The Man from the Bitter Roots Part 10

It was then he discovered that she had especially fine eyes.

"I couldn't have done less than I did, under the circ.u.mstances." Mr.

Sprudell closed a hand and regarded the polished nails modestly.

"But--er--frankly, I would rather not talk for publication."

"People who have actually done something worth telling will never talk,"

declared Miss Dunbar, in mock despair, "while those----"

"But you can understand," interrupted Mr. Sprudell, with a gesture of depreciation, "how a man feels to seem to"--he all but achieved a blush--"to toot his own horn."

"I can understand your reluctance perfectly" Miss Dunbar admitted sympathetically, and it was then he noticed how low and pleasant her voice was. She felt that she did understand perfectly--she had a notion that nothing short of total paralysis of the vocal cords would stop him after he had gone through the "modest hero's" usual preamble.

"But," she urged, "there is so much crime and cowardice, so many dreadful things, printed, that I think stories of self-sacrifice and brave deeds like yours should be given the widest publicity--a kind of antidote--you know what I mean?"

"Exactly," Mr. Sprudell acquiesced eagerly. "Moral effect upon the youth of the land. Establishes standards of conduct, raises high ideals in the mind of the reader. Of course, looking at it from that point of view----" Obviously Mr. Sprudell was weakening.

"That's the view you must take of it," insisted Miss Dunbar sweetly.

Mr. Sprudell regarded his toe. Charming as she was, he wondered if she could do the interview--him--justice. A hint of his interesting personality would make an effective preface, he thought, and a short sketch of his childhood culminating in his successful business career.

"Out there in the silences, where the peaks pierce the blue----" began Mr. Sprudell dreamily.

"Where?" Miss Dunbar felt for a pencil.

"Er--Bitter Root Mountains." The business-like question and tone disconcerted him slightly.

Mr. Sprudell backed up and started again:

"Out there in the silence, where the peaks pierce the blue, we pitched our tents in the wilderness--in the forest primeval. We pillowed our heads upon nature's heart, and lay at night watching the cold stars shivering in their firmament." That was good! Mr. Sprudell wondered if it was original or had he read it somewhere? "By day, like primordial man, we crept around beetling crags and scaled inaccessible peaks in pursuit of the wild things----"

"Who crept with you?" inquired Miss Dunbar prosaically. "How far were you from a railroad?"

A shade of irritation replaced the look of poetic exaltation upon Sprudell's face. It would have been far better if they had sent a man. A man would undoubtedly have taken the interview verbatim.

"An old prospector and mountain man named Griswold--Uncle Bill they call him--was my guide, and we were--let me see--yes, all of a hundred miles from a railroad."

"What you were saying was--a--beautiful," declared Miss Dunbar, noting his injured tone, "but, you see, unfortunately in a newspaper we must have facts. Besides"--she glanced at the wrist watch beneath the frill of her coat sleeve--"the first edition goes to press at eleven-forty-five, and I would like to have time to do your story justice."

Mr. Sprudell reluctantly folded his oratorical pinions and dived to earth.

Beginning with the moment when he had emerged from the canon where he had done some remarkable shooting at a band of mountain sheep--he doubted if ever he would be able to repeat the performance--and first sensed danger in the leaden clouds, to the last desperate struggle through the snowdrifts in the paralyzing cold of forty below, with poor old Uncle Bill Griswold on his back, he told the story graphically, with great minuteness of detail. And when divine Providence led him at last to the lonely miner's cabin on the wild tributary of the Snake, and he had sunk, fainting and exhausted, to the floor with his inert burden on his back, Mr. Sprudell's eyes filled, touched to tears by the story of his own bravery.

Miss Dunbar's wide, intent eyes and parted lips inspired him to go further. Under the stimulus of her flattering attention and the thought that through her he was talking to an audience of at least two hundred thousand people, he forgot the caution which was always stronger than any rash impulse. The circulation of the _Dispatch_ was local; and besides, Bruce Burt was dead, he reasoned swiftly.

He told her of the tragedy in the lonely cabin, and described to her the scene into which he had stumbled, getting into the telling something of his own feeling of shock. In imagination she could see the big, silent, black-browed miner cooking, baking, deftly doing a woman's work, scrubbing at the stains on logs and flooring, wiping away the black splashes like a tidy housewife. "_This_ is my story," she thought.

"Why did they quarrel?"

"It began with a row over pancakes, and wound up with a fight over salt."

She stared incredulously.

"Fact--he said so."

"And what was the brute's name?"

He answered, not too readily:

"Why--Bruce Burt."

"And the man he murdered?"

"They called him Slim Naudain."

"Naudain!" Her startled cry made him look at her in wonder. "Naudain!

What did they call him beside Slim?"

"Frederick was his given name."

"Freddie!" she whispered, aghast.

Sprudell stared at her, puzzled.

"It _must_ be! The name is too uncommon."

"I don't understand."

"He must have been my brother--my half-brother--my mother was married twice. It is too dreadful!" She stared at Sprudell with wide, shocked eyes.

Sprudell was staring, too, but he seemed more disconcerted than amazed.

"It's hardly likely," he said, rea.s.suringly. "When did you hear from him last?"

"It has been all of twelve years since we heard from him even indirectly. I wrote to him in Silver City, New Mexico, where we were told he was working in a mine. Perhaps he did not get my letter; at least I've tried to think so, for he did not answer."

Indecision, uncertainty, were uppermost among the expressions on Sprudell's face, but the girl did not see them, for her downcast eyes were filled with tears. Finally he said slowly and in a voice curiously restrained.

"Yes, he did receive it and I have it here. It's a very strange coincidence, Miss Dunbar, the most remarkable I have ever known; you will agree when I tell you that my object in coming East was to find you and your mother for the purpose of turning over his belongings--this letter you mention, an old photograph of you and some five hundred dollars in money he left."

"It's something to remember, that at least he kept my letter and my picture." She swallowed hard and bit her lips for self-control. "He was not a good son or a good brother, Mr. Sprudell," she continued with an effort, "but since my father and mother died he's been all I had. And I've made myself believe that at heart he was all right and that when he was older he would think enough of us some time to come home. I've counted on it--on him--more than I realized until now. It is"--she clenched her hands tightly and swallowed hard again--"a blow."

Sprudell replied soothingly

"This fellow Burt said his partner thought a lot of you."

"It's strange," Helen looked up reflectively, "that a cold-blooded murderer like that would have turned over my brother's things--would have sent anything back at all."

"I _made_ him," said Sprudell.