The Cross-Cut Part 9

"What 'll we do?" he wailed.

Fairchild turned. "I don't know about you--but I 'm going to the mine."

"It won't do any good--bodies don't float. It may never float--if it gets caught down in the timbers somewheres."

"Have to organize a bucket brigade." It was a suggestion from one of the crowd.

"Why not borry the Argonaut pump? They ain't using it."

"Go get it! Go get it!" This time it was the wail of the little jeweler. "Tell 'em Sam Herbenfelder sent you. They 'll let you have it."

"Can't carry the thing on my shoulder."

"I 'll get the Sampler's truck"--a new volunteer had spoken--"there won't be any kick about it."

Another suggestion, still another. Soon men began to radiate, each on a mission. The word pa.s.sed down the street. More loiterers--a silver miner spends a great part of his leisure time in simply watching the crowd go by--hurried to join the excited throng. Groups, en route to the picture show, decided otherwise and stopped to learn of the excitement. The crowd thickened. Suddenly Fairchild looked up sharply at the sound of a feminine voice.

"What is the matter?"

"Harry Harkins got drowned." All too willingly the news was dispersed.

Fairchild's eyes were searching now in the half-light from the faint street bulbs. Then they centered. It was Anita Richmond, standing at the edge of the crowd, questioning a miner, while beside her was a thin, youthful counterpart of a hard-faced father, Maurice Rodaine.

Just a moment of queries, then the miner's hand pointed to Fairchild as he turned toward her.

"It's his partner."

She moved forward then and Fairchild went to meet her.

"I 'm sorry," she said, and extended her hand. Fairchild gripped it eagerly.

"Thank you. But it may not be as bad as the rumors."

"I hope not." Then quickly she withdrew her hand, and somewhat fl.u.s.tered, turned as her companion edged closer. "Maurice, this is Mr.

Fairchild," she announced, and Fairchild could do nothing but stare.

She knew his name! A second more and it was explained; "My father knew his father very well."

"I think my own father was acquainted too," was the rejoinder, and the eyes of the two men met for an instant in conflict. The girl did not seem to notice.

"I sold him a ticket this morning to the dance, not knowing who he was.

Then father happened to see him pa.s.s the house and pointed him out to me as the son of a former friend of his. Funny how those things happen, is n't it?"

"Decidedly funny!" was the caustic rejoinder of the younger Rodaine.

Fairchild laughed, to cover the air of intensity. He knew instinctively that Anita Richmond was not talking to him simply because she had sold him a ticket to a dance and because her father might have pointed him out. He felt sure that there was something else behind it,--the feeling of a debt which she owed him, a feeling of companionship engendered upon a sunlit road, during the moments of stress, and the continuance of that meeting in those few moments in the drug store, when he had handed her back her ten-dollar bill. She had called herself a cad then, and the feeling that she perhaps had been abrupt toward a man who had helped her out of a disagreeable predicament was prompting her action now; Fairchild felt sure of that.

And he was glad of the fact, very glad. Again he laughed, while Rodaine eyed him narrowly. Fairchild shrugged his shoulders.

"I 'm not going to believe this story until it's proven to me," came calmly. "Rumors can be started too easily. I don't see how it was possible for a man to fall into a mine shaft and not struggle there long enough for a man who had heard his shout to see him."

"Who brought the news?" Rodaine asked the question.

Fairchild deliberately chose his words:

"A tall, thin, ugly old man, with mean squint eyes and a scar straight up his forehead."

A flush appeared on the other man's face. Fairchild saw his hands contract, then loosen.

"You 're trying to insult my father!"

"Your father?" Fairchild looked at him blankly. "Would n't that be a rather difficult job--especially when I don't know him?"

"You described him."

"And you recognized the description."

"Maurice! Stop it!" The girl was tugging at Rodaine's sleeve. "Don't say anything more. I 'm sorry--" and she looked at Fairchild with a glance he could not interpret--"that anything like this could have come up."

"I am equally so--if it has caused you embarra.s.sment."

"You 'll get a little embarra.s.sment out of it yourself--before you get through!" Rodaine was scowling at him. Again Anita Richmond caught his arm.

"Maurice! Stop it! How could the thing have been premeditated when he did n't even know your father? Come--let's go on. The crowd's getting thicker."

The narrow-faced man obeyed her command, and together they turned out into the street to avoid the constantly growing throng, and to veer toward the picture show, Fairchild watching after them, wondering whether to curse or luck himself. His temper, his natural enmity toward the two men whom he knew to be his enemies, had leaped into control, for a moment, of his tongue and his senses, and in that moment what had it done to his place in the estimation of the woman whom he had helped on the Denver road? Yet, who was she? What connection had she with the Rodaines? And had she not herself done something which had caused a fear of discovery should the pursuing sheriff overtake her? Bewildered, Robert Fairchild turned back to the more apparent thing which faced him: the probable death of Harry--the man upon whom he had counted for the knowledge and the perspicacity to aid him in the struggle against Nature and against mystery--who now, according to the story of Squint Rodaine, lay dead in the black waters of the Blue Poppy shaft.

Carbide lights had begun to appear along the street, as miners, summoned by hurrying gossip mongers, came forward to a.s.sist in the search for the missing man. High above the general conglomeration of voices could be heard the cries of the instigator of activities, Sam Herbenfelder, bemoaning the loss of his diamond, ninety per cent. of the cost of which remained to be paid. To Sam, the loss of Harry was a small matter, but that loss entailed also the disappearance of a yellow, carbon-filled diamond, as yet unpaid for. His lamentations became more vociferous than ever. Fairchild went forward, and with an outstretched hand grasped him by the collar.

"Why don't you wait until we 've found out something before you get the whole town excited?" he asked. "All we 've got is one man's word for this."

"Yes," Sam spread his hands, "but look who it was! Squint Rodaine!

Ach--will I ever get back that diamond?"

"I 'm starting to the mine," Fairchild released him. "If you want to go along and look for yourself, all right. But wait until you 're sure about the thing before you go crazy over it."

However, Sam had other thoughts. Hastily he shot through the crowd, organizing the bucket brigade and searching for news of the Argonaut pump, which had not yet arrived. Half-disgusted, Fairchild turned and started up the hill, a few miners, their carbide lamps swinging beside them, following him. Far in the rear sounded the wails of Sam Herbenfelder, organizing his units of search.

Fairchild turned at the entrance of the mine and waited for the first of the miners and the accompanying gleam of his carbide. Then, they went within and to the shaft, the light shining downward upon the oily, black water below. Two objects floated there, a broken piece of timber, torn from the side of the shaft, where some one evidently had grasped hastily at it in an effort to stop a fall, and a new, four-dented hat, gradually becoming water-soaked and sinking slowly beneath the surface. And then, for the first time, fear clutched at Fairchild's heart,--fear which hope could not ignore.

"There 's his hat." It was a miner staring downward.

Fairchild had seen it, but he strove to put aside the thought.

"True," he answered, "but any one could lose a hat, simply by looking over the edge of the shaft." Then, as if in proof of the forlorn hope which he himself did not believe; "Harry 's a strong man. Certainly he would know how to swim. And in any event he should have been able to have kept afloat for at least a few minutes. Rodaine says that he heard a shout and ran right in here; but all that he could see was ruffled water and a floating hat. I--" Then he paused suddenly. It had come to him that Rodaine might have helped in the demise of Harry!

Shouts sounded from outside, and the roaring of a motor truck as it made its slow, tortuous way up the boulder-strewn road with its gullies and innumerable ruts. Voices came, rumbling and varied. Lights.

Gaining the mouth of the tunnel. Fairchild could see a ma.s.s of shadows outlined by the carbides, all following the leadership of a small, excited man, Sam Herbenfelder, still seeking his diamond.

The big pump from the Argonaut tunnel was aboard the truck, which was followed by two other auto vehicles, each loaded with gasoline engines and smaller pumps. A hundred men were in the crowd, all equipped with ropes and buckets. Sam Herbenfelder's pleas had been heard. The search was about to begin for the body of Harry and the diamond that circled one finger. And Fairchild hastened to do his part.

Until far into the night they worked and strained to put the big pump into position; while crews of men, four and five in a group, bailed water as fast as possible, that the aggregate might be lessened to the greatest possible extent before the pumps, with their hoses, were attached. Then the gasoline engines began to snort, great lengths of tubing were let down into the shaft, and spurting water started down the mountain side as the task of unwatering the shaft began.