The Power and the Glory Part 40

"Are you hurt?" inquired the Scotchman, his hands stretched out.

"Can you get out and come in?" Hardwick demanded eagerly.

On the instant, the big gates swung wide, the factory poured out a tide of people as though the building had been afire. At sight of Stoddard, the car, and Johnnie, a cheer went up, spontaneous, heart-shaking.

"My G.o.d--look at that!" MacPherson's eyes had encountered the shackles on Stoddard's wrists.

"Lift him down--lift him out," cried Jerome Hardwick. With tears on his tanned cheeks the Scotchman complied; and Hardwick's eyes, too, were wet as he saw it.

"We'll have those things off of him in no time," he shouted. "Here, let's get him in to the couch in my office. Send some of the mechanics here. Where's Shade Buckheath?"

A dozen pairs of hands were stretched up to a.s.sist MacPherson and Pros Pa.s.smore. As many as could get to the rescued man helped. And when the crowd saw that shackled figure raised, and heard in the tense silence the clinking sound of the chains, a low groan went through it; more than one woman sobbed aloud. But at this Gray raised his head a bit, and once more declared in a fairly strong voice:

"I'm not hurt, people--only a little crack on the head. I'm all right--thanks to her," and he motioned toward the girl in the car, who was watching anxiously.

Then the ever thickening throng went wild; and as Gray was carried up the steps and disappeared through the office doors, it turned toward the automobile, surging about the car, a sea of friendly, admiring faces, most of them touched with the tenderness of tears, and cheered its very heart out for Johnnie Consadine.

CHAPTER XXV

THE FUTURE

"Gray!" it was Uncle Pros's voice, and Uncle Pros's face looked in at the office door. "Could I bother you a minute about the sidewalk in front of the place up yon? Mr. Hexter told me you'd know whether the grade was right, and I could let the workmen go ahead."

Stoddard swung around from his desk and looked at the old man.

"Come right in," he said. "I'm not busy--I'm just pretending this morning. MacPherson won't give me anything to do. He persists in considering me still an invalid."

Uncle Pros came slowly in and laid his hat down gingerly before seating himself. He was dressed in the garb which, with money, he would always have selected--the village ideal of a rich gentleman's wear--and he looked unbelievably tall and imposing in his black broadcloth. When the matter of the patent was made known to Jerome Hardwick, a company was hastily formed to take hold of it, which advanced the ready money for Johnnie and her family to place themselves. Mrs. Hexter, who had been all winter in Boston, had decided, suddenly, to go abroad; and when her husband wired her to know if he might let the house to the Consadine-Pa.s.smore household, she made a quick, warm response.

So they were domiciled in a ready-prepared home of elegance and beauty.

Though the place at Cottonville had been only a winter residence with Mrs. Hexter, she was a woman of taste, and had always had large means at her command. With all a child's plasticity, Laurella dropped into the improved order of things. Her cleverness in selecting the proper wear for herself and children was nothing short of marvellous; and her calm acceptance of the new state of affairs, the acme of good breeding.

Johnnie immediately set about seeing that Mavity Bence and Mandy Meacham were comfortably provided for in the old boarding-house, where she a.s.sured Gray they could do more good than many Uplift clubs.

"We'll have a truck-patch there, and a couple of cows and some chickens," she said. "That'll be good for the table, and it'll give Mandy the work she loves to do. Aunt Mavity can have some help in the house--there's always a girl or two breaking down in the mills, who would be glad to have a chance at housework for a while."

Now Pros looked all about him, and seemed in no haste to begin, though Gray knew well there was something on his mind. Finally Stoddard observed, smiling:

"You're the very man I wanted to see, Uncle Pros. I rang up the house just now, but Johnnie said you had started down to the mills. What do you think I've found out about our mine?"

Certainly the old man looked very tall and dignified in his new splendours; but now he was all boy, leaning eagerly forward to half whisper:

"I don't know--what?"

Stoddard's face was scarcely less animated as he searched hastily in the pigeon-holes of his desk. The patent might have a company to manage its affairs, but the mine on Big Unaka was sacred to these two, in whom the immortal urchin sufficiently survived to make mine-hunting and exploiting delectable employment.

"Why, Uncle Pros, it isn't silver at all. It's--" Gray looked up and caught the woeful drop of the face before him, and hastened on to add, "It's better than silver--it's nickel. The price of silver fluctuates; but the world supply of nickel is limited, and nickel's a sure thing."

Pros Pa.s.smore leaned back in his chair, digesting this new bit of information luxuriously.

"Nickel," he said reflectively. And again he repeated the word to himself. "Nickel. Well, I don't know but what that's finer. Leastways, it's likelier. To say a silver mine, always seemed just like taking money out of the ground; but then, nickels are money too--and enough of 'em is all a body needs."

"These people say the ore is exceptionally fine." Stoddard had got out the letter now and was glancing over it. "They're sending down an expert, and you and I will go up with him as soon as he gets here. There are likely to be other valuable minerals as by-products in a nickel mine. And we want to build an ideal mining village, as well as model cotton mills. Oh, we've got the work cut out for us and laid right to hand! If we don't do our little share toward solving some problems, it will be strange."

"Cur'us how things turns out in this world," the old man ruminated.

"Ever sence I was a little chap settin' on my granddaddy's knees by the hearth--big hickory fire a-roarin' up the chimbly, wind a-goin' 'whooh!'

overhead, an' me with my eyes like saucers a-listenin' to his tales of the silver mine that the Injuns had--ever sence that time I've hunted that thar mine." He laughed chucklingly, deep in his throat. "Thar wasn't a wild-catter that could have a hideout safe from me. They just had to trust me. I crawled into every hole. I came mighty near seein'

the end of every cave--but one. And that cave was the one whar my Mammy kept her milk and b.u.t.ter--the springhouse whar they put you in prison.

Somehow, I never did think about goin' to the end of that. Looked like it was too near home to have a silver mine in it; and thar the stuff lay and waited for the day when I should take a notion to find a pretty rock for Deanie, and crawl back in thar and keep a crawlin', till I just fell over it, all croppin' out in the biggest kind of vein."

Gray had heard Uncle Pros tell the story many times, but it had a perennial charm.

"Then I lost six months--plumb lost 'em, you know. And time I come to myself, Johnnie an' me was a-huntin' for you. And there we found you shut in that thar same cave; and I was so tuck up with that matter that I never once thought, till I got you home, to wonder did Buckheath and the rest of 'em know that they'd penned you in the silver mine. I ain't never asked you, but you'd have knowed if they had."

"I should have known anything that Rudd Dawson or Groner or Venters knew," Gray said, "but I'm not sure about Buckheath or Himes. However, Himes is dead, and Buckheath--I don't suppose anybody in Cottonville will ever see him again."

Pros's face changed instantly. He leaned abruptly forward and laid a hand on the other's knee.

"That's exactly what I came down here to speak with you about, Gray," he said. "They've fetched Shade Buckheath in--now, what do you make out of that?"

Stoddard shoved the letter from the Eastern mining man back in its pigeon-hole.

"Well," he said slowly, "I didn't expect that. I thought of course Shade was safely out of the country. I--Pa.s.smore, I'm sorry they've got him."

After a little silence he spoke again. "What do I make of it? Why, that there are some folks up on Big Unaka who need pretty badly to appear as very law-abiding citizens. I'll wager anything that Groner and Rudd Dawson brought Shade in."

Uncle Pros nodded seriously. "Them's the very fellers," he said. "Reckon they've talked pretty free to you. I never axed ye, Gray--how did they treat ye?"

"Dawson was the best friend I had," Stoddard returned promptly. "When I got to the big turn on Sultan--coming home that Friday morning --Buckheath met me, and asked me to go down to Burnt Cabin and help him with a man that had fallen and hurt himself on the rocks.

Dawson told me afterward that he and Jesse Groner were posted at the roadside to stop me and hem me in before I got to the bluff. I've described to you how Buckheath tried to back Sultan over the edge, and I got off on the side where the two were, not noticing them till they tied me hand and foot. They almost came to a clinch with Buckheath then and there. You ought to have heard Groner swear! It was like praying gone wrong."

"Uh-huh," agreed Pros, "Jess is a terrible wicked man--in speech that-a-way--but he's good-hearted."

"That first scrimmage showed me just what the men were after," Stoddard said. "Buckheath plainly wanted me put out of the way; but the others had some vague idea of holding me for a ransom and getting money out of the Hardwicks. Dawson complained always that he thought the mills owed him money. He said they must have sold his girl's body for as much as a hundred dollars, and he felt that he'd been cheated. Oh, it was all crazy stuff! But he and the others had justified themselves; and they had no notion of standing for what Buckheath was after. I was one of the cotton-mill men to them; they had no personal malice.

"Through the long evenings when Groner or Dawson or Will Venters was guarding me--or maybe all three of them--we used to talk; and it surprised me to find how simple and childish those fellows were. They were as kind to me as though I had been a brother, and treated me courteously always.

"Little by little, I got at the whole thing from them. It seems that Buckheath took advantage of the feeling there was in the mountains against the mill men on account of the hospital and some other matters.

He went up there and interviewed anybody that he thought might join him in a vendetta. I imagine he found plenty of them that were ready to talk and some that were willing to do; but it chanced that Dawson and Jesse Groner were coming down to Cottonville that morning I pa.s.sed Buckheath at the Hardwick gate, and he must have cut across the turn and followed me, intending to pick a quarrel. Then he met Dawson and Groner and framed up this other plan with their a.s.sistance.

"Uncle Pros, I want you to help me out. If Buckheath has to stand trial, how are we--any of us--going to testify without making it hard on the Dawson crowd? I expect to live here the rest of my days. Here's this mine of ours. And right here I mean to build a big mill and work out my plans. I think you know that I hope to marry a mountain wife, and I can't afford to quarrel with those folks."

Uncle Pros's chin dropped to his breast, his eyes half closed as he sat thinking intently.

"Well," he said finally, "they won't have nothing worse than manslaughter against Shade. It can't be proved that he intended to shoot Pap--'cause he didn't. If he was shootin' after us--there's the thing we don't want to bring up. You was down in the bottom of the cyar, an' I had my back to him, and so did Johnnie, and we don't know anything about what was done--ain't that so? As for you, you've already told Mr.

Hardwick and the others that you was taken prisoner and detained by parties unknown. Johnnie an' me was gettin' you out of the springhouse and away in the machine. Then Gid and Shade comes up, and thinkin' we're the other crowd stealin' the machine--they try to catch us and turn loose at us--that makes a pretty good story, don't it?"

"It does if Dawson and Groner and Venters agree to it," Stoddard laughed. "But somebody will have to communicate with them before they tell another one--or several others."