The Spoilers Part 8

"My niece has just told me of your service to her," the old gentleman began. "I am happy to know you, sir."

"Besides being a brave knight and a.s.sisting ladies in distress, Mr. Glenister is a very great and wonderful man," Helen explained, lightly. "He owns the Midas."

"Indeed!" said the old man, his shifting eyes now resting full on the other with a flash of unmistakable interest. "I hear that is a wonderful mine. Have you begun work yet?"

"No. We'll commence sluicing day after to-morrow. It has been a late spring. The snow in the gulch was deep and the ground thaws slowly. We've been building houses and doing dead work, but we've got our men on the ground, waiting."

"I am greatly interested. Won't you walk with us to the hotel? I want to hear more about these wonderful placers."

"Well, they ARE great placers," said the miner, as the three walked on together; "n.o.body knows HOW great because we've only scratched at them yet. In the first place the ground is so shallow and the gold is so easy to get, that if nature didn't safeguard us in the winter we'd never dare leave our claims for fear of 'snipers.' They'd run in and rob us."

"How much will the Anvil Creek mines produce this summer?" asked the Judge.

"It's hard to tell, sir; but we expect to average five thousand a day from the Midas alone, and there are other claims just as good."

"Your t.i.tle is all clear, I dare say, eh?"

"Absolutely, except for one jumper, and we don't take him seriously. A fellow named Galloway relocated us one night last month, but he didn't allege any grounds for doing so, and we could never find trace of him. If we had, our t.i.tle would be as clean as snow again." He said the last with a peculiar inflection.

"You wouldn't use violence, I trust?"

"Sure! Why not? It has worked all right heretofore."

"But, my dear sir, those days are gone. The law is here and it is the duty of every one to abide by it."

"Well, perhaps it is; but in this country we consider a man's mine as sacred as his family. We didn't know what a lock and key were in the early times and we didn't have any troubles except famine and hardship. It's different now, though. Why, there have been more claims jumped around here this spring than in the whole length and history of the Yukon."

They had reached the hotel, and Glenister paused, turning to the girl as the Judge entered. When she started to follow, he detained her.

"I came down from the hills on purpose to see you. It has been a long week--"

"Don't talk that way," she interrupted, coldly. "I don't care to hear it."

"See here--what makes you shut me out and wrap yourself up in your haughtiness? I'm sorry for what I did that night--I've told you so repeatedly. I've wrung my soul for that act till there's nothing left but repentance."

"It is not that," she said, slowly. "I have been thinking it over during the past month, and now that I have gained an insight into this life I see that it wasn't an unnatural thing for you to do.

It's terrible to think of, but it's true. I don't mean that it was pardonable," she continued, quickly, "for it wasn't, and I hate you when I think about it, but I suppose I put myself into a position to invite such actions. No; I'm sufficiently broad-minded not to blame you unreasonably, and I think I could like you in spite of it, just for what you have done for me; but that isn't all. There is something deeper. You saved my life and I'm grateful, but you frighten me, always. It is the cruelty in your strength, it is something away back in you--l.u.s.tful, and ferocious, and wild, and crouching."

He smiled wryly.

"It is my local color, maybe--absorbed from this country. I'll try to change, though, if you want me to. I'll let them rope and throw and brand me. I'll take on the graces of civilization and put away revenge and ambition and all the rest of it, if it will make you like me any better. Why, I'll even promise not to violate the person of our claim-jumper if I catch him; and Heaven knows THAT means that Samson has parted with his locks."

"I think I could like you if you did," she said, "but you can't do it. You are a savage."

There are no clubs nor marts where men foregather for business in the North--nothing but the saloon, and this is all and more than a club. Here men congregate to drink, to gamble, and to traffic.

It was late in the evening when Glenister entered the Northern and pa.s.sed idly down the row of games, pausing at the c.r.a.p-table, where he rolled the dice when his turn came. Moving to the roulette-wheel, he lost a stack of whites, but at the faro "lay- out" his luck was better, and he won a gold coin on the "high- card." Whereupon he promptly ordered a round of drinks for the men grouped about him, a formality always precedent to overtures of general friendship.

As he paused, gla.s.s in hand, his eyes were drawn to a man who stood close by, talking earnestly. The aspect of the stranger challenged notice, for he stood high above his companions with a peculiar grace of att.i.tude in place of the awkwardness common in men of great stature. Among those who were listening intently to the man's carefully modulated tones, Glenister recognized Mexico Mullins, the ex-gambler who had given Dextry the warning at Unalaska. As he further studied the listening group, a drunken man staggered uncertainly through the wide doors of the saloon and, gaining sight of the tall stranger, blinked, then approached him, speaking with a loud voice:

"Well, if 'tain't ole Alec McNamara! How do, ye ole pirate!"

McNamara nodded and turned his back coolly upon the new-comer.

"Don't turn your dorsal fin to me; I wan' to talk to ye."

McNamara continued his calm discourse till he received a vicious whack on the shoulder; then he turned for a moment to interrupt his a.s.sailant's garrulous profanity:

"Don't bother me. I am engaged."

"Ye won' talk to me, eh? Well, I'm goin' to talk to YOU, see? I guess you'd listen if I told these people all I know about you.

Turn around here."

His voice was menacing and attracted general notice. Observing this, McNamara addressed him, his words dropping clear, concise, and cold:

"Don't talk to me. You are a drunken nuisance. Go away before something happens to you."

Again he turned away, but the drunken man seized and whirled him about, repeating his abuse, encouraged by this apparent patience.

"Your pardon for an instant, gentlemen." McNamara laid a large white and manicured hand upon the flannel sleeve of the miner and gently escorted him through the entrance to the sidewalk, while the crowd smiled.

As they cleared the threshold, however, he clenched his fist without a word and, raising it, struck the sot fully and cruelly upon the jaw. His victim fell silently, the back of his head striking the boards with a hollow thump; then, without even observing how he lay, McNamara re-entered the saloon and took up his conversation where he had been interrupted. His voice was as evenly regulated as his movements, betraying not a sign of anger, excitement, or bravado. He lit a cigarette, extracted a note-book, and jotted down certain memoranda supplied him by Mexico Mullins.

All this time the body lay across the threshold without a sign of life. The buzz of the roulette-wheel was resumed and the c.r.a.p- dealer began his monotonous routine. Every eye was fixed on the nonchalant man at the bar, but the unconscious creature outside the threshold lay unheeded, for in these men's code it behooves the most humane to practise a certain aloofness in the matter of private brawls.

Having completed his notes, McNamara shook hands gravely with his companions and strode out through the door, past the bulk that sprawled across his path, and, without pause or glance, disappeared.

A dozen willing, though unsympathetic, hands laid the drunkard on the roulette-table, where the bartender poured pitcher upon pitcher of water over him.

"He ain't hurt none to speak of," said a bystander; then added, with enthusiasm:

"But say! There's a MAN in this here camp!"

CHAPTER VI

AND A MINE IS JUMPED

"Who's your new shift boss?" Glenister inquired of his partner, a few days later, indicating a man in the cut below, busied in setting a line of sluices.

"That's old 'Slapjack' Simms, friend of mine from up Dawson way."

Glenister laughed immoderately, for the object was unusually tall and loose-jointed, and wore a soiled suit of yellow mackinaw. He had laid off his coat, and now the baggy, bilious trousers hung precariously from his angular shoulders by suspenders of alarming frailty. His legs were lost in gum boots, also loose and cavernous, and his entire costume looked relaxed and flapping, so that he gave the impression of being able to shake himself out of his raiment, and to rise like a burlesque Aphrodite. His face was overgrown with a grizzled tangle that looked as though it had been trimmed with b.u.t.ton-hole scissors, while above the brush heap grandly soared a shiny, dome-like head.

"Has he always been bald?"