The One-Way Trail Part 27

of bills that dazzled the lay-preacher's eyes, and talked of buying a ranch and building himself a mansion on it.

Nor did he visit the saloon. He was sober, and looked the picture of health and cheerfulness. He talked freely of his strike and its possibilities. He swaggered and patronized his less fortunate fellow townsmen, until he had them all by the ears and set them tumbling over each other to get out after the gold.

He was followed and watched. Men shadowed his every movement in the hope of discovering his mine, but he was too clever for them. They kept his trail to the hills, but there he quickly lost them. He never took the same route twice, and, on one occasion, traveled for three days and nights, due north, before entering the foot-hills. He was as elusive as the very gold his pursuers sought.

One by one the would-be prospectors returned disappointed to the village, and again took up their various works, forced to the sorry consolation of listening to the tales of Will's wealth, and watching him occasionally run in to the village and scatter his money broadcast amongst the storekeepers.

Of all Barnriff Peter Blunt seemed the least disturbed. He went calmly on with his work, smiling gently whenever spoken to on the subject.

And his reply was invariably the same.

"I'm not handling 'placer,'" he told Doc Crombie one day, when that strenuous person was endeavoring to "pump" him on the subject. "I allow 'placers' are easy, and make a big show. But my 'meat' is high grade ore that's going to work for years. His strike don't interest me a heap, except it proves there's gold in plenty around these parts."

Nor could he be drawn into further discussion in the matter.

Yet his interest was far greater than he admitted. He was puzzled, too. He could not quite make out how he had missed the signs of alluvial deposit. Both scientifically and practically he was a master of his hobby, in spite of local opinion. Yet he had missed this rich haul under his very nose. That was his interest as a gold miner. But there was another side to it, which occupied his thoughts even more.

And it was an interest based on his knowledge of Will Henderson, and--various other things.

He was out at a temporary camp at one of his cuttings with Elia, who, since his first sojourn with the prospector, now frequently joined him in his work. They had just finished dinner, and Peter was smoking and resting. Elia was perched like a bird on an upturned box, watching his friend with cold, thoughtful eyes. Suddenly he blurted out an irrelevant remark.

"Folks has quit chasin' Will Henderson," he said.

"Eh?"

Peter stared at him intently. He was becoming accustomed to the curious twists of the lad's warped mind, but he wondered what he was now driving at.

"He's too slim for 'em," Elia went on, gazing steadily into the fire.

"He's slim, an'--bad. But he ain't as bad as me."

Peter smiled at the naive confession.

"You're talking foolishly," he said, in a tone his smile belied.

"Maybe I am. Say, I could track Will."

"Well?"

"I'm goin' to. But I'll need your help. See here, Peter, I'll need to get away from sis, an' if I get out without sayin', she'll set half the village lookin' to find me. If I'm with you, she won't. See?"

Peter nodded.

"But why do you want to track him?"

"'Cause he's bad--an' ain't got no 'strike.' He's on some crook's work. Maybe he's cattle duffin'. I mean to find out."

Peter's eyes grew cold and hard, and the boy watching him read what he saw with a certainty that was almost uncanny.

"You've been thinking that always, too," he said. "You don't believe in his strike, neither," he added triumphantly.

"I don't see why I shouldn't," replied Peter, guardedly.

"Yes, you do," the boy persisted. "It's because he's bad. Say, he's makin' Eve bad takin' that money he sends her. An' she don't know it."

"And supposing it's as you say--and you found out?"

"The boys 'ud hang him. And--and Eve would be quit of him."

"And you'd break her heart. She's your sister, and would sooner cut off her right hand than hurt you."

Elia laughed silently. There was a fiendishness in his manner that was absolutely repulsive.

"Guess you're wrong," he said decidedly. "It wouldn't break Eve's heart worth a cent. She don't care a cuss for him, since--since that night. Eve's a heap high-toned in her notions. He hit her. He nigh killed her. She ain't one to fergit easy." He laughed again. "I ken see clear through Eve. If Will was dead, in six months she'd marry agin. D'ye know who? Jim Thorpe. She's jest a fool gal. She's allus liked Jim a heap. That night's stickin' in her head. She ain't fergot Jim--nor you. Say, d'you know what she's doin'? When Will sends her money she sets it aside an' don't touch it. She don't buy things for herself. She hates it. She lives on her sewin'. That's Eve. I tell you she hates Will, same as I do, an' I'm--I'm glad."

Peter smiled incredulously. He didn't believe that the girl's love for her husband was dead. Possibly her att.i.tude deceived the lad, as well it might. How could one of his years understand a matter of this sort?

But he thought long before he replied to the venomous tirade. He knew he must stop the lad's intention. He felt that it was not for him to hunt Will down, even--even if he were a cattle-thief.

"Look here, laddie," he said at last, "I promised you all the gold I found in this place. I'm going to keep that promise, but you've got to do something for me. See? Now I'm not going to say you can't track Will if you've a notion to. But I do say this, if he's on the crook, and you find it out, you'll promise only to tell me and no one else.

You leave Will to me. I'm not going to have you hanging your sister's husband. You've got to promise me, laddie, or you don't see the color of my gold. And don't you try to play me up, either, because I'll soon know if you are. Are you going to have that gold?"

The boy's face was obstinately set. Yet Peter realized that his cupidity was fighting with the viciousness of his twisted mind, and had no doubt of the outcome. The thought of seeing Will hang was a delirious joy to Elia. He saw the man he hated suffering, writhing in agony at the end of a rope, and dying by inches. It was hard to give it up. Yet the thought of Peter's gold--not the man himself, of whom, in his strange fashion, he was fond--was very sweet. Gold! It appealed to him, young as he was, as it might have appealed to a mind forty years older; the mind of a man beaten by poverty and embittered by a long life of hopeless struggle. Finally, as Peter expected, cupidity won the day, but not without a hot verbal protest.

"You're a fool man some ways, Peter," the boy at last declared in a snarling acquiescence. "What for d'you stop me? Gee, you've nothing to help him for. Say, I'd watch him die, I'd spit at him. I'd--I'd----"

But his frenzy of evil joy made it impossible for him to find further words. He broke off, and, a moment later, went on coldly: "All right, I'll do as you say. Gee, but it makes me sick. Eh? No. I won't tell other folk. Nor Eve--but--but you're goin' to give me that gold, an'

I'll be rich. Say, I'll be able to buy buggies, an' hosses, an'

ranches, an' things? I'll be able to have plenty folks workin' for me?

Gee! I'll make 'em work. I'll make 'em sick to death when I get that gold."

Peter rose abruptly to return to work. The boy's diseased mind nauseated him. His heart revolted with each fresh revelation of the terrible degeneracy that possessed the lad.

CHAPTER XVIII

A WOMAN'S INSTINCT

The women of Barnriff were as keenly alive to the prevailing excitements as the men. Perhaps they were affected differently, but this was only natural. The village, with its doings, its gossip, was their life. The grinding monotony of household drudgery left them little margin for expansion. Their horizon possessed the narrowest limits in consequence. Nor could it be otherwise. Most of them lived in a state of straining two ends across an impossible gulf, and the process reduced them to a condition of pessimism which blinded them to matters beyond their narrow focus.

But just now the cloud had lifted for a moment and a flutter of excitement gave them an added interest in things, and relieved them from the burden of their usual topics. When they met now matters of housekeeping and babies, and their men-folk, were thrust aside for the fresher interests. And thus Pretty Wilkes, bl.u.s.tering out of Abe Horsley's emporium in a heat of indignation, found little sympathy for her grievance from Mrs. Rust and Jane Restless.

"Say, I'll give Carrie a word or two when I see her," she cried, viciously flourishing a roll of print in the faces of her friends. "If Abe isn't a money grubbing skinflint I just don't know nothin'. Look at that stuff. Do I know print? Do I know pea-shucks! He's been tryin'

to sell me faded goods that never were anything else but faded, at twice the price they ever were, when they couldn't have been worth half of it if the color hadn't faded that never did, because there wasn't no decent color to fade. I'll----"

But the two women's attention was wandering. They were gazing across at Eve's house where Annie Gay was just disappearing through the doorway. Pretty saw her, too, and, in a moment, her anger merged into the general interest.

"Say, if that ain't the third time this mornin'," she exclaimed.

"Meanin' Annie?" inquired Mrs. Rust.