Sally of Missouri Part 12

"Oh, Lord!" groaned Steering. He very well knew what was taking Piney away. It was hard on him that the boy's plan for absence should pile up on Sally Madeira's plan, but he could understand that it would be harder on the boy to stay in the Tigmores with the inspiration of the Tigmores hushed and gone.

"Not thinking of going to Italy yet, Piney?" It had come to be an accepted joke with them, that penchant of Piney's for Italy. The boy was willing to laugh about it, but his eyes always sobered dreamily in the end, and invariably he wound up with, "but I'm a-goin', all righty, an'

don't you fergit it." He did now. "But y'see, whilst I'm a-waitin' I git kinda tired the hills, Mist' Steerin'," he complained, trying to explain how it was with him without telling anything. "Lots er times I go off an' don't come back fer a long time." Not till Miss Madeira comes home, Bruce added out of his own intuition. "Git sorta tired the hills,"

repeated Piney stubbornly.

"Do they stop talking to you, the hills and the woods and the quiet?"

"Ya.s.s, they do, sometimes, when I'm pestered--not as I pester much," he laughed and broke off suddenly in his laughter, with a little sobbing shake in his breath, and pa.s.sed on ahead of Steering, who looked away from him up the bridle road that cut into the Canaan Tigmores.

"There comes Uncle Bernique!" cried Steering then, glad of a chance to divert Piney. Gazing toward Bernique welcomingly, he was diverted himself. The old man made no answer to the shouts that Piney and Steering sent out to him. He peered straight toward them, through them, his eyes dry and brilliant. He seemed hardly able to sit on his horse, because of a sort of enervating restlessness; he paid no attention whatever to his bridle; both of his hands were in the pockets of the tattered old coat that covered his body.

"Hi there, Pard!" hallooed Piney, with a boy's rich a.s.surance that recognises neither cla.s.s nor age.

"Found!" the old man tried to speak, but made a dry, clicking sound instead. He took his hands from his pockets and held up in each hand a lump of mineral earth. As he came toward them in that way, both hands upheld, the wild fever light in his eyes, his thin body electrified with a strange new vitality, to Steering, who saw all at once what it meant, his movement was that of the last full strain of the miner's epic.

"Found! Found!" he repeated, as though the sound was blessed, and he held up the rocks, as though the sight was heaven. When they reached him, trembling by now themselves, they had to help him from his horse and quiet and rest him by the roadside before he could tell his tale.

Waiting nervously, Bruce took the nuggets and regarded them; beautiful specimens, one stratum opaque, and seaming on to that stratum another, reddish and glinting, like the spiked fire of gold; and on that stratum another, grey and silver-faceted.

"Pretty splendid," cried Steering, and sat down suddenly and weakly. It was not to be forgotten that Old Bernique had emerged from the bridle-path in the Canaan Tigmores.

"When did you make the find, Uncle Bernique?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely.

"Thees minute," control was coming back to the old man, he raised his head from Piney's shoulder and leaned toward Bruce--"only thees minute!

And for twenty year I have known that it must be here, the ore, lead and zinc, in the gr-r-eat quant.i.ty! For twenty year! And just thees minute have I found it!" At the wailing sound of time lost, life lost, in Bernique's voice, long lines of ghostly, bent-backed miners, with ghostly, unavailing picks and shovels, seemed to defile down the bridle-path from the Canaan Tigmores in historic ill.u.s.tration, conjured up by the hypnosis of the old man's words.

"The troub' has been," went on Bernique feverishly, "that we have not looked for the ore in that place where the ore is----"

"That's always the troub'," muttered Piney. He had got his composure back and he seemed now rather good-naturedly contemptuous. Piney's was not a nature to accommodate itself to the exaltation of an ore find.

"The mother lode runs through the Canaan Tigmores," went on Bernique hurriedly, "of that I am now convince', but it comes to the surface,--it comes to the surface,--ah, G.o.d above! I expire with it,--let us go to Choke Gulch, and I will show you where it comes to the surface!"

He was insistent, his breath had come back to him, and they let him have his way, following him up the bridle-path into the long shadow of the Canaan Tigmores. On the top of the first bluff they tied their horses again and took a foot trail where the bluff, having rolled back a mile from the river, tumbled precipitately into a deep yawning gully. From the timbered eminence the prospect below was as dank and gloomy as a paleolithic fern forest. Sodden, mossy, and almost impenetrable, the hill split and dropped into Choke Gulch. From far down within the black and tangled fastnesses came the solemn ripple of slow-running water. A veil of weird loneliness hung over the cavernous place and the air that shivered up to the three was cool and laden with damp, sweet odours. Old Bernique began to descend. As they proceeded, the old man's sense of something stupendous impressed itself more and more upon his companions.

Farther on down, the solemn quiet of the Gulch became unbearable, but no one spoke. Little sunlight penetrated the dense curtain of brown and red leaves overhead, and what little flickered through had an electric brightness against the dead brown of the leaf-carpeted ground and the grey and h.o.a.ry tree-trunks. Every bird that came to the tree-tops sang once, but it was only when he discovered his mistake, lifted his wings and careened away gladly into the upper light.

"Whayee!" Piney found a shivering voice at last, "ef I never git rich till I come down into an ugly hole fer riches I'll be mighty pore all my days." Bruce smiled absently at the boy's susceptibility, but threw a rea.s.suring arm about his shoulder. He smiled again when presently Piney drew away. That was Piney's habit, as affectionate in instinct as a kitten, and as timid of manifestation as a wild doe.

Old Bernique called his little party to a halt at the bottommost dip of the Gulch, where a deep, clear and rock-bound spring wound murmurously over a rocky bed. Two red spots came out in the old man's cheeks, his eyes began fairly to flame again, his breath came in wheezy gasps, and his old face pinched up sharp and sensitive as a pointer's nose. He pointed to the debris of shattered rock about the spring. "The wataire fell over a cap-rock here," he said brusquely, the nervous constriction of his throat making it hard for him to say anything. "The strata underneath were soft and had been worn away by the wataire. I put a duck-nest of dynamite in there this morning,--and--see--there!"

Anybody could see; the zinc and lead ores were disseminated, rich and warm, in the loose rocks of the out-cropping. "It's a vein thirty inches thick and it runs,--it runs str-r-aight through the Canaan Tigmores,--sometimes sinking many feet from the surface,--but always there,--I am vair' sure of that,--str-r-aight through the Canaan Tigmores----" The old man's breath began to jerk with a sick, sobbing sound.

"Well,"--Steering was not so unaccustomed a miner by now but what the sight there in the Gulch had its effect upon him,--"Well," he said gingerly, "if you are right, Uncle Bernique, if the face doesn't cut blind, why, Mr. Crittenton Madeira and old Grierson have a good thing, haven't they?"

"Urg-h-h!" Old Bernique made a gnashing sound and leaned his head listeningly. The thud of the stream-drill reached them faintly from its place afar in the Canaan Tigmores. "They come fas'!" he said mournfully.

"Wisht I wuz aouter this," interrupted Piney, shivering.

"I have been track' thees mother lode,"--began old Bernique again, his feverish gaze again seeking out Bruce,--"I think,"--he stopped and fell to musing,--"What you gawn do, Mistaire Steering," he queried suddenly, with his weary old head twisted to one side, "what you gawn do about thees?"

"Lord, Uncle Bernique, I can't do anything. You might do something for yourself. You might sell your rights of discovery, might not you?"

"Non! Non! There is othaire thing,--there is a most good possibilitee,--thees mother lode, Mistaire Steering, it come out,--I think it come out somewhere, eh?--Mistaire Steering, have you got leetle mawney?"

"That's exactly how much, Uncle Bernique, a little."

"Mistaire Steering, eef you got leetle mawney to buy leetle land, I think I know good land to buy."

"I have told you all along to consider my money your money, Uncle Bernique."

"We must be vair' quiet about all thees, Mistaire Steering,--Piney, you compr-r-ehend that we tr-r-us' you, as I have always tr-r-us' you, absolutement! We must be vair' quiet. Thees leetle piece land run down close to the rivaire, below Poetical, at those Sowfoot Crossing, and eet ees not vair' good land for the farming----"

Thud! Thud! The old man caught his temples with both hands. "I am 'most craze' by that steam-drill," he whispered. "Eet come so close to our secret. Let us get away. That sound cr-r-aze me. Found! Found! Vair'

large lode, Mistaire Steering.--Sacre! The sound of that steam-drill is to me the most worse thing. That lode run through and come out by the rivaire, eef I am not mistake', Mistaire Steering. I go to buy that land to-night. You go back with Piney, please sair. Eef you come with me, you excite the question and the price. To me it will be sold without question. I am eccentrique, they say. You return to Canaan and have your mawney ready for me, Mistaire Steering. That bat Grierson, Mistaire Steering! When I think----"

Old Bernique was still throwing out riches of castigation at Grierson, Madeira, himself, fate, still half incoherent, when the three friends at last got back to their horses, and separated. Down at the foot of the bluff again, Steering, a little sore-headed with the ache of antic.i.p.ation, hope, doubt, sat his horse in Piney's company and watched the old man ride off up the river unattended. Steering felt excited and exalted himself, but the old Frenchman was really, as he said, "craze'."

Piney was the only sensible one left. Piney was not at all enthused and stayed very quiet until he parted with Bruce some distance out from Canaan. Bruce went on back to town to wait for Old Bernique at the hotel.

Piney took the path that led up to the bluff behind Madeira Place. As he came through the Madeira grounds Crittenton Madeira came out of the house and stood on the back porch, regarding him quizzically. Piney had a peculiar, poorly hidden dislike of Madeira that, taken with the boy's charm of personality, more or less amused the Canaan capitalist.

"Where have you been, young man?"

"In the woods."

"Look here, learning anything when you are out with that man Steering?"

"Yep."

"What, for instance?"

"Not to talk."

Madeira laughed carelessly. "You go and get Miss Madeira to sing, young Impudence," he said. "I'd just as soon hear the tenor, too. I am going to rest,"--he sighed deeply,--"I'm going to try to rest out here in the garden. I'd like some music."

Madeira went to the garden and stretched out on a bench, the smile that he had given Piney staying on his face, crinkling in automatically with the grievous strain that was about his eyes and mouth in these days.

After a little he closed his eyes softly, enjoyingly. From the library came the carolling sweetness of Piney's tenor. And by and by, following it, soaring up with it, the glorious fulness of Salome Madeira's velvety soprano.

Bruce, far down the river road, heard, too.

_Chapter Twelve_

THE COLOSSUS OF CANAAN

After Crittenton Madeira had organised the Canaan Mining and Development Company the _Canaan Call_ sent him in one leaping, exultant paragraph out of his position as "our esteemed fellow townsman" into a position of far more cla.s.sic significance by naming him the "Colossus of Canaan."

Madeira was a man of lightning-like execution of a plan, once he had got hold of his plan, and Bruce Steering, sharpened by circ.u.mstances into a consideration of every chance about him and even beyond him, had brought Madeira the plan from far away New York. Throwing his immense energies toward the prospect of ore in the Canaan Tigmores, bringing forward every dollar of his fortunes,--as usual not so large as they were accredited with being,--to finance his new projects, Madeira had accomplished wonders within an incredibly short time. There were those, unacquainted with the contents of an envelope in Madeira's vest pocket, who marvelled that a sharp man should let his projects be entangled with entailed property, but for the most part Canaanites were too accustomed to follow where Madeira led to marvel, or to ask foolish questions. Even for those so inclined Madeira had good answers. On the one side, he could show, from the progress already made, that there must be such a great quant.i.ty of ore in the Canaan Tigmores that it would be possible to take fortunes out of them during old Grierson's possession of the hills, even though the old man lived but a few years. On the other side he could show that it was not in the Canaan Tigmores alone that he was pushing the search for ore, but in the outlying land that had pa.s.sed into his control as well. It was true that he had put a steam-drill into the Canaan Tigmores, but it was equally true that he had put steam-drills up the Di at two or three points far beyond the Tigmores.

He made it as plain as day that the operations of the Canaan Mining and Development Company would extend all over that section, and that the Company's chances could not be taken away even by the death of Grierson. And he made it equally and cheerfully plain that Grierson would not die.