Silver and Gold Part 10

"So!" exploded the Professor, "vell, I vish you vell of it!" And he flung violently out the door.

"Takes it hard," observed Bunker, "never was a good loser. You want to watch out for him, now--he's going over to report to Murray."

"So that's the combination," nodded Denver. "I was over there yesterday and Murray knew all about me--gave me a tip not to buy this property."

"Danged right he's working for him," returned Old Bunk grimly. "He runs to him with everything he hears. It's a wonder I haven't killed that little tub of wienies--he crabs every trade I start to make. What's the matter with Old Bible-Back now?"

"Oh, nothing," answered Denver, "but if it's all the same to you I'd like to just locate that ground. Then I'll do my discovery work and if there ever comes up a question I'll have your quit-claim to boot."

"Suit yourself," growled Bunker, "but I want to tell you right now I've got a perfect t.i.tle to that property. I've held it continuously for fifteen years and----"

"Give me a quit-claim then; because Murray questions your t.i.tle and I don't want to take any chances. He says you haven't kept up your work."

"He does, hey!" challenged Bunker thrusting out his jaw belligerently, "well, I'd like to see somebody jump me. I'm living on my property, and possessory t.i.tle is the very best t.i.tle there is. By grab, if I thought that Mormon-faced old devil was thinking of jumping my ground----" He went off into uneasy mutterings and wrote out the quit-claim absently; then they went up together and, after going over the lines, Denver relocated the mine and named it the Silver Treasure.

"Think you guessed right, do you?" inquired Bunker with a grin. "Well, I hope you make a million. And if you do you'll never hear no kick from me--you've bought it and paid my price."

"Fair enough!" exclaimed Denver and shook hands on the trade, after which he bought some second-hand tools and went to work on a trail. Not a hundred feet down-stream from where the vein cropped out, the main trail crossed to the east side of the creek, leaving the mine on the side of a steep hill. A few days' work, while he was waiting for his powder, would clear out the worst of the cactus and catclaws and give him free access to his hole. Then he could clean out the open cut, set up a little forge and prepare for the driving of his tunnel. The sun was blazing hot, not a breath of wind was stirring and the sweat splashed the rocks as he toiled; but there was a song in Denver's heart that made his labors light and he hummed the "Barcarolle" as he worked. She was scornful of him now and thought only of her music; but the time would come when she would know him as her equal, for a miner can be an artist, too. And at swinging a double-jack or driving uppers Denver Russell was as good as any man. He worked for the joy of it and took pride in his craft--and that marks the true artist everywhere.

Yet now that his sale had been consummated and he had the money he needed, Bunker Hill suddenly lost all interest in Denver and retired into his sh.e.l.l. He had invited Denver once to come down to his house and share the hospitality of his home; but, after Denver's brusque, almost brutal refusal, Old Bunk had never been the same. He had shown Denver his claim and stated the price and told a few stories on the side, but he had shown in many ways that his pride had been hurt and that he did not fully approve. This was made the more evident by the careful way in which he avoided introducing his wife; and it became apparent beyond a doubt in that tense ecstatic minute when Drusilla had come in from the garden.

Then, if ever, was the moment when Denver should have been introduced; but Bunker had pointedly neglected the opportunity and left him still a stranger. And all as a reward for his foolish words and his refusal of well-meaning hospitality. Denver realized it now, but his pride was touched and he refrained from all further advances. If he was not good enough to know Old Bunker's family he was not good enough to a.s.sociate with him; and so for three days he lived without society, for the Professor, too, was estranged. He pa.s.sed Denver now with eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing even to recognize his presence; and, cut off for the time from all human intercourse, Denver turned at last to his phonograph.

The stars had come out in the velvety black sky, the hot stillness of evening had come, and from the valley below no sound came up but the eerie, _eh_, _eh_, _eh_, of tree toads. They were sitting by the stream and in cracks among the rocks, puffing out their pouched throats like toy balloons and raising, a shrill, haunting chorus. Their thin voices intermingled in an insistent, unearthly refrain as if the spirits of the dead had come again to gibber by the pool. Even the scales and trills of Drusilla had ceased, so hot and close was the night.

Denver set up his phonograph with its scrollwork front and patent filing cases and looked over the records which he had bought at great expense while the other boys were buying jazz. He was proud of them all but the one he valued most he reserved for another time. It was the "Barcarolle"

from "Les Contes D' Hoffmann," sung by Farrar and Scotti, and he put on instead a tenor solo that had cost him three dollars in Globe. Then a violin solo, "Tambourin Chinois," by some man with a foreign name; and at last the record that he liked the best, the "Cradle Song," by Schumann-Heink. And as he played it again he saw Drusilla come out and stand in the doorway, listening.

It was a beautiful song, very sweet, very tender, and sung with the feeling of an artist; yet something about it seemed to displease Drusilla, for she turned and went into the house. Perhaps, hearing the song, she was reminded of the singers, stepping forward in a blare of trumpets to meet the applause of vast audiences; or perhaps again she felt the difference between her efforts and theirs; but all the next day, when she should have been practicing, Drusilla was strangely silent. Denver paused in his work from time to time as he listened for the familiar roulades, then he swung his heavy sledge as if it were a feather-weight and beat out the measured song of steel on steel. He picked and shoveled, tearing down from above and building up the trail below; and as he worked he whistled the "Cradle Song," which was running through his brain. But as he swung the sledge again he was conscious of a presence, of someone watching from the sycamores; and, glancing down quickly he surprised Drusilla, looking up from among the trees. She met his eyes frankly but he turned away, for he remembered what the seeress had told him. So he went about his work and when he looked again his lady of the sycamores had fled.

CHAPTER XII

STEEL ON STEEL

The stifling summer heat fetched up wind from the south and thundercaps crowned the high peaks; then the rain came slashing and struck up the dust before it lifted and went scurrying away. The lizards gasped for breath, Drusilla ceased to sing, all Pinal seemed to palpitate with heat; but through heat and rain one song kept on--Denver's song of steel on steel. In the cool of his tunnel he drove up-holes and down, slugging manfully away until his round of holes was done and then shooting away the face. As the sun sank low he sat on the dump, sorting and sacking the best of his ore; and one evening as he worked Drusilla came by, walking slowly as if in deep thought.

He was down on his knees, a single-jack in his right hand a pile of quartzite at his left, and as she came to the forks he went on cracking rocks without so much as a stare. She glanced at him furtively, looked back towards the town, then turned off and came up his trail.

"Good evening," she began and as he nodded silently she seemed at a loss for words. "--I just wanted to ask you," she burst out hurriedly, "if you'd be willing to sell back the mine? I brought up the money with me."

She drew out the sweaty roll of bills which he had paid to her father and as Denver looked up she held it out to him, then clutched it convulsively back.

"I don't mean," she explained, "that you have to take it. But I thought perhaps--oh, is it very rich? I'm sorry I let him sell it."

"Why, no," answered Denver with his slow, honest smile, while his heart beat like a trip-hammer in his breast, "it isn't so awful rich. But I bought it, you know--well, I was sent here!"

"What, by Murray?" she cried aghast, "did he send you in to buy it?"

"Don't you think it!" returned Denver. "I'm working for myself and--well, I don't want to sell."

"No, but listen," she pleaded, her eyes beginning to fill, "I--I made a great mistake. This was father's best claim, he shouldn't have sold it; and so--won't you sell it back?"

She smiled, and Denver reached out blindly to accept the money, but at a thought he drew back his hand.

"No!" he said, "I was sent, you know--a fortune-teller told me to dig here."

"Oh, did he?" she exclaimed in great disappointment. "Won't some other claim do just as well? No, I don't mean that; but--tell me how it all came about."

"Well," began Denver, avoiding her eyes; and then he rose up abruptly and brushed off the top of a powder-box. "Sit down," he said, "I'd sure like to accommodate you, but here's how I come to buy it. There's a woman over in Globe--Mother Trigedgo is her name--and she saved the lives of a lot of us boys by predicting a cave in a mine. Well, she told my fortune and here's what she said:

"You will soon make a journey to the west and there, within the shadow of a place of death, you will find two treasures, one of silver and the other of gold. Choose well between them and both shall be yours, but--well, I don't need to tell you the rest. But this is my choice, see? And so, of course----"

"Oh, do you believe in those people?" she inquired incredulously, "I thought----"

"But not this one!" spoke up Denver stoutly, "I know that the most of them are fakes. But this Mother Trigedgo, she's a regular seeress--and it's all come true, every word! Apache Leap up there is the place of death. I came west after that fellow that robbed me; and this mine here and that gold prospect of the Professor's are both in the shadow of the peaks!"

"But maybe you guessed wrong," she cried, s.n.a.t.c.hing at a straw. "Maybe this isn't the one, after all. And if it isn't, oh, won't you let me buy it back for father? Because I'm not going to New York, after all."

"Well, what good would it do _him_?" burst out Denver vehemently.

"He's had it for fifteen years! If he thought so much of it why didn't he work it a little and ship out a few sacks of ore?"

"He's not a miner," protested Drusilla weakly and Denver grunted contemptuously.

"No," he said, "you told the truth that time--and that's what the matter with the whole district. The ground is all held by lead-pencil work and n.o.body's doing any digging. And now, when I come in and begin to find some ore, your old man wants his mining claim back."

"He does not!" retorted Drusilla, "he doesn't know I'm up here. But he hasn't been the same since he sold his claim, and I want to buy it back.

He sold it to get the money to send me to New York, and it was all an awful mistake. I can never become a great singer."

"No?" inquired Denver, glad to change the subject, "I thought you were doing fine. That evening when you----"

"Well, so did I!" she broke in, "until you played all those records; and then it came over me I couldn't sing like that if I tried a thousand years. I just haven't got the temperament. Those continental people have something that we lack--they're so Frenchy, so emotional, so full of fire! I've tried and I've tried and I just can't do it--I just can't interpret those parts!"

She stamped her foot and winked very fast and Denver forgot he was a stranger. He had heard her sing so often that he seemed to know her well, to have known her for years and years, and he ventured a comforting word.

"Oh well, you're young yet," he suggested shame-facedly, "perhaps it will come to you later."

"No, it won't!" she flared back, "I've got to give it up and go to teaching school!"

She stomped her foot more impatiently than ever and Denver went to cracking rocks.

"What do you think of that?" he inquired casually, handing over a chunk of ore; but she gazed at it uncomprehendingly.

"Isn't there anything I can do?" she began at last, "that will make you change your mind? I might give you this much money now and then pay you more later, when I go to teaching school."

"Well, what do you want it back for?" he demanded irritably, "it's been lying here idle for years. I'd think you'd be glad to have somebody get hold of it that would do a little work."