The Claim Jumpers Part 17

Bennington explained.

"I know. Well, it didn't matter, any way. I just captured this box.

Climb up. There's room. I've lost the doctor and Mrs. McPherson already."

Two mounted men, decorated with huge tin marshals' badges, rode slowly along forcing the crowd back to the right and to the left. The first horse race was on. Suddenly there was an eager scramble, a cloud of dust, a swift impression of dim ghostlike figures. It was over. The crowd flowed into the street again.

The two pressed together, hand in hand, on the top of the dry-goods box. They laughed at each other and everything. Something beautiful was very near to them, for this was the Pioneer's Picnic, and both remembered that the Pioneer's Picnic marked the limit of many things.

"What's next? What's next?" she called excitedly to a tall young cattleman.

The cowboy looked up at her, and his face relaxed into a pleased smile.

"Why, it's a drillin' match over in the next street, miss," he answered politely. "You'd better run right along over and get a good place." He glanced at de Laney, smiled again, and turned away, apparently to follow his own advice.

"Come on, we'll follow him," cried Mary, jumping down.

"And abandon our box?" objected Bennington. But she was already in full pursuit of the tall cowboy.

The ring around the large boulder--dragged by mule team from the hills--had just begun to form when they arrived, so they were enabled to secure good places near the front rank, where they kneeled on their handkerchiefs, and the crowd hemmed them in at the back. The drilling match was to determine which pair of contestants could in a given time, with sledge and drill, cut the deepest hole in a granite boulder.

To one who stood apart, the sight must have been picturesque in the extreme. The white dust, stirred by restless feet, rose lazily across the heated air. The sun shone down clear and hot with a certain wide-eyed glare that is seen only in the rarefied atmosphere of the West. Around the outer edge of the ring hovered a few anxious small boys, agonized that they were missing part of the show. Stolidly indifferent Indians, wrapped close in their blankets, smoked silently, awaiting the next pony race, the riders of which were skylarking about trying to pull each other from their horses' backs.

When the last pair had finished, the judges measured the depths of the holes drilled, and announced the victors.

The crowd shouted and broke for the saloons. The latter had been plying a brisk business, so that men were about ready to embrace in brotherhood or in battle with equal alacrity.

Suddenly it was the dinner hour. The crowd broke. Bennington and Mary realized they had been wandering about hand in hand. They directed their steps toward the McPhersons with the greatest propriety. It was a glorious picnic.

The house was gratefully cool and dark after the summer heat out of doors. The little doctor sat in the darkest room and dissertated cannily on the strange variety of subjects which a Scotchman can always bring up on the most ordinary occasions.

The doctor was not only a learned man, as was evidenced by his position in the School of Mines and his wonderful collections, but was a scout of long standing, a physician of merit, and an Indian authority of acknowledged weight. Withal he was so modest that these things became known only by implication or hearsay, never by direct evidence. Mrs.

McPherson was not Scotch at all, but plain comfortable American, redolent of wholesome cleanliness and good temper, and beaming with kindliness and round spectacles. Never was such a doctor; never was such a Mrs. McPherson; never was such a dinner! And they brought in after-dinner coffee in small cups.

"Ah, ha! Mr. de Laney," laughed the doctor, who had been watching him with quizzical eye. "We're pretty bad, but we aren't got quite to savagery yet."

Bennington hastened to disavow.

"That's all right," the doctor rea.s.sured him; "that's all right. I didn't wonder at ye in this country, but Mrs. McPherson and mysel' jest take a wee trip occasionally to keep our wits bright. Isn't it so, Mrs.

Mac?"

"It is that," said she with a doubtful inner thought as to the propriety of offering cream.

"And as for you," went on the doctor dissertatively, "I suppose ye're getting to be somewhat of a miner yourself. I mind me we did a bit of a.s.say work for your people the other day--the Crazy Horse, wasn't it? A good claim I should judge, from the sample, and so I wrote Davidson."

"When was this?" asked the Easterner, puzzled.

"The last week."

"I didn't know he had had any a.s.saying done."

"O weel," said the doctor comfortably, "it may not have occurred to him to report yet. It was rich."

"Mrs. McPherson, let's talk about dresses," called Mary across the table. "Here we've come down for a _holiday_ and they insist on talking mining."

And so the subject was dropped, but Bennington could not get it out of his mind. Why should Mizzou have had the Crazy Horse a.s.sayed without saying anything about it to him? Why had he not reported the result?

How did it happen that the doctor's a.s.sistants had found the ore rich when the company's a.s.sayers East had proved it poor? Why should Mizzou have it a.s.sayed at all, since he was no longer connected with the company? But, above all, supposing he had done this with the intention of keeping it secret from Bennington, what possible benefit or advantage could the old man derive from such an action?

He puzzled over this. It seemed to still the effervescence of his joy.

He realized suddenly that he had been very careless in a great many respects. The work had all been trusted to Davidson, while he, often, had never even seen it. He had been entirely occupied with the girl. He experienced that sudden sinking feeling which always comes to a man whom neglected duty wakes from pleasure.

What was Davidson's object? Could it be that he hoped to "buy in" a rich claim at a low figure, and to that end had sent poor samples East?

The more he thought of this the more reasonable it seemed. His resignation was for the purpose of putting him in the position of outside purchaser.

He resolved to carry through the affair diplomatically. During the afternoon he ruminated on how this was to be done. Mary could not understand his preoccupation. It piqued her. A slight strangeness sprang up between them which he was too _distrait_ to notice. Finally, as he tumbled into bed that night, an idea so brilliant came to him that he sat bolt upright in sheer delight at his own astuteness.

He would ask Dr. McPherson for a copy of the a.s.says. If his suspicions were correct, these a.s.says would represent the richest samples. He would send them at once to Bishop with a statement of the case, in that manner putting the capitalist on his guard. There was something exquisitely humorous to him in the idea of thus turning to his own use the information which Davidson had acc.u.mulated for his fraudulent purposes. He went to sleep chuckling over it.

CHAPTER XV

THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

The next morning the young man had quite regained his good spirits. The girl, on the other hand, was rather quiet.

Dr. McPherson made no objections to furnishing a copy of the a.s.says.

The records, however, were at the School of Mines. He drove down to get them, and in the interim the two young people, at Mrs. McPherson's suggestion, went to see the train come in.

The platform of the station was filled to suffocation. a.s.suming that the crowd's intention was to view the unaccustomed locomotive, it was strange it did not occur to them that the opposite side of the track or the adjacent prairie would afford more elbow room. They huddled together on the boards of the platform as though the appearance of the spectacle depended on every last individual's keeping his feet from the naked earth. They pushed good-naturedly here and there, expostulating, calling to one another facetiously, looking anxiously down the straight, dwindling track for the first glimpse of the locomotive.

Mary and Bennington found themselves caught up at once into the vortex.

After a few moments of desperate clinging together, they were forced into the front row, where they stood on the very edge, braced back against the pressure, half laughing, half vexed.

The train drew in with a grinding rush. From the step swung the conductor. Faces looked from the open windows.

On the platform of one of the last cars stood a young girl and three men. One of the men was elderly, with white hair and side whiskers. The other two were young and well dressed. The girl was of our best patrician type--the type that may know little, think little, say little, and generally amount to little, and yet carry its negative qualities with so used an air of polite society as to raise them by sheer force to the dignity of positive virtues. From head to foot she was faultlessly groomed. From eye to att.i.tude she was languidly superior--the impolitic would say bored. Yet every feature of her appearance and bearing, even to the very tips of her enamelled and sensibly thick boots, implied that she was of a different cla.s.s from the ordinary, and satisfied on "common people" that impulse which attracts her lesser sisters to the vulgar menagerie. She belonged to the proper street--at the proper time of day. Any one acquainted with the species would have known at once that this private-car trip to Deadwood was to please the prosperous-looking gentleman with the side whiskers, and that it was made bearable only by the two smooth-shaven individuals in the background.

She caught sight of the pair directly in front of her, and raised her lorgnette with a languid wrist.

Her stare was from the outside-the-menagerie standpoint. Bennington was not used to it. For the moment he had the Fifth Avenue feeling, and knew that he was not properly dressed. Therefore, naturally, he was confused. He lowered his head and blushed a little. Then he became conscious that Mary's clear eyes were examining him in a very troubled fashion.

Three hours and a half afterward it suddenly occurred to him that she might have thought he had blushed and lowered his head because he was ashamed to be seen by this other girl in her company; but it was then too late.

The train pulled out. The Westerners at once scattered in all directions. Half an hour later the choking cloud dusts rose like smoke from the different trails that led north or south or west to the heart of the Hills.

"The picnic is over," he suggested gently at their noon camping place.