The Man from the Bitter Roots Part 27

"Relics of past greatness," Helen replied smiling. "A remodelled gown that was my mother's. One good street suit at a time and a blouse or two is the best I can do. I am merely a wonderful bluff in the evening."

Bruce felt that it was a sore spot although she was smiling, and he could not help being glad, for it meant she needed him. If he had found her in prosperous circ.u.mstances the success or failure of the placer would have meant very little to her. He _must_ succeed, he told himself exuberantly; his incentive now was to make her life happier and easier.

"If everything goes this summer as I hope--and expect--" he said slowly, "you need not be a 'bluff' at any hour of the day."

Her eyes widened.

"What do you mean?"

Then Bruce described the ground that he and Slim had located. He told of his confidence in it, of his efforts to raise the money to develop it, and the means by which he had accomplished it. Encouraged by her intelligent interest he talked with eager enthusiasm of his plans for working it, describing mercury traps, and undercurrents, discussing the comparative merits of pole and block, Hungarian and caribou rifles. Once he was well started it seemed to him that he must have been saving up things all his life to tell to this girl. He talked almost breathlessly as though he had much to say and an appallingly short time to say it in.

He told her about his friend, Old Felix, and about the "sa.s.sy" blue-jays and the darting kingfisher that nested in the cut-bank where he worked, of the bush-birds that shared his sour-dough bread. He tried to picture to her the black bear lumbering over the river bowlders to the service berry bush across the river, where he stood on his hind legs, cramming his mouth and watching over his shoulder, looking like a funny little man in baggy trousers. He told her of his hero, the great Aga.s.siz, of his mother, of whom even yet he could not speak without a break in his voice, and of his father, as he remembered him, harsh, silent, interested only in his cattle.

It dawned upon Bruce suddenly that he had been talking about himself--babbling for nearly an hour.

"Why haven't you stopped me?" he demanded, pausing in the middle of a sentence and coloring to his hair. "I've been prattling like an old soldier, telling war stories in a Home. What's got into me?"

Helen laughed aloud at his dismay.

"Honest," he a.s.sured her ruefully, "I never broke out like this before.

And the worst of it is that I know with the least encouragement from you I'll start again. I never wanted to talk so much in my life. I'm ransacking my brain this very minute to see if there's anything else I know that I haven't told you. Oh, yes, there is," he exclaimed putting his hand inside his coat, "there's some more money coming to you from Slim--I forgot to tell you. It isn't a great deal but--" he laid in her hand the bank-notes Sprudell had been obliged to give him in Bartlesville after having denied finding her.

Helen looked from the money to Bruce in surprised inquiry:

"But Mr. Sprudell has already given me what Freddie left."

"Oh, this is another matter--a collection I made for him after Sprudell left," he replied glibly. It was considerable satisfaction to think that Sprudell had had to pay for his perfidy and she would benefit by it.

The last thing that Helen had expected to do was to cry, but the money meant so much to her just then; her relief was so great that the tears welled into her eyes. She bit her lip hard but they kept coming, and, mortified at such an exhibition, she laid her arm on the back of the worn plush sofa and hid her face.

Tears, however embarra.s.sing, have a way of breaking down barriers and Bruce impulsively took in his the other hand that lay in her lap.

"What is it, Miss Dunbar? Won't you tell me? If you only knew how proud and happy I should be to have you talk to me frankly. You can't imagine how I've looked forward to being allowed to do something for you. It means everything to me--far more than to you."

Bruce remembered having seen his mother cry, through homesickness and loneliness, softly, uncomplainingly, as she went about her work in the ugly frame house back there on the bleak prairie. And he remembered the roars of rage in which Peroxide Louise had voiced her jealousy. But he had seen few women cry, and now he was so sorry for her that it hurt him--he felt as though someone had laid a hand upon his heart and squeezed it.

"It's relief, I suppose," she said brokenly. "It's disgusting that money should be so important."

"And do you need it so badly?" Bruce asked gravely.

"I need it if I am to go on living." And she told him of the doctor's warning.

"You must go away at once." Brace's voice was sharp with anxiety. "I wish you could come West," he added wistfully.

"I'd love it, but it is out of the question; it's too far--too expensive."

Bruce's black eyebrows came together. His poverty had never seemed so galling, so humiliating.

"I must go." She got up quickly. "I'm late. Do my eyes look very badly?"

"They're all right." He turned abruptly for his hat. He knew that if he looked an instant longer he should kiss her! What was the matter with him anyhow? he asked himself for the second time. Was he getting maudlin? Not content with talking a strange girl to death he would put on the finishing touch by kissing her. It was high time he was getting back to the mountains!

He walked with her to the office, wishing with all his heart that the blocks were each a mile long, and in his fear lest he miss a single word she had to say he pushed divers pedestrians out of his way with so little ceremony that only his size saved him from unpleasant consequences.

It was incredible and absurd that he should find it so hard to say good-bye to a girl he had just met, but when they reached the steps it was not until he had exhausted every infantile excuse he could think of for detaining her just an instant longer that he finally said reluctantly:

"I suppose you must go, but--" he hesitated; it seemed a tremendous thing to ask of her because it meant so much to him--"I'd like to write to you if you'd answer my letter. Pardners always write to each other, you know." He was smiling, but Helen was almost startled by the wistful earnestness in his eyes. "I'd like to know how it feels," he added, "to draw something in the mail besides a mail-order catalogue--to have something to look forward to."

"To be sure--we _are_ partners, aren't we?"

"I've had a good many but I never had one I liked better." Bruce replied with such fervor that Helen felt herself coloring.

"I don't like being a _silent_ partner," she returned lightly. "I wish I could do my share. I'm even afraid to say I'll pray for your success for, to the present, I've never made a prayer that's been answered.

But," and she sobered, "I want to tell you I _do_ believe in you. It's like a fairy tale--too wonderful and good to be true--but I'm going to bank on it and whatever happens now--no matter how disagreeable--I shall be telling myself that it is of no importance for in a few months my hard times will all be done."

Bruce took the hand she gave him and looked deep into her eyes.

"I'll try--with all my might," he said huskily, and in his heart the simple promise was a vow.

He watched her as she ran up the steps and disappeared inside the wide doors of the office building--resenting again the thought that she had "hours"--that she had to work for pay. If all went well--if there were no accidents or miscalculations--he should be able to see her again by--certainly by October. What a long time half a year was when a person came to think of it! What a lot of hours there were in six months! Bruce sighed as he turned away.

He looked up to meet the vacant gaze of a nondescript person lounging on the curbing. It was the fourth or fifth time that morning he thought he had seen that same blank face.

"Is this town full of twins and triplets in battered derbies?" Bruce asked himself, eying the idler sharply as he pa.s.sed, "or is that hombre tagging me around?"

XVII

A PRACTICAL MAN

Bruce's thoughts were a jumble of dynamos and motors, direct and alternating currents, volts and amperes, when James J. Jennings'

papier-mache suitcase hit him in the shins in the lobby of a hotel which was headquarters for mining men in the somnolent city on the Pacific coast.

Jennings promptly dropped the suitcase and thrust out a hand which still had ground into the knuckles oil and smudge acquired while helping put up a power-plant in Alaska.

"Where did you come from--what are you doing here?" Bruce had seen him last in Alberta.

"Been up in the North Country, but"--James lifted a remarkable upper lip in a shy grin of ecstasy--"I aims to git married and stay in the States."

"Shoo--you don't say so!" Bruce exclaimed, properly surprised and congratulatory.

"Yep," he beamed, then dropped, as he added mournfully, "So fur I've had awful bad luck with my wives; they allus die or quit me."

Bruce ventured the hope that his luck might change with this, his last--and as Jennings explained--fifth venture.