's the matter? You're not looking pert, the pair of you," said one of them.

"Give me a cigar, if you've got one," said Devine. "Saunders will tell you about the thing. I've done quite enough talking for one night."

Saunders told the story tersely, and afterward snapped the magazine of his rifle up and down with a dramatic gesture.

"Held them off with that, and not a blame ca'tridge in the thing," he said.



CHAPTER XXVII

SAUNDERS TAKES PRECAUTIONS

The men from the settlement had been three weeks in camp. Saunders sat with his back to a big fir and a little hammer in his hand. There was a pile of shattered quartz at one side of him and another smaller heap of fragments of the same material lying on an empty flour-bag at his feet. Devine, who had just announced that dinner was almost ready, leaned against a neighboring fir, looking on with a suggestive grin; and a big, gaunt, old-time prospector, with a grim, bronzed face, was carefully poising one of the quartz lumps in a horny hand. Saunders, who had been at work since daylight that morning, had paid the latter six dollars for his services, and admitted that he was highly satisfied with the result. He was then engaged in manufacturing specimens.

There was already a change in the forest surrounding the lonely camp. The willows had been hewn down, great firs lay in swaths, with some of their mighty branches burnt, and a track of ruin stretched back from Saunders' tent to the side of the range. The Grenfell Consolidated Mine, three separate claims, occupied what was supposed to be the richest of the land. It was certainly the most accessible portion, for payable milling ore was already being extracted from an open cut. It was not the fault of Saunders that the Consolidated did not occupy the whole of it, but the law allows each free miner only so many feet of frontage, and the Gold Commissioner had shown himself proof against the surveyor's reasoning that, as Grenfell had found the mine, a fourth location should be recorded in the name of his executors. A dead man, as the Commissioner pointed out, could not record a mineral claim.

The men from the settlement had, however, promptly staked off every remaining rod of ground along the lead, and, though the spot was remote from anywhere, another band was busily engaged in an attempt to trace it back across the dried-up lake. How they had heard of it at all was not very evident, but as the eagles gather round the carcass and the flies about the fallen deer, so men with shovels and axes appear as by enchantment when gold is struck. Distance counts as nothing, and neither thundering rivers nor waterless deserts can deter them.

Saunders listened with great contentment to the ringing of the axes and the sharp clink of the drills. Men who labor strenuously from dawn to dark in the invigorating mountain air consume provisions freely, and, as the storekeeper was quite aware, those engaged on that lode would be compelled to purchase their pork and tea and flour from him.

"It was quite a smart idea to give Jim a commission on the sales, though I was kind of wondering if he'd have the sense to stay where he is and run the store," he said. "If he hasn't been fool enough to outfit the boys on credit he must have been raking in money."

Then he took up the lump of stone the prospector handed him and knocked most of it to pieces with the hammer; after which he handed one or two of the fragments to Devine, who grinned more broadly.

"Since Weston wants more specimens I guess he's got to have them," he explained. "I don't know any reason why we shouldn't send him the best we can. This lot should assay out, anyway, several ounces to the ton."

The prospector made a little grave sign of agreement, for this was a game to which he was more or less accustomed. Lode ore now and then is of somewhat uniform quality, but at times it varies in richness in a rather striking manner; and the storekeeper had spent six or seven hours picking out the most promising specimens. From these he had trimmed off every fragment in which, as far as he could discern, the precious metal was not present, with the result that any mineralogist to whom they might be handed could certify to the richness of the Grenfell Consolidated. Saunders was a business man, and quite aware that the vendor of any kind of goods, when asked for samples, does not, as a rule, submit indifferent ones.

"I guess," he added, probably referring to prospective investors, "this lot ought to fetch them. You asked the boys to come along, Devine?"

Devine said he had done so, and in a few more minutes several little groups of men, in dilapidated long boots and somewhat ragged duck, who had ceased work for their mid-day meal, gathered round the fir. They waited mildly curious when Saunders rose and made a sign that he required their attention, which they were perhaps the more willing to give because they were all his customers, and bills are apt to run up in a bush ranching community.

"Boys," said Saunders, "I want to point out that instead of owning gold-mines most of you would now be shoveling on the railroads or humping fir trees at the sawmills, if it hadn't been for me."

Some of them laughed, and some of them admitted that there was a certain truth in this, for the bush rancher who buys uncleared land usually spends several years in very strenuous labor before it produces enough for him to live on, and in the meanwhile he must either go away and endeavor to earn a few dollars every now and then or else fall into the hands of the nearest storekeeper.

"Our friend is a philanthropist," said one of them, who spoke clean, colloquial English. "We all admit his favors, but he doesn't mention that he puts them in the bill."

"And he doesn't charge anything extra for insects in his flour," said another man.

There was a little laughter, but Saunders gazed at them reproachfully.

"If you think it's easy making money out of the kind of crowd you are, all you have to do is to start a store and see. But that wasn't quite what I meant to say," he explained. "Anyway, I put the whole of you right on to this lead."

"You were quite a long while doing it," interjected one of the audience.

Saunders waved his hand.

"Am I a blame fool?" he asked. "I've no use for an inquisitive, grasping crowd worrying round my gold-mine until I've got things securely fixed. Still, you drove off those jumpers, for which you have my thanks; and I want in due time to get back the money most of you owe me."

"You can count on that, boys," said another of them. "It's a dead sure thing."

The storekeeper disregarded this.

"Well," he continued, "we'll get to the point of it. It's kind of easy finding a gold-mine when you've a friend of my kind to put you on to it, but it's quite often a blame hard thing to keep it. Now, you'll have men from the cities wanting to buy you up, offering you a few hundred dollars for the claims you've struck, and if you're fools you'll take it. If not, you'll hold off until the Grenfell Consols go up on the market and then give us first call on buying the lot. If we can't take the deal you'll get six or eight times as much in Vancouver as you would if you let go now."

One of the men who had spoken broke in again.

"Boys," he said, "when Saunders makes a proposition of that kind it's because he sees how he's going to get something out of it. But for all that, I guess it's sound advice he's giving you."

There was a little consultation among the men, and then one of them asked a question that evidently met with the favor of his companions.

"How are we going to live in the meanwhile?"

"That's quite easy," said the storekeeper, with a smile. "I'll supply you with pork and flour, drills and giant-powder, at bed-rock figure, while you get in your assessment work, and while you live on your ranches afterward until you make a deal. All I ask is that you won't sell until the Grenfell's floated, and that you'll give us first call then. It's a cold fact that if I had the money I'd buy you all up now."

There was truth in his last assurance, which was at the same time a highly diplomatic one, for it occurred to most of the audience that if there was anything to be made by waiting they might as well have it as anybody else; and after a further consultation they gave him their promise. Then they trooped away to prepare their dinner, and Saunders turned to Devine with a contented smile.

"I guess," he said, "we've headed those company men right off this lode, and, what's most as much to the purpose, the boys will have to trade with me if anybody comes up and starts another store. Just now I'd feel quite happy if I knew how Jim was running things."

He was soon to learn, for he had scarcely risen from a meal of salt pork, somewhat blackened in the frying-pan, and grindstone bread indifferently baked by Devine, when Jim and several strangers plodded into camp. He was very ragged, and apparently very weary, but he displayed no diffidence in accounting for his presence.

"It was kind of lonesome down there, and I figured I'd come along," he said.

Saunders gazed at him for a moment in mute indignation before his feelings found relief in words.

"And you raking in money by the shovelful!" he gasped.

"No," said Jim, decisively, "I wasn't quite doing that. Anyway, it was your money. I got only a share of it; and you didn't figure I'd stay back there weighing out flour and sugar when there was a gold strike on?"

Saunders contrived to master his anger, and merely made a little gesture of resignation. He was acquainted with the restlessness which usually impels the average westerner to throw up ranch or business and strike into the bush when word of a new mineral find comes down, though much is demanded of those who take the gold trail, and, as a rule, their gains are remarkably small.

"Whom did you leave to run the store?" asked Saunders.

"Nobody," said Jim. "Except two Siwash, there was nobody in the settlement; and, anyway, the store was most empty when the boys came along." He indicated the strangers with a wave of his hand. "As they hadn't a dollar between them I told them I'd give them credit, and they could pack up with them anything they could find in the place."

Saunders appeared to find some difficulty in preserving a befitting self-restraint, but he accomplished it.

"What did you do with the money you'd taken already?" was his next question.

"Wrapped it up in a flour-bag," said the man from Okanagan, cheerfully. "Then I pitched the thing into an empty sugar-keg. Wrote up what the boys owed you, and put the book into the keg too. Anyway, I wrote up as much as I could remember."

Saunders looked at Devine, who stood by, and there was contempt beyond expression in his eyes.

"That," he said, "is just the kind of blamed fool he is."

Then he turned to Jim.

"If I were to talk until to-morrow I couldn't quite tell you what I think of you."

Jim only grinned, and, sitting down by the fire, set about preparing a meal, while Saunders, who appeared lost in reflection, presently turned again to Devine.

"I guess I'll go down this afternoon," he said. "We'll have a fresh crowd pouring in, and they'll want provisions. Anyway, I've headed off those company men, and if it's necessary I can go through to the railroad and get hold of Weston by the wires."

Devine admitted that this might be advisable, and Saunders, who was a man of action, took the back trail in the next half-hour. He had held his own in one phase of the conflict which it was evident must be fought before the Grenfell Consolidated could be floated, and it was necessary that somebody should go down to despatch the specimens to Weston.

They were duly delivered to the latter; and the day after he got them it happened that he sat with Ida on a balcony outside a room on the lower floor, at the rear of Stirling's house. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon and very hot, but a striped awning was stretched above their heads, and a broad-leafed maple growing close below flung its cool shadow across them. Looking out beneath the roof of greenery they could see the wooded slope of the mountain cutting against a sky of cloudless blue, while the stir of the city came up to them faintly. Weston had already, at one time or another, spent several pleasant hours on that balcony. They had been speaking of nothing in particular, when at length Ida turned to him.

"Have you ever heard anything further from Scarthwaite?" she asked.

Weston fumbled in his pocket.

"I had a letter only a few days ago."

He took it out and handed it to her, with a little smile which he could not help, though he rather blamed himself for indulging in it.

"As you know the place and met my sister, you may enjoy reading it. Julia's unusually communicative. It almost seems as if I were a person of some consequence to them now."

Ida took the letter, and her face hardened as she read. Then she looked at him with a suggestive straightening of her brows.

"Isn't that only natural? You have found a mine," she said.

"The same idea occurred to me," laughed Weston; "but, after all, perhaps I shouldn't have shown you the letter. It wasn't quite the thing."

"Still, you felt just a little hurt, and that I could respect a confidence?"

Ida looked at him as if she expected an answer, and it occurred to Weston that she was very alluring in her long white dress, though the same thought had been uppermost in his mind for the last half-hour.

"Yes," he admitted, "I suppose that was it."

He could have answered more explicitly, but he felt that it would not be safe, for it seemed very probable that if he once gave his feelings rein they would run away with him; and this attitude, as the girl naturally had noticed on other occasions, tended to make their conversation somewhat difficult.

"What are you going to do about one very tactfully-worded suggestion?" she asked.

"You mean the hint that I should make a few shares in the Grenfell Consolidated over to my English relatives? After all, considering everything, it's not an unnatural request. I shall endeavor to fall in with it."

Ida's face did not soften. The man was her lover, for, though he had not declared himself, she was quite aware of that, and she was his partisan and very jealous of his credit. It was difficult to forgive those who had injured him, and these people in England had shown him scant consideration, and had spoken of him slightingly to her, a stranger. He noticed her expression and changed the subject.

"I have fancied now and then that you must have said something remarkably in my favor that day at Scarthwaite," he said. "I never quite understood what brought up the subject, but Julia once referred to a picture."

Ida laughed softly.

"I'm afraid I wasn't very tactful, and I shouldn't be astonished if your people still regard me as a partly-civilized Colonial. Anyway, there was a picture—a rather striking one. Do you remember Arabella's' making a sketch of you with the ax?"

"I certainly do. She wasn't complimentary in some of her remarks. She called me wooden. But the picture?"

"Would you like to see it before you go?"

Weston glanced at her sharply, and she nodded, while a faint trace of color crept into her face.

"Yes," she said. "I have it here. I made Arabella give it to me."

She saw the man set his lips, for it seemed scarcely probable to him that a young woman who begged for the picture of a man would do so merely because she desired to possess it as a work of art. Besides, he felt, and in this he was to some extent correct, that she had intended the admission to be provocative. He was, however, a man with a simple code which forbade his making any attempt to claim this woman's love while it was possible that in a few months he might once more become a wandering outcast. He sat still for a moment or two, and it seemed to Ida, who watched him quietly, that he had worn much the same look when he stood beside the helpless Grenfell, gripping the big ax. This was really the fact, though he now entered upon a sterner struggle than he had been ready to engage in then. Once more he was endeavoring to do what it seemed to him right.

"Miss Kinnaird would have been better employed if she had painted the big snow peak with the lake at its feet," he said at length.

Ida abandoned the attempt to move him. She had yielded to a momentary impulse, but she was too proud to persist.

"Well," she said, "that peak certainly was rather wonderful. You remember it?"

"Yes," said Weston with injudicious emphasis; "I remember everything about that camp. I can see the big black firs towering above the still water—and you were sitting where the light came slanting in between them. You wore that gray fishing suit with the belt round it, and you had your hat off. The light made little gold gleams in your hair that matched the warm red glow on the redwood behind you—and you had burst the strap of one little shoe."

"Haven't you overlooked Arabella?" suggested Ida, who realized that his memory was significantly clear.

"Miss Kinnaird?" said Weston. "Of course, she was with you—but it's rather curious that she's quite shadowy. I don't quite seem to fix her, though I have a notion that she didn't fit in. She was out of key."

"That," laughed Ida, "was probably the result of wearing a smart English skirt. Do you remember the day you fell down and broke her parasol, and what you said immediately afterward about women's fripperies?"

"I didn't know that I had an audience," explained Weston, with his eyes twinkling. "I certainly remember that when you fancied that I had hurt myself you would have carried half the things over the portage if I had let you. We went fishing that evening. There was one big trout that broke you in the pool beneath the rapid. The scent of the firs was wonderful."

She led him on with a few judicious questions and suggestions, and for half an hour they talked of thundering rivers, still lakes and shadowy bush. He remembered everything, and, without intending to do so, he made it clear that in every vivid memory she was the prominent figure. It was here she had hooked a big trout, and there she had, under his directions, run a canoe down an easy rapid. She had enjoyed all that the great cities had to offer, but as she listened to him she sighed for the silence of the pine-scented bush.

At last he rose with a deprecatory smile.

"I'm afraid I've rather abused your patience," he said; "and I have to call on Wannop about the mine."

"You have told me nothing about it," said Ida. "How is it getting on?"

A shadow crept into Weston's face.

"There isn't very much to tell, and it was a relief to get it out of my mind for an hour or so. As a matter of fact, it's by no means getting on as we should like it."

Then, after another word or two, he took up his hat and left her.



CHAPTER XXVIII

WESTON STANDS FAST

Business called Weston to Winnipeg a few days after his interview with Ida, and, as it happened, he met Stirling at the head of the companionway when the big lake steamer steamed out into Georgian Bay. Neither of them had any other acquaintance on board, and they sat together in the shade of a deckhouse as the steamer ploughed her way smoothly across Lake Huron a few hours later. Weston had arranged to meet a Chicago stock-jobber who had displayed some interest in the mine, and he had chosen to travel up the lakes because it was more comfortable than in the cars in the hot weather, besides being somewhat cheaper, which was a consideration with him. Stirling, it seemed, was going to inspect the route for a railroad which an iron-mining company contemplated building. He lay in a deck-chair, with a cigar in his hand, apparently looking out at the shining water which stretched away before them, a vast sheet of turquoise, to the far horizon.

"Well," he asked at length, "how's the Grenfell Consolidated progressing?"

"It seems to be making most progress backward," said Weston. "Still, I suppose the fact that somebody evidently considered it worth while to send up men to jump our claim might be considered encouraging."

He briefly related what had taken place at the mine, as far as Saunders' letter had acquainted him with the facts, and Stirling listened thoughtfully.

"It's a crude maneuver, so crude that, as you've nothing but suspicions to go upon, it would be wiser not to mention them to anybody else," he said. "After all, the jumpers may have been acting on their own account."

"You believe they were?"

Stirling smiled. "I naturally don't know enough about the matter to decide; but, in a general way, when I come across anything that seems to the discredit of any gentleman of importance, or big combine with which I may happen to be at variance, I keep it judiciously quiet until I have the proofs in hand. I find it an excellent rule." Then he added in a suggestive manner: "You probably have had another rather more favorable offer since those jumpers failed?"

Weston admitted that this was the case and said that he had ignored the offer. He further stated that, as he had found the mine, he meant to keep it until he could dispose of it on satisfactory terms.

"That," said Stirling, dryly, "is a very natural wish, but one now and then has some trouble in carrying out views of that kind. I've seen your prospectus. Any applications for your shares?"

"They're by no means numerous." And a flush of anger crept into Weston's face. "If that were the result of a depressed market or of investors' indifference I shouldn't mind so much, but we are evidently being subjected to almost every kind of unwarranted attack."

"Any mode of attack's legitimate in this kind of deal, and there's a rather effective one your friends don't seem to have tried yet. Quite sure it wouldn't be wiser to make what terms you can and let them have the mine?"

"I'm afraid I haven't considered the wisdom of the course I mean to adopt. Anyway, it's a simple one. If those people want that mine they must break us first."

"Well," Stirling said, "I guess if I were you I'd allot very few of those shares to what one might call general applicants. Locate them among your friends and Wannop's clerks."

"There are uncommonly few general applicants, and my friends are not the kind of men who have money to invest. The same thing probably applies to Wannop's clerks. It's quite certain that nobody connected with the Grenfell Consolidated could make them a present of the shares."

"Considering everything, that's unfortunate, for, as I once pointed out, the next move will probably be to sell your stock down. It's a game that contains a certain hazard in the case of a small concern, because the stock is generally in few hands; but I've no doubt your friends will try it."

"Then we're helpless," said Weston. "We must raise sufficient money among the general investors, or give up the mine."

"The situation," said Stirling, dryly, "seems unpleasant, but it's the kind of one in which a little man who will neither make terms with a big concern nor let his friends help him might expect to find himself."

Weston sat silent awhile, gazing at the steamer's smoke trail which stretched far back, a dingy smear on the blueness, across the shining lake; and the contractor watched him with a certain sympathy which, however, he carefully refrained from expressing. There had been a time in his career when it had seemed that every man of influence in his profession and all the powers of capital had been arrayed against him. He had been tricked into taking contracts the bigger men would not touch; his accounts had been held over until long after the convenanted settling day, and he had been compelled to submit to every deduction that perverted ingenuity could suggest. He had, however, hardened his heart, and toiled the more assiduously, planning half the night and driving machine or plying shovel himself by day, whenever a few dollars could be saved by doing so. He had lived on the plainest fare, but he had, without borrowing or soliciting favors from any man, borne the shrewd blows dealt him and struggled on inch by inch uphill in spite of them. Now it seemed to him that this young Englishman was bent on doing much the same. At length Weston turned to him with a wry smile.

"It's quite possible that you're right, and the thing is too big for me, but I have got to see it out," he said.

Stirling made a little sign of comprehension. His companion's quietness pleased him, and he felt that, though the man must fight with indifferent weapons and with formidable powers against him, he would not easily be beaten. What was more to the purpose, the contractor did not mean him to be beaten at all, if he could prevent it, though this was a point that he did not consider it advisable to mention.

"Well," he said reassuringly, "no one can tell exactly how a game of this kind will go. All you can do is to hold tight and keep your eyes open."

They changed the subject, and nothing more was said about the mine during the rest of the journey.

In due time Stirling went ashore at a way port, and Weston met the man from Chicago in Winnipeg a day or two later. The latter asked a good many questions about the mine, but he contented himself with stating that the matter would require investigation, and Weston, who gave him a small bag of specimens, spent another day in Winnipeg in a very dejected mood. He felt the hideous cruelty of the system which, within certain rather ample limits, made it a legitimate thing to crush the little man and rob him of his few possessions by any means available. There was, it seemed, no mercy shown to weaklings in the arena he had rashly entered with none of the weapons that the command of money supplied to those pitted against him; but in place of shrinking from the conflict a slow, smoldering rage crept into his heart.

He remembered the weary marches made in scorching heat and stinging frost, how his shoulders had been rubbed raw by the pack-straps, and how his burst boots had galled his bleeding feet. There had been long nights of misery when he had lain, half-fed and too cold to sleep, wrapped in dripping blankets beside a feeble, sputtering fire, while the deluge thrashed the roaring pines. The bustle of the city jarred on him that afternoon, and he wandered out of it, but the march, parched with thirst, through the feathery ashes of the brulee, rose up in his memory as he walked aimlessly toward the prairie, and he recalled Grenfell lying beside the lode he had died to find. It became a grim duty to hold his own, and once more he determined that his enemies should crush him before they laid their grasping hands on the mine. He shrank, however, from going back to Montreal and waiting there in suspense, and by the time he retraced his steps to his hotel he had decided that this was out of the question. He wrote a few lines to Wannop and started for the bush with the next day's train.

It was dark when he reached the camp, after an arduous journey, and found Devine and Saunders sitting beside the fire. The latter, it transpired, had engaged a clerk in Vancouver to take charge of his store, and he smiled when Weston inquired whether he expected the man to remain at the settlement any longer than his predecessor had done when he heard that there was a new gold find in reach of him.

"I guess I've fixed that," he said. "I took some trouble to get one who was very lame."

Neither of the pair, however, appeared cheerful, and Weston's face grew hard when he heard what they had to say about the mine.

"As you'd see by the specimens, we were turning out high-grade milling ore a little while ago," Devine observed.

"Well?"

The surveyor's gesture was expressive. "We're not in it now. Ore's turned spotty, and it's running deeper. I think I remember your telling me that Grenfell figured that the lode takes an inclination?"

"He certainly did."

"It's another proof that you could count on what he said. There's no doubt about that inclination. We can't get out ore that will pay for crushing with an open cut much longer."

"Then," said Weston, "we can follow it with an adit."

He looked at Saunders, who smiled in a rather grim fashion.

"Adits cost money to drive," observed the latter. "You have brought some along?"

Weston said that this was not the case, and Saunders spread out his hands.

"Well," he said, "I'm broke. Half the men on this location are owing me quite a pile, and it's clear that I'll never get a dollar out of them unless they strike it rich, or the Grenfell Consols go up with a bang. That's how Jim from Okanagan fixed the thing. Now I've got credit from a Vancouver wholesaler who takes a share in the store, and that will keep us in pork and flour, but the giant-powder and detonators in the shack yonder represent this syndicate's available capital. I bought a big supply when I was in Vancouver, but there'll be no more to be had when they run out."

"We'll go on until they do," said Weston, doggedly.

The next morning he laid his city clothes carefully aside, and borrowed from his comrades garments more adapted to the bush. They certainly did not fit him, but that was a matter of no account, and when he had put them on he commenced work in very grim earnest. He was hard pressed—up against it, as they say in that country—and every crashing blow he struck upon the drill was a relief to him. Indeed, he worked with curious cold-blooded fury that wore out his comrades long before night came. Saunders had invested the proceeds of several years of Spartan self-denial in the precarious venture, but that was as nothing compared with Weston's stake. He must succeed or relinquish all idea of winning the woman, who, he ventured to think, might listen to him when he had accomplished his task; and when he desisted at sunset his hands were bleeding and he had partly lamed Devine by an incautious stroke of the pick. That, however, was a matter about which the surveyor protested less than the hazards his comrade quietly took. He rammed the giant-powder into the holes with reckless haste, and, though the cheapest fuses are seldom to be relied on, he allowed his companions scanty time to get out of the mine when he lighted them.

It was the same the next day, and for most of the next three weeks. Indeed, Saunders and Devine were never sure how they contrived to keep pace with him; but they did it for the credit of their manhood, which would not allow them to be beaten by a Britisher. At nights their hands and backs were distressfully sore, but the adit they drove crept on steadily along the dip of the lode. Though they had worked reasonably hard already, their faces grew gaunter and harder under the strain, and as yet they had come upon little sign of any richer ore. In the meanwhile it was very hot, and all day the withering sprays of the fallen firs emitted heavy, honey-like odors under the scorching sun.

Then it occurred to some of the others that, as there had been several weeks of fierce dry weather, it would be a favorable opportunity to burn off the slashing, or clear away the branches of the felled trees, which is usually done before the great logs, which do not readily burn, are attacked with the saw; and one day, when the wind promised to drive the conflagration away from the camp, fires were kindled here and there among the tindery undergrowth. The attempt proved successful, and in a few hours the fire had spread into the surrounding forest. It crept on through the latter steadily, springing up the towering trunks from spray to spray, until the dark firs were garlanded with climbing flame. Beneath them the brushwood crackled furiously, and every now and then a mighty limb fell amidst a shower of sparks, while half-charred logs and rows of blackened stumps marked out the lode. The smoke obscured the sun until the workings were wrapped in a haze, and it crept into the adit where Weston and his comrades toiled; but they held on with their fish-oil lamps burning until the light outside grew dim, and then, crawling back, sore all over, to the wooden shack which had now replaced the tent, they lay down outside it when supper was over.

It was an impressive spectacle that they gazed upon. The conflagration was still not far from them, for, as a rule, a forest fire does not move very rapidly. Across the valley hung a dusky pall of smoke, and beneath it all trunks stripped to bare spires stood out black against a sea of flame. The latter, however, was of no very great extent from wing to wing, and, now that the wind had almost dropped, it made very little progress, though it crept on down the valley in a confined belt, rising and falling in pulsations with the sharp crackle of licked-up undergrowth breaking through the deep-toned roar. Saunders, lying propped up on one elbow, watched it meditatively.

"It's a high-class burn," he said. "Going to save somebody quite a lot of chopping. But if that breeze whipped round there'd sure be trouble."

As the men at work on the lode lived either in tents or rude shelters of bark and logs, this seemed very probable; but Weston was not in the mood to concern himself about the matter then.

"How much giant-powder have we got in hand?" he asked.

"Almost enough to last another three weeks with fuse and detonators to match. You'll have to find the next lot when that runs out."

Weston laughed.

"I've just sufficient money to take me back to Montreal, traveling Colonist, and I must go back to see how Wannop's getting on before very long. What are you going to do then?"

Devine looked at Saunders, who smiled at him.

"Push the adit right on, if we have to cut every foot of it with the drill," he said. "Before we let up, we'll rip the rock out with our naked hands."

It was a characteristic answer, but Weston was satisfied with it. He had discovered that if the men of the Pacific Slope were occasionally a trifle assertive and what he called flamboyant in their conversation, they nevertheless, as a rule, meant just what they said. It is, of course, not unusual for an imaginative person to describe what he intends to do in dramatic periods, but while some people are wisely content with that, the western bushman generally can be depended on to carry out the purpose.

They said nothing further, and presently went to sleep, with the crackle of the undergrowth through which the fire crawled ringing in their ears.



CHAPTER XXIX

THE FIRE

The shack was full of smoke when Weston awakened, coughing, and drowsily looked about him. Somebody else was spluttering close by, and in a moment or two he heard Devine relieve himself with a few expletives. Then Weston got up from his lair of spruce twigs fully dressed, for the night was chilly and the shack had only three sides to it, while the men who live in such places not infrequently take off their clothes to work and put them on when they go to bed.

"The wind has evidently dropped, and the smoke's drifting back. I can't stand much more of this," said Weston.

Devine, it seemed, had lost his temper.

"Then why don't you get out, instead of worrying people?" he asked. "Anyway, it's only one of the little luxuries that Saunders and I are quite accustomed to. I've been eaten by mosquitoes, sandflies, and other insects of various kinds. You've 'most smashed my ankle, besides sticking a grub-hoe into me, and Saunders must work out a big stone just when I was under it. We've been living most of two months on his rancid pork and grindstone bread, and now you make a circus about a little smoke!"

He broke off in another fit of spluttering, and the storekeeper's voice rose out of the vapor which seemed to be rapidly thickening.

"The wind's not dropped. It's shifted, and the fire's working back," he said.

In another moment Weston stood gasping in the doorway. A little chilly breeze, such as often draws down from the ranges in early morning, met him in the face, and the air was thick with drifting smoke. Hoarse shouts rose out of it and a patter of running feet, and it became evident that most of the men were departing hastily for the range or the remoter forest. Weston, however, could not see them, and it was, indeed, a few seconds before he saw anything except a confused glimmering behind a dusky pall of vapor. Then, as the smoke thinned, a bewildering glare shot up, and ranks of trees were silhouetted against a sea of fire that flung itself upon the rearmost of them and ran aloft from spray to spray, while the snapping of the smaller branches resembled volleys of riflery. After that the smoke drove down again and blotted out everything.

Weston, however, was not unduly alarmed. He concerned himself most about the possibility of their work being delayed during the next day or two. As a rule, an active man has little difficulty in avoiding a forest fire, unless it is of unusual extent, or is driven by a strong wind, and there was a wide space already burned clear to which they could remove their possessions. It appeared advisable to set about the latter task at once, for the conflagration was by this time uncomfortably close to them.

"Hand me the big flour-bag," he said.

Saunders hoisted it on his shoulders, and he stumbled away with it, coughing in the smoke, until he could deposit it in the cleared track where the fire had passed the previous afternoon. Then he went back for another load, and had some difficulty in reaching the shack, for the vapor filled his eyes and almost suffocated him. He fell down once or twice among the half-burned branches as he retraced his steps with his burden; but pork and flour and picks and drills were precious commodities in the bush, and he made a third journey, upsetting Saunders as he plunged into the shack. In the meanwhile, the other also had been busy, and at length they sat down gasping beside the pile of blankets, clothing, tools and provisions, with several other men who had hastily removed their possessions from adjacent claims.

"Where are the rest of the boys?" Saunders asked one of them.

"Some of them are in the workings, some of them on the range, but I guess it was for Vancouver the Fraser crowd started out. Seemed to me they meant to get there before they stopped."

Just then a shower of sparks fell about them and charred a hole or two in Devine's clothes, while they had a momentary vision of the front of the conflagration. It was not a reassuring spectacle, for the rolling sea of fire flung itself aloft in glittering spray to the tops of the highest firs, and the valley rang with the roar it made.

"Well," said Saunders, reflectively, "I don't know that I blame the Fraser crowd, and one of the boys was telling me not long ago that the settlement he came from was burned out. A thing of that kind makes a man cautious. Anyway, it's quite hot enough here, and we'll hump this truck along to the adit."

The others agreed that it would be advisable, but most of the things were heavy, and it was some little time later when Weston lighted a fish-oil lamp in the heading and held it up. The narrow tunnel seemed half-full of rolled-up blankets, flour-bags and slabs of pork, and a group of men, some of whose faces were blackened, sat among them.

"Our lot came in first. Have you got it all?" Weston asked.

They found the flour and pork, the tea and Saunders' rifle, as well as a couple of hammers and several drills; but Weston did not seem satisfied.

"Where are my clothes?" he asked.

None of them seemed to know, though it became evident that his city garments were, at least, not in the adit.

"Guess they'll be frizzled quite out of fashion if you left them in the shack," said one of the men. "A miner has no use for getting himself up like a bank clerk anyway."

Weston held up the lamp so the rest could see him. His face was black, and the sleeve of his duck jacket had several big holes in it. His trousers were rent in places, and one of his long boots was burst, while Devine's hat, which was too big for him, hung shapeless and dotted with charred holes on his head.

"I'm going back to Montreal in a day or two. Can I call on big stock-jobbers and company floaters like this?"

"Guess you can buy new ones in Montreal," said the miner.

"You can," agreed Weston, "when you have the money. The trouble is, I haven't. Saunders, I'm going back for those clothes."

They went with him to the mouth of the adit and saw the shack outlined against a dazzling blaze. It did not seem to be burning yet, but none of Weston's companions believed that it would be possible for him to reach it. The smoke had risen, and now rolled among the tops of the firs, but, though they stood at some distance from the fire, the air scorched their faces. Weston's showed up in the lurid radiance worn and very grim, and it was evident to Devine that the curious moodiness which had troubled him since he came back from the city was at least as strong as it had been.

"You can't get them now," he expostulated.

"Give me your jacket," said Weston, sharply. "It's thicker than the thing I have on."

The surveyor hesitated. He could see the sparks and blazing fragments stream past the shack, and he had no wish to encourage his comrade in the rashness he contemplated.

"Well," said Weston, "I'll go as I am."

Then Saunders remembered something, and seized him by the shoulder.

"Hold on!" he cried. "Did either of you bring the giant-powder and detonators along?"

Weston glanced at Devine, who shook his head.

"I didn't, anyway," he said.

For a moment or two there was a silence that was expressive of dismay, as they realized that in the haste and confusion they had saved only the things that could be replaced. The result of this might prove disastrous, for giant-powder and detonators are comparatively dear in that country, and in any case are not obtainable in the bush. To hire labor was in the meanwhile out of the question, and the progress two men could make cutting through hard rock with only the pick and drill was, as they were quite aware, likely to be remarkably small. Saunders made a little dejected gesture.

"Then," he said, "they're still in the lean-to behind the shack; and it would be kind of wiser to crawl back into the adit. The case of detonators was lying bang up against the giant-powder."

This was a significant statement, for it must be explained that although giant-powder, as dynamite is generally called in the west, as a rule merely burns more or less violently when ignited by a flame, it is still a somewhat unstable product, and now and then explodes with appalling results on apparently quite insufficient provocation. In use it is fired with a detonator, a big copper cap charged with a fulminate of the highest power, and when lighted in this fashion the energies unloosed by the explosion, though limited in their area, are stupendous. The detonator is almost as dangerous, for a few grains of the fulminate contained in it are sufficient to reduce a man to his component gases. At least, this was the case a few years ago.

Several men besides its owners had sought shelter from the heat and sparks in the adit, and they evidently agreed with Saunders that it was advisable to crawl back into shelter as soon as possible; but Weston stood still. He had for the past few weeks been looking disaster in the face, and this had produced in him a certain savage desperation which is not altogether unusual in the case of hard-pressed men who feel that they have everything against them. In his mood, which was not a pleasant one, each fresh blow stirred him to a grimmer effort, made with a curious quiet fury from which his comrades now and then almost shrank. Turning abruptly, he shook himself free from Saunders' grip.

"Well," he said, "I'm going to bring out that powder."

In a moment he had scrambled up the pile of shattered rock, and was running across the open space like a deer. It was strewn with half-burned branches, and here and there with little piles of glowing fragments, but he went straight through them without a stumble; and it must be admitted that his comrades stood still and watched him with consternation before it dawned on them that it was scarcely fitting to let him go alone. Then Saunders climbed up to the level ground somewhat deliberately.

"I guess," he said, "we've got to go after the blame fool!"

They set out; but Saunders, who had been keeping store for some years, was not remarkably agile; and one could hardly blame Devine for proceeding with a certain caution. However, they reached the outside of the shack soon after Weston had disappeared in it, and they stopped gasping. The air which scorched their faces seemed to frizzle their hair, and the smoke, which once more had descended, whirled about them. They could hear nothing but the roar of the fire.

Then a half-seen figure reeled out of the shack, and Devine, who was nearest it, laughed discordantly when his comrade thrust upon him a bundle of clothes. The thing seemed altogether incongruous, but he turned and set off toward the adit with his arms full of the garments, which got loose and flopped about him, until he flung them to another man who had ventured part of the distance.

"General Jackson!" exclaimed the miner. "He went back for his clothes!"

Devine did not stop to sympathize with his astonishment, but ran back to the shack, and Weston flung him a partly-filled flour-bag as he approached it. It fell close beside a glowing fragment, and the surveyor felt a little shiver run through him as he whipped it up, for he had some knowledge of the vagaries of giant-powder. He flung the bag over his shoulder as gently as possible, and once more started for the adit, though he proceeded with caution. He was desperately anxious to get rid of his burden, but he had no desire to shake it up unduly. Giant-powder will now and then go off without any very apparent cause.

In the meanwhile Saunders clutched at Weston as he turned back toward the hut. One had to enter it before gaining admission to the smaller shed in which they kept the giant-powder.

"You're not going in again? We've got one bag," he said.

"The other one is still inside," was the hoarse reply.

Saunders did not waste his breath in expostulation, but grappled with him, and he had rent part of Weston's jacket off his back in the effort to detain him when Devine came running up. Then Weston, wriggling around, struck the storekeeper in the face, and plunged back into the smoke as the latter dropped his hand.

They lost sight of him for almost a minute, and then he reeled out of the shack as the smoke drove away. A stream of sparks whirled past it, and close above him the roof was blazing, but he held another flour-bag in his hands, and his comrades, who had reasonably steady nerves, were almost appalled when he poised himself to throw it. There was only a thin strip of cotton fabric between the flying sparks and the plastic yellow rolls of powder. Still, the bag was thrown, and Saunders set off with it, while Weston stood gasping a moment and looked at Devine.

"There's the bag of detonators yet," he said, and, swinging around, disappeared again.

Devine remembered that there was no lid to the iron box in which they kept the detonators, and that they were intended to be ignited by the sparking of a fuse. He stood some little distance from the shack, and it did not occur to him that, as one person could carry the box readily, he was serving no purpose in waiting. Indeed, he was only conscious of a suspense that made it impossible for him to go away. He did not know how long he waited, but in the meanwhile the smoke whirled lower, and he could see nothing for a moment or two. Then it lifted, and the shack stood out in the midst of a lurid blaze. There was a horrible crackling, and Weston suddenly sprang into sight, black against the brightness, with the iron box, which had deer-hide straps attached to it, slung upon his back. The sparks rained about him, but he plunged through the midst of them, while the box banged against him. Then Devine turned and ran.

They reached the mouth of the adit safely, and when they crawled into it, Weston sat down and gasped heavily for a while before he turned to the others and pointed to the two bags of giant-powder lying on the floor. His duck jacket was burned in patches, and there were several red spots, apparently where sparks had fallen, on his blackened face and hands.

"Haven't you sense enough to take that open lamp farther away from those bags?" he asked.

There was a roar of hoarse laughter as his companions recognized the incongruity of the question; and Weston blinked at them, as though puzzled by it, until a light broke in on him.

"Perhaps it wasn't quite in keeping with the other thing, boys," he admitted. "Give me some tobacco, one of you. Mine seems to have gone, and I feel I'd like to sit quiet a minute or two."

The hand he thrust into his pocket came out through the bottom of it, for the lower part of the jacket was torn and burned; but one of the others produced a plug of tobacco, and when he had lighted his pipe Weston leaned back somewhat limply against the side of the adit.

"Well," he said, "I suppose it was rather a crazy trick, but if we'd been sensible we'd certainly have let the Grenfell Consolidated fall into the hands of those city men."

Then he turned to the storekeeper with a deprecatory gesture.

"I'm sorry, Saunders, but you would try to hold me. You ought to have known that you can't reason with a man in the mood that I was in then."

Saunders grinned. "I wouldn't worry about the thing. If there isn't a club handy the next time you feel like doing anything of that kind I'm going to leave you severely alone."

Then, through the roar and crackle of the fire, they heard a heavy crash, and one of the men nearest the mouth of the adit glanced at Weston significantly.

"It's kind of fortunate you got through when you did," he said. "A big branch has fallen right across your shack and broken it up."



CHAPTER XXX

DEFEAT

There had been trouble at the Board Meeting, and, now that it was almost over, the directors of the Grenfell Consolidated sat in dejected silence, listening to the animadversions of one of their comrades. They did not agree with everything he said, but it scarcely seemed worth while to raise minor objections, for they were willing to admit that the situation was desperate.

"We should never have proceeded to allotment," he said. "I warned you that the applications for our stock were quite insufficient to warrant the flotation of the concern at the time, but you apparently lost your heads over those specimens, and you overruled me. Now it's unpleasantly evident that we cannot expect to go on much longer, and I venture to predict a voluntary liquidation during the next few months."

"It certainly looks like that," said one of the others, gloomily. "Still, you might give us your reasons for counting on the thing, if you have any."

The man laughed—a little harsh laugh that had in it a hint of contempt for the intelligence of his colleagues.

"Will you let me have those estimates again, Mr. Weston?" he asked.

Weston, who sat with a set face gazing at the papers in front of him, handed several of them across the table. It was now some time since he had left the mine, and in the meanwhile trouble after trouble had crowded thick upon him. He realized also that he was rapidly losing the confidence of his companions. They were not men of any great account in that city, and it was significant that the Board Meeting was held in Wannop's little back office, where there was scarcely room for all of them.

"You have discussed those estimates at length already," he said. "I should, however, like to point out that I consider them absurdly high. In fact, I'd undertake to do the work at not more than two-thirds of the cost."

"This company," said the first speaker, severely, "has no intention of taking up road-making and the building of flumes and dams. It has, as I think you will admit, gentlemen, quite enough already on its hands."

There was some show of agreement from all but Wannop, and Weston set his lips. There had been a time when they had listened to his suggestions, but now it was becoming evident that they regarded him with suspicion.

"This," said his colleague, "is a little list of our requirements and expenditures before we can expect to get to work. Tools, drilling-machines and labor on the heading." He read out the cost of each item. "Then we have to provide a stamp-mill, turbines, flumes and dam; and, though Mr. Weston suggests a wood-burning engine to supply the crushing power, the saving effected would be no great matter. The point is that we now discover that the cost of these things will in one way or another be nearly double what we stated in our prospectus."

"That," said Wannop, dryly, "isn't altogether unusual."

"What is more to the purpose is that it will approximately absorb our whole available capital," said the first speaker, who took up another paper. "Then we have as an alternative scheme several leagues of road and trail cutting, including wooden bridges and a strip that must be dug out of an impassable mountainside. You have to add to it the cost and maintenance of pack-horses and the rates you'd have to pay the owners of the nearest crushing-plant to do your reducing. Gentlemen, I can only move that these estimates stand over, and that in the meanwhile we merely proceed with the heading."

They agreed to this. Then another of them spoke.

"It seems to me that there's a way in which we could save something as well as our credit," he said. "I've had a hint that another big concern might be willing to take us over."

They looked at one another in a manner which suggested that this was not altogether a new idea. Weston straightened himself suddenly.

"It will never be done with my consent," he said.

"Then," remarked the first speaker, "it is quite likely that you will find yourself in a minority of one."

"Mr. Weston can count on at least one supporter," said Wannop, shortly.

Then there was an awkward silence, until one of the others thrust back his chair.

"It's becoming quite clear that we can't go on," he said. "This concern was started wrong. We should have spent more money, taken first-class offices, and turned out floods of illustrated pamphlets."

"I just want to ask how you're going to spend money that you haven't got?" said Wannop. "I was quite willing to take the money. You wouldn't put it up."

There was a little laughter, and the meeting broke up; but Weston stayed behind with Wannop when the others went down the stairway. The broker, who sat down again, made a little dejected gesture.

"I guess the game is up. They're going back on us," he said. "In a way, I don't blame them. The Hogarth people have scared them off. They're not big enough."

"Have you any idea as to what they'll do?" Weston asked.

Wannop nodded. "Oh, yes," he said. "They'll hold out a month or two, and piffle away at the adit to save appearances. Then they'll call the stockholders together, and suggest turning the mine over to the Hogarth people on such terms as they can get. There are just two things that could save us—a strike of extra high-grade ore, or a sudden whim of investors to purchase western mining stock." He smiled in a wry fashion. "I don't expect either of them."

Weston sat still a moment, and then rose with an air of weariness.

"Well," he said, "I'm going back to the mine tomorrow. We'll hold on as long as possible."

He left; and a few minutes later Stirling came in. He sat down and handed Wannop a cigar.

"Now," he said, "we have got to talk."

"If you'd come a little earlier you'd have met Weston."

"Yes," said Stirling, "that's just why I didn't. Now, where's the trouble?"

"I'll tell you—though to some extent it's a breach of confidence. It's the shortage of money, and the fact that our stock is tumbling down."

"Tumbling down?"

Wannop smiled. "I might have said being clubbed down."

"I want to get the thing quite straight," said Stirling. "What made you take up this mine?"

"Mr. Weston's representations. I think I attached as much weight to them as I did to the specimens. I felt that was a man that I could put my money on."

"You feel that now?"

"I do," Wannop admitted. "In fact, it's hard to believe he will be beaten, though the rest of us are going back on him."

Stirling nodded in a manner which might have meant anything.

"So your stock is being sold down?" he said. "As I pointed out to Mr. Weston, considering that you haven't a great deal of it, that's rather a dangerous game. Are any actual holders parting?"

They had spoken without reticence, in terse, sharp sentences, as men who recognized the advisability of coming straight to the point, which is, after all, a custom that usually saves trouble for everybody concerned. The men who shrink from candor, lest they should give themselves away, not infrequently waste a good deal of time wondering what the other person means, and then decide incorrectly.

"They are," said Wannop. "Besides several small lots, one parcel of six hundred shares held in England changed hands, though that was when we stood near par and the stock was only beginning to break away. What we want is such a strike of ore as will startle mining investors."

"Anything else?" Stirling asked suggestively.

"Well," said Wannop, "we're not likely to get it. If a good strong buyer, who could wait, were to take hold, it would help us as much as anything."

"Quite sure?" asked Stirling very dryly.

"Isn't it evident? It would stiffen prices and scare off the Hogarth brokers. What's more, it would steady my colleagues' nerves."

"Yes," admitted Stirling, "it would do all that. However, I want to suggest that that isn't quite enough. Anyway, that's my view of it."

They looked at each other steadily for a moment or two, and then Stirling made a little forceful gesture.

"Now," he said, "I'm going to take hold of this thing; and in the first place I'll give you an order on my bank for all the money that seems necessary. You will take up some of that stock for me; and, as the Hogarth men will offer more freely as soon as they strike an actual buyer, in case prices stiffen you'll follow their lead and pitch the stock you bought on to the market."

"Some men would consider that was playing the other people's game," commented Wannop, with a chuckle.

"It would be, in the meanwhile," said Stirling. "Well, you won't let your sales—if you make any—get out of hand. You'll have to put on one or two smart men, and cover or sell at a lower price through different ones when it appears advisable. I shall naturally lose a little on every deal of that kind, but the only real trouble will be when you quietly gather in as much as possible of the stock the other people are offering. It will have to be done without raising suspicions, and before their broker can report and ask for instructions."

Wannop struck the table. "There's some hazard in it—but it's a great idea," he said. "They'll club the Grenfell Consols down quite flat."

"Until settling day. Then, when the other people have to deliver, they can't get the stock. We'll shove the prices up on them to anything we like."

Wannop gazed at him in exultation, but presently he asked a disconnected question.

"Why are you doing all this?"

"For money, for one thing," said Stirling, with a little flush in his face. "For another, because I've been sweated and bluffed and bullied by people of the kind you're up against, and now I feel it's 'most a duty to strike back." He clenched a big, hard hand. "I've watched my wife scrubbing and baking and patching my clothes in the old black days when I lived in a three-roomed shack because I was bluffed out of half my earnings by people who sent their daughters to Europe every year. I've nothing to say against legitimate dealing, but it's another thing when these soft-handed, over-fed-men suck the blood out of every minor industry and make their pile by the grinding down of a host of struggling toilers. By next settling day one or two of them are going to feel my hand."

He reached out for his hat, rather red in face.

"If I've any other reasons, they don't concern you," he added in a different tone. "All I expect from you is to do your part judiciously, and, as a matter of fact, it will have to be done that way."

He went out, and left Wannop sitting with the light of a somewhat grim satisfaction in his eyes.

In the meanwhile, Weston went moodily back to his hotel, and spent an unpleasant hour or two before he proceeded irresolutely toward Stirling's house. He realized that this was in some respects most unwise of him, but he was going away on the morrow and he felt that he could not go without a word with Ida.

She was sitting near the fire, which burned upon the open hearth, when he was shown into a daintily-furnished room. After a swift glance at him she rose and followed the maid to the door.

"I cannot receive anybody else just now," she said.

Then she came back and sat down not far from him, feeling that there was a crisis on hand, for, though the man's manner was quiet, there was trouble in his face.

"You have something to tell me. About your meeting, perhaps?"

"Yes," said Weston. "I don't, however, wish to trouble you much about the meeting. I merely want to thank you for your sympathy before I go away. You see, I'm going west to-morrow."

"Will you be long away?"

"Yes," said Weston, with a strained quietness that jarred on her. "In fact, it's scarcely probable that I shall come back here at all. The game's up. My directors have lost their nerve. The Grenfell Consolidated must go down in the next few months."

It was evident to Ida that whatever could be done must be done by her, or the man would go away again without a word, and this time he would, as he had said, not come back at all. For a moment or two she sat very still.

"Ah," she murmured, "I needn't tell you that I'm sorry."

"No," said Weston, simply. "I know you are."

Then there was, for a minute or two, a silence that both found almost intolerable and that seemed emphasized by the snapping of the fire. There was before the girl a task from which she shrank, but it was clear to her that, since she could not let him go, one of them must speak.

"What are you going to do in the west?" she asked.

"Push on the heading until we have to let the mine go."

"And then?"

Weston spread out his hands.

"I don't know. Act as somebody's camp-packer. Shovel on the railroads. Work on the ranches."

It was very evident to Ida that his quietness was the result of a strenuous effort. The barrier of reticence between them was very frail just then, and she meant to break it down. She leaned forward in her chair with her eyes fixed on him, and now the signs of tension in his face grew plainer.

"You speak as if that would be easy for you," she said.

Weston shut his eyes to one aspect of the question. He had not the courage to face it, and he confined himself to the more prosaic one.

"As a matter of fact, I'm afraid it won't be," he admitted. "The life I've led here, and the few weeks I spent at Kinnaird's camp, have rather spoiled me for the bush. Some of the customs prevalent in the trail-choppers' shanties and the logging-camps are a little primitive, and one can't quite overcome a certain distaste for them."

"That was not quite what I meant," said Ida.

Weston was startled, but she saw that he would not allow himself to wonder what she really did mean.

"Anyway," he answered doggedly, "I suppose I can bear any unpleasantness of that kind, which is fortunate, because there's apparently no way out of it. After all, it's one consolation to feel that I'm only going back to what I was accustomed to before I found the mine."

"Ah," said Ida, "you are very wrong in one respect. You speak as if you could bear the trouble alone. Don't you think it would hurt anybody else as much to let you go?" Then, while the blood crept into her face, she fixed her eyes on him. "Yes," she added simply, "I mean myself."

Weston rose, and stood leaning on the back of his chair, with one hand tightly closed. He had struggled stubbornly, but it was evident that his strength had suddenly deserted him and that he was beaten now.

"It would hurt you as much?" he said, with a curious harshness. "That's quite impossible. The hardest, bitterest thing I could ever have to face would be to go away from you."

He flung out the closed hand.

"Now," he said, "you know. I've thrown away common sense and prudence, all sense of what is fitting and all that is due to you. None of those things seem to count just now."

He drew a little nearer.

"I fell in love with you at Kinnaird's camp, and tried hard to crush that folly. Then I found the mine, and for a few mad weeks I almost ventured to believe that I might win you. After that, the fight to drive your memory out of my heart had to be made again."

"It was hard?" asked Ida very softly.

"It was relentlessly cruel." Weston's voice grew sharper. "Still, I tried to make it. I gave way in only one point—I came to see you now and then. Now it's so hard that I'm beaten. I've failed in this thing as I've failed in the other."

He straightened himself suddenly, with a little forceful gesture.

"I'm beaten all round, beaten to my knees; but I don't seem ashamed. Even if you can't forgive me, I'm glad I've told you."

"I think," said Ida, "I could forgive you for one offense—the one you seem to think most important—rather easily. It would have been ever so much harder to do that had you gone away without telling me."

"You mean that?" cried Weston, and, stooping over her, he caught one hand and gripped it almost cruelly.

"Can't you take anything for granted?" Ida asked demurely. "Must one always explain in full to you?"

She felt the man's arms close about her, and his lips hot on her cheek; but in another moment he drew away from her.

"But this is madness," he said. "I have nothing. In a few more weeks I shall be an outcast."

"Ah," said Ida, "you have given me all that counts for anything, and"—she looked up at him with shining eyes and burning cheeks—"you belong to me."

He stood silent for several moments, with trouble in his face, apparently struggling with himself.

"What are you thinking of?" she asked,

Weston raised his head.

"I dare not think," he said. "I've won you by unfair means—and yet, knowing that, I'm only filled with the exultation of it. Still, this thing has to be faced and decided now. You know I love you—but is it right that you should be bound to a man who may never be able to marry you?"

"Is that any great obstacle," asked Ida, "if I don't object?"

"It is," said Weston, hoarsely. "I want you now."

The girl was almost startled by the change in him. His restraint had broken down once for all, at last, and she saw by the tension in his face and the glow in his eyes that his nature was stirred to its depths. In a moment or two, however, he seemed to succeed in imposing a partial control upon himself.

"I had meant to come to you only when we had made the mine a success," he said.

"To save your pride!—you could think of that?"

Weston laughed harshly.

"My pride—there isn't a shred of it left. But now, at least, the situation has to be faced."

"Is it so very dreadful?" asked Ida, with a smile. "You have told me that you love me. Is that a thing to be ashamed of? Must I tell you that I am glad you came to me when you were beaten, and not when you had won? Is there anything that I should trouble myself about?"

"Your friends' opinion, your father's opposition——"

He broke off, and Ida, who turned in her chair, looked around suddenly with her cheeks flushed.

"My father," she said, "is able to speak for himself."

Weston started, for he saw Stirling standing just inside the doorway looking at them gravely. Their attitude and the girl's expression would, he realized, be significant to a man of the contractor's intelligence. Then Ida rose and faced the elder man.

"I think I would better tell you that I have promised to marry Mr. Weston when things are propitious," she said. She looked around at Weston with a smile. "At least, I suppose I have."

"Ah!" said Stirling, dryly, "the situation rather suggested it. Mr. Weston has, no doubt, something to say to me."

Ida glanced at Weston and slipped out of the room.



CHAPTER XXXI

HIGH-GRADE ORE

Stirling waited until the door closed before he turned to Weston.

"Sit down. We've got to have a straight talk," he said.

Weston complied, feeling that he had to face the most unpleasant few minutes he had ever spent in his life. He had given way to his passion in a moment of desperation, and he fancied that he could make no defense which would appear reasonable to such a man as his companion. In spite of this, he was filled with a certain reckless exultation. Ida Stirling loved him.

"What Miss Stirling told you was correct," he said. "At least, I intend to marry her if ever—things are propitious; but, as far as I can remember, she did not bind herself."

"There are occasions when one's memory gets a little confused," said Stirling, dryly. "You have made the situation quite clear; but there are one or two points to consider, and, so far, you haven't troubled to ascertain my views on the matter."

"That remark," said Weston, "is quite warranted. I have only this to say. When I entered your house half an hour ago I hadn't the faintest notion that I should permit my feelings to run away with me."

"Then this thing has been going on for quite a time?"

Stirling's tone was coldly even, but Weston did not like the question. The form of it rather jarred on him. He realized, however, that he was on his defense, and would probably have to put up with a good deal more than that.

"I have had a strong regard for Miss Stirling since I first met her in British Columbia," he said. "That, however, is all I can admit. I do not know how she thought of me, and I have, at least, never knowingly, until this evening, spoken a word which could show her what my feelings were."

"Oh," said Stirling, "you've lived in the woods. If you hadn't, you'd have found out by now that young women possess a certain faculty of putting things together. Anyway," he added enigmatically, "I don't know that the bush isn't as good a place to raise a man in as the hothouse Susan Frisingham talked about."

Weston gazed at him in some astonishment, but the contractor made a little gesture with his hand.

"Well," he said, "you meant to keep the thing to yourself?"

"Until I had made the Grenfell Consolidated a success, when I should have come to you."

"Quite the proper course," commented Stirling. "It's kind of a pity you didn't stick to it. When you had arrived at that wise decision, why did you come here to talk to my daughter?"

It was a shrewd question, and perfectly warranted, but Weston answered it candidly.

"I think I came because I could not stay away," he said.

"Then it never occurred to you that my daughter might fall in love with you?"

A flush crept into Weston's face.

"At least," he said, "I never came here with the intention of profiting by that possibility."

Stirling laughed in a rather dry fashion.

"Then she was to do it all at once, when you intimated that she had permission to?"

"It almost looks like that," Weston admitted, with an embarrassment that surpassed anything he had expected. "I'm afraid," and he made a deprecatory gesture, "that I've made a deplorable mess of the whole affair."

"You have," said Stirling. "As it happens, however, that's in your favor. If you'd shown yourself a cleverer man in this matter, it might have occurred to me that it was Miss Stirling's money that you had your eyes on."

Weston turned and gazed at him with the blood in his forehead.

"I wish with all my heart that Miss Stirling's money were at the bottom of the sea!" he said passionately. "There's just another thing I have to say. I came to your house in a fit of desperation a little while ago, so shaken by what I had just had to face that I was off my guard. When I told Miss Stirling what I felt for her it was a folly—but I did it—and I have no excuse to make."

Then, to Weston's astonishment, the contractor's manner changed suddenly, and he leaned forward with a smile.

"Well," he said, "it's possible that she could find one or two for you. But we have to face the situation. It seems that you love my daughter, and there is reason for believing that she is fond of you. Now, Ida has been accustomed to every luxury, and the only thing you count on is a share in the Grenfell mine, which I guess you will admit may go under at any time. What do you propose to do?"

"I don't know," replied Weston, simply. "It's a question that has been driving me to desperation lately."

"Well," said Stirling, "I could find a way out of the difficulty. Are you open to place yourself in my hands, do what I tell you, and take what I may think fit to offer you?"

"No," answered Weston. "I'm sorry—but I can't do that."

"Then, if the Grenfell goes under, you'd rather go back to the bush and chop trees for the ranchers or shovel on the railroads?"

Weston sat very still a moment, with his face awry. Then he looked up resolutely.

"Yes," he said. "I think that, by and by, Miss Stirling would be glad I did it. She would not have her husband her father's pensioner. After all," he added, "one meets with sudden changes of fortune in the west."

Then Stirling suddenly stretched out his hand and laid it on his companion's shoulder.

"I've been twice warned by short-sighted women that my daughter might make an injudicious marriage, and on each occasion I pointed out that when she chose her husband she would choose just right," he said. "Now it seems that she has done it, and I'm satisfied."

He let his hand fall, and, while Weston gazed at him in bewilderment, smiled reassuringly.

"Go back to the mine when you like," he added. "You admitted that you would take advice from me, and all I suggest now is that you hold fast to every share you hold, and make no arrangements of any kind until after next settling day. In the meanwhile, if you'll go along to the first room in the corridor it's quite likely that you'll find Ida there. I've no doubt that she'll be anxious to hear what I've said to you."

Weston could never remember what answer he made, but he went out with his heart beating furiously and a light in his eyes; and when he entered the other room Ida stretched out her hands to him when she saw his face.

"Then it isn't disaster?" she said. "You will stay with me?"

Weston drew her toward him.

"Dear, I must still go away to-morrow, but we have, at least, this evening."

It was all too short for them, but Weston left in a state of exultation, with fresh courage in his heart, and it was in an optimistic frame of mind that he started west the next day. For several weeks he toiled strenuously under the blinking fish-oil lamps in the shadowy adit, but there was now, as his companions noticed, a change in his mood. The grimness which had characterized him had vanished. In place of toiling in savage silence he laughed cheerfully when there was any cause for it, and showed some consideration for his personal safety. He handled the sticks of giant-powder with due circumspection, and no longer exposed himself to any unnecessary hazard from falling stones. The man was softer, more human, and on occasion whimsical.

For all that, the work was pushed on as determinedly as before, and both Saunders and Devine experienced the same difficulty in keeping pace with their comrade's efforts, though they had grown hard and lean and their hands were deeply scarred. Yard by yard the adit crept on along the dipping lode, and one evening they stood watching Weston, who was carefully tamping a stick of giant-powder in a hole drilled in the stone. The ore had shown signs of getting richer the last few days, but their powder was rapidly running out, and they had not decided yet where they were to obtain a fresh supply. His directors had sent him neither the promised machines nor the money with which to hire labor, and he chafed at the fact that, as it was a long and arduous journey to the nearest station where he could reach the wires, he could not ascertain the cause of the delay.

The storekeeper nodded when at length Weston carefully clamped down a big copper cap on a length of snaky fuse and inserted it in another hole.

"Well," he said, "I guess this shot will settle whether there's high-grade ore in front of us."

He struck a sputtering sulphur match and touched the fuses.

"Now," he said, "we'll get out just as quickly as possible."

They ran down the adit, with Devine in front swinging a blinking lamp, and crawled out, gasping, into the cold evening air as dusk was closing down. Then they sat around and waited until there was a crash and a muffled rumbling. Weston stood up, but Saunders made a sign of expostulation.

"You just sit down again and take a smoke," he said. "We've got to give her quite a while yet."

There was a reason for this. The fumes of giant-powder are apt to prove overpowering in a confined space, and in case of some men the distressful effects they produce last for several hours; but when Weston filled his pipe he scattered a good deal of the tobacco he had shredded upon the ground. A strike of really rich ore would, he knew, send the Grenfell Consolidated up, and he had worked since morning in a state of tense anticipation, for the signs had been propitious. He contrived to sit still for some minutes, and then stood up resolutely.

"You may wait as long as you like," he said. "I'm going back to the adit now."

They went with him, Saunders expostulating and Devine carrying the lamp. Thin vapor that turned them dizzy met them as they floundered into the dark tunnel. The lamp burned uncertainly, but they crept on by the feeble ray of light over masses of fallen rock, until they reached a spot where the adit was blocked with the debris. Weston, dropping on hands and knees, tore out several smaller fragments, and held up one of them; but as he did it there was a faint, hoarse cry, and sudden darkness, as Devine fell forward upon the lamp.

"Get me out! Quick!" he gasped.

Weston felt for the lamp, and contrived to light it, though he wasted several matches in the attempt; but he felt greatly tempted to disregard the dictates of humanity when he hooked it in his hat.

"Well," he said reluctantly, "I suppose we'll have to take him out."

They did it with some difficulty, and left him unceremoniously when they had deposited him, limp and almost helpless, in the open air; for miners who meet with unpleasantness of that kind recover, and one does not make a discovery that promises to put thousands of dollars into one's pockets very frequently. They went back, and, though Weston felt faint and dizzy, he flung himself down among the smaller stones, and thrust one or two of them into Saunders' hands.

"Feel them—and look at the break!" he exclaimed.

Saunders poised one of the stones carefully, and then glanced at the rent where it had been torn from the rock.

"Yes," he said, "we've struck it this time, sure. Guess we'll get out of this and make supper."

"Make supper!" Weston gazed at him incredulously. "I don't stir out of here until sun-up!"

Then he tore off his tattered shirt and stood up, stripped to the waist.

"Get hold of the drill," he said, hoarsely. "You've got to work to-night."

Saunders remembered that night long afterward. For the first half-hour he was troubled by a distressful faintness; and when that passed off, as the air grew clearer, his back and arms commenced to ache unpleasantly. He already had toiled since soon after sunrise; but Weston, too, had done so, and he, at least, seemed impervious to fatigue. So intent was he that every now and then he swung the heavy hammer long after his turn had run out, without asking for relief; and Saunders judiciously permitted him to undertake the more arduous task. By and by, however, Devine crept back to join them, and, when at length morning broke and the mouth of the adit glimmered faintly, Weston glanced at his bleeding hands as he flung down the hammer.

"I suppose we'll have to let up for an hour or two," he said reluctantly.

Saunders staggered when they reached the open air, and Weston seemed to have some difficulty in straightening himself, but they got breakfast, and afterward lay smoking beside the fire, almost too stiff to move. It was getting cold among the ranges now, and they were glad of the warmth from the blaze.

"We'll go on for two or three days," said Weston. "Then we'll pack every load of ore out to the New Passage smelter and get them to reduce it. Devine and I will take it down to the railroad over the Dead Pine trail. The freighter from the settlement should be in with his pack-train by the time we're ready."

"Nobody ever brought a pack-beast in or out by Dead Pine, and there'll be deep snow in the pass," Saunders expostulated.

"Then," said Weston, curtly, "I'm going to do it now. If we can't raise a stamp and reducing plant, we have got to prove that we can make a trail to the railroad by which we can get our ore out without spending a small fortune on packing. If we can get over Dead Pine divide it should shorten the present trail by half; and I'm under the impression that if we spend a few thousand dollars on making a road up the big gully it could be done."

Saunders looked at Devine, who made a little sign.

"Oh," he said, "he means to try it. I guess we've got to let him."

They went back to work by and by; and a few days later Weston and Devine and a grizzled freighter breakfasted in haste beside a sputtering fire. A row of loaded pack-horses stood close by in the rain, and a cluster of dripping men gathered round when at length Weston rose to his feet. The freighter waved his hand to them with a little, dry smile.

"We're going to blaze you out a new road, boys, and it will save me some in horses if it can be done," He said. "Guess you'll be sorry when you see what the next man strikes you for, if we don't come back again."

There was some laughter; and rude good wishes followed the three wet men as they plodded away beside the loaded beasts into the rain.



CHAPTER XXXII

GRENFELL'S GIFT

It was snowing hard, and, though it was still two hours before sunset, the light was growing dim when Weston pulled the foremost pack-horse up on the edge of the gully. He and Devine had each a beast in his charge, and the freighter had started with two, but one of these had been left behind with a broken leg and a merciful bullet in its brain. That country is a difficult one, even to the Cayuse horses, which are used to its forest-choked valleys and perilous defiles.

In front of them a rugged peak rose above the high white ridge of Dead Pine. They could see the latter cutting against a lowering sky some twelve hundred feet above, though the peak showed only a ghostly shape through its wrappings of drifting mist. In altitude alone the ridge was difficult to reach, but, while that would not have troubled any of the men greatly, the ascent was made more arduous by the fact that the unmarked trail followed the slope of an awful gully. The latter fell almost sheer from close beside their feet, running down into the creeping obscurity out of which the hoarse thunder of a torrent rose. Here and there they could catch a glimpse of a ragged pine clinging far down among the stones, and that seemed only to emphasize the depth of the gloomy pit. On the other hand, the hillside rose like a slightly slanted wall, and the sharp stones of the talus lay thinly covered with snow between it and the gully.