The Saint of the Speedway

Ridgwell Cullum

The Saint
of
The Speedway

by

Ridgwell Cullum

McClelland and Stewart

Publishers : : Toronto

Copyright, 1924,

By George H. Doran Company

The Saint of the Speedway

—B—

Printed in the United States of America

Foreword

If the reader will cast a thought back to the classic sea mystery of the Marie Celeste, it will be clear how much this book owes its inception to the extraordinary derelict, the mystery of which remains unsolved to this day. But the author disclaims any attempt in the following pages to offer a solution of the mystery and has only used certain of the features surrounding the condition of the Marie Celeste at the time she was found abandoned in mid-ocean for the purposes of his story-narrative.

Contents

The Saint of the Speedway

CHAPTER I
The Adventurers

IT was a time of tense emotion. Each was a-surge with an almost uncontrollable excitement as the two men moved up the whole length of the riffled sluice. Neither uttered one single word. But they moved slowly on either side of the long, primitive, box-like construction, keeping pace, each with the other, as though in a mutual desire that such fortune as was theirs should be witnessed together, as though neither had courage to face alone the possibilities of this their first serious “washing.”

At each riffle the men paused. The more emotional of the two, Len Stern, thrust out a hand and stirred the deposit lying there. And at each stirring the same result was revealed. The riffles were filled with deposit. On the top was a spread of lighter soil, with here and there a dull yellow protrusion thrusting above it. But under this lay a solid thickness of pure alluvial gold in dust and smaller nuggets. From the top end of the sluice-box to the mouth which disgorged the red soil upon the miniature mountain of tailings below it, it was the same. There was not one single riffle that was not laden to its capacity with the precious metal.

They came to a halt at the head of the box. Len Stern stood for a moment gazing down its narrow channel. But Jim Carver was disinclined for any dreaming. Stolid, practical, for all the emotion of those amazing moments, he climbed up the light trestle work and shut off the water stream which had supplied the washing. Then he dropped again to the ground and waited.

The stream of water fell away, and instantly the torrid heat of the sun began to dry up the woodwork. And as his gaze passed down over the succession of riffles the unshining yellow of their precious burden suggested a golden pathway the whole length of the sluice.

“It makes you feel good, Len,” he said quietly, for all the burning excitement in his big blue eyes.

The other nodded as though the thing he were contemplating had left him speechless.

Jim Carver eyed him shrewdly. Then he glanced up at the blazing tropical sky. He gazed down at the slow-moving river, meandering on between jungle-grown banks on its way to the bay, less than five miles distant. Finally he bestirred himself.

“We best clean this wash up, Len,” he said. “We best clean it up an’ take it right back to camp. It’s feed time.”

He started to work at the top riffle, and Len Stern came back to realities.

“Sure,” he agreed. And at once joined in the work. “Say, Jim, do you get it?” he cried, glancing quickly at the mountain of pay dirt they had spent months in accumulating, standing ready for washing. “We guessed to wash a ton. Maybe it was, more or less. Ther’s not ounces in these riffles—no, ther’s—ther’s pounds!”

Jim nodded as he laboured.

“It’s the biggest ‘strike’ ever made in the world,” he admitted in a tone that might well have been taken for one of grudging.

It was the northwest coast of Australia, the coast of that almost unexplored region which is one of the few remote territories of the world still retaining its fabulous atmosphere of romance.

It was on the shores of a wide, shallow bay where a small river abruptly opened out its land arms in welcome to the tropical ocean. Sun-scorched, fleshy vegetation grew densely almost to the water’s edge, keeping dank and fever-laden the suffocating atmosphere within its widespread bosom. Yet only was it this merciful shade that made life endurable to sensitive human creatures.

The sun was at its zenith, a furious disc of molten heat in a brazen sky. The sea at the river mouth lay dead flat under its burning rays, except for the ripple where some huge submarine creature disturbed its surface. Not a breath of air was stirring to relieve the suffocating atmosphere.

The two men were lounging in the shade of the wattle walls of their reed-thatched shelter. It was built amidst a cluster of dense-growing trees, and the site looked out over the brilliant bay. They had long since eaten, and were now awaiting the cooling of the day before returning to their labours.

They were youthful adventurers, foreigners to the country in which they found themselves. They were northerners, far-northerners, from the great snow-crowned hills of Alaska. They had set out on their adventure as a result of listening to the flimsiest, most fanciful yarn that ever a half-vagrant Chinaman had dispensed out of the remote cells of his drug-laden imagination. And as a result, that day, after two-and-a-half years of marooning on a coast peopled only by none too friendly blacks, and in the heart of a jungle alive with every bug and beast and reptile of a pestilential nature, they had, at long last, proved beyond every question of doubt that Charlie Wun Lee had, for once in his life, fallen a victim to sheer veracity.

For all its usually incredible source, the story, which had set these men wandering in the world’s remote places, had had a curious ring of reality in it. Charlie Wun Lee was a queer, reasonably honest, far-travelled old Chinaman who dispensed ham and eggs to belated travellers in a squalid frame house in their home town of Beacon Glory, hidden away in the hill country of Alaska. And his story had been inspired by sheer friendliness for two men who found themselves in a position where the outlook for livelihood was completely threatening.

He had told them he knew where there was more gold than the world had ever seen before, and both being gold men their appetites had been at once whetted.

Briefly, his story was that he had been shipwrecked when he was cook on an Australian coasting vessel. The ship went to pieces, but he and six others reached land after terrible privations. All they knew about their whereabouts was that it was the coast of Australia somewhere on the northwest of the continent. It was a country of unbearable heat and fever-haunted jungle. They were marooned on this coast for more than a year, keeping body and soul together with such food as they could collect from the sea and the forest. Fortunately, they had little need for clothing, for they discovered not a living soul, and no indication, even, of the blacks whom they knew peopled these regions of the country. But during that long, desperate year one by one his white companions had died off, victims of a subtle jungle fever that killed them slowly and painfully, until only he and one other were left alive. This stealing death frightened him. The dank jungle became a place of dread. So he and his last remaining companion took to the river and sought to reach the hills out of which it sprang.

But they never reached the hills. No. The river claimed them. They forgot their fears. They forgot even their contemplated destination. In his own graphic fashion he told them the river was alive with gold. Gold looked up at them out of the pay dirt which composed its bed throughout its whole course. Oh, yes. They tried it out with such means as they had to their hands. But they only collected nuggets of reasonable size and troubled nothing with “dust.” They collected a large quantity and secreted them, and it was this store that ultimately started him on the way to the prosperity he now enjoyed.

After this he endeavoured to study the coast line with a view to making a chart at such time as he might be rescued, for he had never given up the hope that they would ultimately be rescued. And sure enough they were. A storm-driven coasting vessel ran into the mouth of the river for shelter.

They were taken on board and clothed. But they kept their secret of the gold, determined, should opportunity ever offer, to come again and work it. On the plea of desiring to know the position of the territory which had been so disastrous to them, the skipper of the boat was induced to give them the exact bearings of the river mouth, and later, Charlie Wun Lee inscribed it on his rough chart which he produced in corroboration of his story. He also produced for his audience a couple of nuggets of gold which he declared he had kept as a souvenir ever since.

But he shook his head sadly over them when he told how opportunity never came of returning to collect the gold awaiting him. His companion died on the way to Sydney, a victim of the jungle fever, the germs of which had contrived to impregnate him. And he—well, other things came his way and he did not fancy facing the hateful coast alone. Besides, he did very well with the laundry he started in Sydney until he got burnt out, and finally migrated to Alaska. No, he assured them, he would rather dispense ham and eggs at two dollars a time in Beacon Glory than go back for that gold. Besides, his little gambling parlour at the back of his restaurant was not so bad a gold mine.

Well, anyhow, there it was. It was true what he had told them. Every word of it. And if they liked they could have the chart as a present. And when they came back with all the gold they needed, if the jungle fever didn’t get hold of them and they felt like making him a present in return, well, he would very gladly receive it. But, whether they chose to go after it or not, he wanted them to know that the thing he had told them was no fairy story, but the real truth, which was a wholly inadequate illustration of the reality of wealth he had seen there.

Now they knew the real extent of the debt they owed to the friendly little dispenser of ham and eggs. But they also knew now, after the fierce excitement of witnessing the result of the first real washing had subsided, the immensities of the proposition confronting them. As yet neither had uttered a word of doubt or anxiety. But the thought of the potentialities of the situation was looming heavily.

Jim Carver’s blue eyes were turned upon the sunlit bay. He was deeply engrossed, not in the wonders of the tropical scene set out before him, but in a train of teeming thought. His pipe was his only real comfort on this intolerable coast, and he was enjoying it to the uttermost at the moment. Len Stern’s dark eyes were upon the small mountain of raw gold heaped on an outspread flour sack on the sun-baked ground in front of him, which represented the result of their first “clean-up.” Whatever worries lay back of his mind his mercurial temperament refused to be robbed of one moment of the delight which this tangible result of their labours afforded.

“Man, I feel I just want to holler!” he cried in a sudden outburst, breaking up the silence which was so much their habit. “Say, I just can’t get a grip on the nature of a boy who sits around doping out ham an’ eggs with the knowledge of a thing like this back of his mind. He’s all sorts of a sheer damn fool——”

“Is he?”

Jim had removed his pipe. He had turned his big, thoughtful eyes on the man contemplating the heaped treasure. Len was gazing at him, his smile of delight completely passed from his dark face.

They were both big creatures. Broad, and enormously muscular, a picture of virile capacity and latent human energy. Jim’s eyes were frankly wide and blue as the distant sea, set in a face whose skin lent itself to a deep, florid sunburn. Len was dark-eyed and dark-skinned. He was burned to the mahogany of a nigger. Both were clad in barely sufficient clothing to meet the demands of decency.

For a moment Len stared at his companion. Then his smile slowly returned.

“Say, Jim, boy, ain’t ther’ a darn thing in all this to set you crazy to shout?” He shook his head. “It’s no sort of use. Your head’s always ready to shelter every old bogey it can collect. Two an’ a bit years of hell! That’s what it’s been. The folks guessed we were bug. The yarn of a ham-slingin’ Chink. A river of gold! An’ I guess we came nigh breakin’ our folks for outfit. Well, it’s ours. All of it. An’ I guess we can pay our folk a hundred times over. It’s a strike to unship the world’s financial balance. Psha! It’s so big——”

“That’s the trouble, Len. It’s too big.”

Len flung his head back in a boisterous laugh.

“Too big?” he cried scornfully. “It just couldn’t be!”

“It could. It is.”

Jim’s unyielding tone promptly brought the other to seriousness.

“How?” he asked soberly. “Maybe I’ve got some of your notion. But let’s talk it out.”

Jim knocked out his pipe and refilled it. He lit it thoughtfully. Then he turned smilingly to his friend.

“Say, I’m as crazy for this thing as you, boy,” he said in his quiet way. “But I don’t figger to let it snow my senses under. You’re right. It’s been two years an’ more of hell gettin’ it, and we want it all, after that. But I seem to see something of what was back of Charlie’s mind quittin’ the game an’ never returning to it. Get a look down there.” He pointed at a rough sheltered landing with a tubby, cutter-rigged fishing smack lying moored there. “That’s our link with the world outside. An’ we got to get out not pounds, but tons of metal if I’m a judge. We got to market it an’ keep it quiet, or we’ll have the Australian Government jumping in on us, to say nothing of all the rest of the world.” He shook his head. “How’s it to be done? It can’t.”

“But it can. It must!”

Len’s whole manner had undergone a complete transformation. All the excited delight had passed out of his eyes. They had suddenly become hard, and shrewd, and full of keen resolution. The thought of failure with the prize in their hands had stirred him to a feeling like that of a mother who sees her offspring about to be snatched from her arms. He was ready to fight with the last breath of life for this thing he so dearly coveted.

“Here, you can’t tell me a thing I haven’t thought, Jim,” he cried. “All this stuff’s been in my brain tank ever since we bought that barge of ours down in Perth. I’d got it all then. An’ I planned it all before we beat it up the coast in that old coaster, with our craft on a tow-line. You’re right. It’s got to be a secret. If we shout we’ll lose half the game. Maybe we’ll lose it all. We’re not going to shout. No. I best tell you, an’ we’ll sort out the metal from the tailings. You’ve a cautious head and a clear brain. Maybe you’ll see any weak spot lying around.”

Jim nodded in ready agreement. He had achieved his purpose. Len was down to hard facts.

“This is the thing I got planned,” Len went on, dipping his hands into the pile of gold and letting it sift back between his hard-worn fingers. “We’ve got to get a third feller into our game—on commission. We got to think wide and act wide. We got to play a red-hot game, an’ play it good. Ther’s got to be no weakening, an’ if any feller we work with plays the skunk he’s got to get his med’cine short. You get that?”

Jim made no reply, but the look in his eyes was sufficient.

“Well, here it is,” Len went on quickly. “If we dope this stuff out free we’ll break the market, and set every news-sheet shouting from one end of the world to the other. And the folks’ll jump in an’ shut us down. We’re sort of in the position of the feller who can transmute base metal. No. When we’ve a big enough bunch of stuff out I’m going to take a big trip down to Perth. I’m going to get a guy with a tramp ship, a Windjammer for preference. I’m going to fix up with him; he’ll get a handsome commission on our trade of gold, and I’m going to bring him along up and have him stand off down the coast a few miles, an’ then, with this old barge of ours, I’ll come along and pick up all we got, an’ haul it back aboard of his ship. Then you’re going right along with him and the stuff, and you’re going to travel from port to port and dispose of it for credit at such banks as will trade in smallish parcels. And meanwhile, I’ll stop right here on this coast an’ get stuff out ready for when you come back. Then I’ll take a trip, an’ you’ll stop around. An’ when we’ve sold all we need we’ll—quit. It’s the only way, Jim. We got to play the smugglin’ game, an’ play it good. We got to take chances. Mighty big chances! I got to trust you, an’ you got to trust me, an’ we got to trust that skipper by makin’ it worth his while an’ keeping a gun pushed ready. Ther’s got to be no weakening. It’s the only way I can see to put our play through. Otherwise, our gold ain’t worth hell room to us. Do you see it? Are you on? I want you to make that first trip because you got folks needing you worse than any one needs me. That’s one reason. The other is I want you to feel I’m putting right into your hands my share, and I’m not worrying a thing because that’s so. See? We know each other. We’re on the square. An’ the thing I want from you is to keep the commission guy on the same angle. Well?”

“It’s the sort o’ thing I had in mind, Len, only I hadn’t got it clear like you.”

Jim knocked out his pipe and stood up stretching himself, while he gazed out over the flat calm of the bay.

“It goes. Sure it does,” he said readily. “An’ I’m glad for that thought that made you have me make the first trip. It’s kind of generous, Len. But it’s like you. Gee, I’m sick of this coast! Say, can you beat it? Here we are, two fellers takin’ every chance in life to make an honest grub stake out of no-man’s land, and to do that we got to hunt our holes like gophers, lest folks get wise to us an’ snatch it from us. It sort of makes you wonder. But you know, Len, this river’s too rich. I sort of feel that. I kind of feel the thing’s not goin’ to be as easy as you make it seem. But we’re goin’ to see it through to the end. An’ God help the feller that starts in to rob us! Yes, it’s a kind thought of yours, sending me on the first trip. I got a mother an’ a dandy sister who’ll likely bless you for this. I guess they’re hard put all right, and the thought’s had me worried for months. Say——”

He turned towards the river and glanced up at the sky. Len laughed.

“That’s all right, Jim. I’m ready all the time,” he said. “It ain’t work gettin’ back on the river. It’s play. Come on. We’re going to get out half a ton of stuff,” he laughed, as he sprang to his feet. “Then I’ll make Perth, an’ buy up that tramp skipper.”

He moved off beside his partner, leaving his golden pile just where it lay. And together they passed out of the shelter of the trees.

CHAPTER II
The Headland

THE woman was standing in the doorway of her log-built home. She was gazing out over the waters of the creek below her which flowed gently on to the distant Alsek River. A mood of quiet contemplative happiness was shining in her dark eyes. It was the mother soul in her that was stirred to a deep sense of happy satisfaction.

Rebecca Carver was a smallish, sturdy, vigorous creature something past the middle of life. She had lived hardly enough in the harsh Alaskan territory that had bred her and had always remained her home. And even now, with advancing years, and a body sometimes only barely equal to the onslaught of its pitiless climate, she had not even a momentary desire to leave it.

But then she had not lived unhappily. The years of her wifehood had been passed in the exciting, many-coloured, chequered life which ever falls to the lot of those who devote themselves to the crazy uncertainties of the quest of gold. No. Her life had never been monotonous. And besides the excitement of it all she had had her son, and daughter, and her man, and these alone would have been sufficient to keep an atmosphere of smiling contentment in her woman’s heart.

Now, however, her man had long since gone. Her son was far away, fending for them and himself as best he might. She only had her daughter remaining with her, but the girl was the pride and joy of her loyal heart; a blue-eyed, beautiful creature who never failed to remind her, to her contented satisfaction, of the cheerful, reckless, gambling husband who had been her strong support in the hard years of their life together.

Circumstances were hard-pressing with her now. They had pressed heavily ever since the death of her husband. The future was full enough of threat to depress the stoutest heart. But, for the moment, she was not concerned with these things. It was the thought of her boy, her first-born, that filled her yearning soul with happiness. Only that morning her daughter had brought her out a letter from Beacon Glory. It was a letter at long last from Jim. And the tidings it yielded were of the best.

The day was utterly grey with the herald of coming winter. There had been no sun to relieve the dark-hued forests on the hills which rose up on every side about her. The blistering summer heat had long since reduced all vegetation to the russet hues of fall, and even the great forests of jack-pine had lost something of the intensity of their evergreen hues. Somewhere behind her, hidden by a rampart of iron-bound coast, lay the open seas of the North Pacific. For the rest, to the North, and East, and South, lay the tattered world of broken foothills which were the fringe of the greater hills beyond. She knew it all by heart, this world of southern Alaska which had always been her home, and for all the overwhelming nature of it, for all the threat of the heavy grey sky, she feared nothing it could show her. And now, perhaps, less than ever.

She abruptly withdrew her gaze from the tumultuous scene of it all. She dived into the capacious pocket of her rough skirt. When her hand was withdrawn it was grasping the neatly folded pages of a letter in a big, scrawling handwriting. She unfolded them and became deeply absorbed. She almost knew the contents of the letter by heart, but somehow she felt she could never read it often enough.

The letter was vaguely headed “Australia.” It was without date, but this she had ascertained from its postmark, as she had also ascertained that it had been mailed in a city she had barely cognisance of, called “Perth.”

Dearest Mother:

We’ve made good. We’ve made so good I can’t begin to tell you about it.

Just for a moment a deep sigh of happiness escaped the mother’s lips, and something like tears of emotion half-filled her eyes. She brushed them aside promptly, however, and continued her reading.

I don’t know the date so I can’t hand it to you. I can’t hand you our whereabouts either, but for different reasons. What I can tell you is I’m setting right out for home as soon as Len gets along back, which’ll maybe in six weeks. He’s taking this letter with him, an’ will mail it, which’ll maybe in two or three weeks’ time. I’ll be setting out in a windjammer called the Imperial of Bristol. When you read the name you’ll wonder to see it in Len’s handwriting, but you see he’s taking the letter, and we don’t know the name of the ship till he gets to his destination and charters it, see? So he’ll have to fill the name in. This’ll all seem kind of mysterious to you, but it don’t matter. The thing is, I’m coming right along home to you, an’ll reach you in about six months’ time, with enough stuff so you’ll never have to worry a thing again ever.

The letter went on for several pages, filled to the brim with that kindly, intimate talk which never fails to stir the depths of a mother’s heart. And so Rebecca Carver read it all once again, revelling in the delight with which the words of her boy filled her.

Jim had made good! Jim was returning home! He was crazy to be with her and his sister Claire again. Oh, it was good, so good! The woman’s brown eyes were raised smiling whimsically at the sudden thought which her mood had inspired. Why, it was all so good that she would almost joyfully accept whatever offer Bad Booker might make for their last block of real estate in the city of Beacon Glory, which now represented their entire resources for the coming winter. Yes, never in her life had she been so thrilled. Never!

She remembered earlier thrills. She remembered those hard times when they had been well-nigh confronted with starvation. She remembered how her husband, that headlong gambler, had set out to the gaming tables of Beacon Glory with their last remaining dollars in his pocket. And she had sat at home with her half-fed children awaiting his return. Then the joy of his return with pockets bulging—yes, those had been great moments. But then he was a skilful gambler and rarely failed. This—this was something on a different plane. Something——

Her contemplative gaze had discovered movement on the hillside across the water. It was a horse-drawn vehicle moving rapidly, descending the precipitate slope diagonally at the break of the forest which gave way to the bald, wind-swept crest above. Its course would bring it down to the far side of the ford of the river directly opposite where she was standing.

Her smile deepened. It needed no second thought to tell her whose vehicle it was. Ivor McLagan, the oil man from the Alsek River, was on his way into Beacon Glory, which lay ten miles or so to the northeast of her home.

She awaited his arrival. He was a welcome enough visitor at all times. And he never failed to call in on his way, and leave her any newspapers he might chance to have. He was wealthy, and a man everybody esteemed. She had sometimes hoped—— But she knew that could never be. Claire was a girl of strong decision for all she was only twenty-one. She had already definitely refused to marry him. She liked him well enough. They all liked him. Especially had Jim liked him, but it was her woman’s understanding of the position that made her fear that Claire’s frank regard would never deepen to anything warmer.

The buckboard seemed to be almost falling down the precipitous slope under the man’s reckless handling. It was literally plunging headlong, but she understood—she knew. It was McLagan’s way with his Alaskan bronchos. There would be no disaster. And as she watched his progress she wanted to laugh, for such was the lightness of her mood.

The buckboard rattled, and shook, and jolted as it bustled down the hillside over a broken almost undefined trail. Its surefooted, well-fed team was utterly untiring. The shaggy creatures made no mistakes. Tough, hardy, they were bred to just such work as this, and they were in the hands of a super-teamster. So the creek came up to them with a rush and they plunged belly deep into the chill water of the ford. Then, moments later, they were reined in sharply at the door of the man’s familiar stopping place.

“Say, ma’am, this country’s one hell of a proposition for a quiet, decent, comfort-loving, ordinary sort of engineer.”

The man’s greeting was full of cheer, and his smiling eyes conveyed a quiet sense of dry humour. Ivor McLagan had no claims to good looks, and his manner ordinarily was sufficiently brusque to border on rudeness, but in this woman’s presence he had a way of displaying a side to his character that those who met him in business, those of his own sex, were never admitted to. No, McLagan had nothing in face or feature to thrill any woman’s artist soul, but what he lacked in that direction he made up in another. As he turned his buckboard wheels and leapt to the ground, he towered over the little woman in the doorway a figure of magnificent manhood.

Rebecca’s eyes smiled up at him responsively.

“It surely is, Ivor. But I don’t mind a thing. Jim’s coming right back to me. He’s made good, he and Len, an’ he’s coming home with stuff so we’ll never need to worry ever again.”

It was out. The mother had to tell her glorious news on the instant. And to this old friend of her Jim’s of all men.

Ivor nodded. Then came the quiet, conventional reply, “You don’t say?”

The woman’s excitement rose. “But I surely do,” she cried, holding up the bundled pages of her letter. “It’s all right here. This is mail I got from him this morning. Claire brought it out from Beacon, bless her! My, I—I sort of feel just anyhow. Ever feel that way? Ever feel you wanted to dance around an’ shout? Say—but come right in an’ get some coffee. It’s on the stove. I—I’m forgettin’ everything.”

Ivor shook his head.

“Don’t you worry, ma’am,” he said in a tone of sympathy one would never have associated with him. “Just get busy an’—shout. But tell me first, when’s Jim getting along?”

“Guess he’s right on the way now.” The woman’s eyes were alight, then a shadow crept into them. “He won’t be along for six months from the start. Maybe that’ll be three months an’ more from the coming of this letter.”

“Yes, it would be about that.”

The man’s eyes were serious as he regarded the letter bunched in Rebecca’s hand. Then he looked up and was smiling again.

“I’m just so glad for you, ma’am, I can’t say,” he said cordially. “Jim’s a great boy. He’s got elegant grit, too. He’s out for you an’ Claire all the time, and I’ll be real glad to have him around again for—for all your sakes. How does Claire feel? But there, I guess she’s crazy glad. Where is she?”

He craned, peering into the doorway expectantly. But the mother shook her head.

“She’s not inside,” she declared. “Glad? Why, it don’t say a thing, Ivor. You know her. She and Jim are kind of all in all to themselves. She went sort of white as a corpse when she read that letter. She didn’t say much, but if you’d seen her eyes! My! You can guess wher’ she is now. Ther’s only one place for Claire when Jim’s on the water sailin’ home. It’s right up on the headland back of here,” she jerked her greying head towards the back of the house. “She’s right up there where she can see the sea. An’ I guess she’s dreaming fool dreams of his home-coming.”

“Yes, I guess it’s kind of wonderful for you both,” Ivor said kindly.

“Wonderful? Sure it is. Ther’s another thing. We been kind of in bad shape an’ were selling out our last block in Beacon that my man left to us. Oh, I’m not really thinkin’ of the stuff he’s bringing. No,” Rebecca went on, as though she feared the man might think that sheer selfishness was the substance of her delight. “But it helps. And Claire’s been a heap worried dealing with Bad Booker, but it don’t matter a thing now. We’ll take what he offers an’ be thankful.”

Ivor had turned to his horses. He unloosed the halter shank of the nearside beast and secured it to the tying ring on the log wall of the house, then he drew out a bundle of well-read newspapers and held them out to Rebecca.

“Here, take these,” he said in his quick, rough way. “I’ll leave my plugs right here. They’ll be glad to stand. I’m just going up to get a word with Claire. I’ll bring her right along down.”

The mother took the papers and threw them on to the table in the room behind her. Somehow her usual interest in them was overwhelmed.

“Thanks, Ivor,” she said. “You never seem to forget us. I’ll sure be real glad to have you bring Claire down with you. She’s crazy glad, sure—we both are, but it don’t seem time to me to be dreaming around on any old hill-tops. I’ll set coffee an’ a bite to eat against you get back.”

She watched him hurry away, this great creature all height, and muscle, and plainness of feature. She realised his eagerness, and again there arose in her mother heart that hope which her better sense sought to deny her.

The girl was gazing out upon the distant sea. The iron-bound coast that lay immediately below her made no claim upon her, for all the wild beauty, the cruel austerity with which its ages-long battle with the merciless waters of a storm-swept ocean had endowed it. Neither had the panorama of tumultuous hills which rose about her, nor the distant snowy crests of the northern reaches of the Rocky Mountains any appeal. She only had eyes for the grey, far-off horizon where sky and sea met. She was searching for some sign of a sail, which, in fancy, she might translate into the wings of the vessel bringing home a beloved brother and—fortune.

She was beautifully tall and slim, for all her somewhat rough clothing which had little more than warmth and utility to recommend it. It was the best that the joint efforts of her mother and herself had been able to contrive out of their limited resources, and the girl was not given to grumbling. No, she was accustomed to hardships, and self-denial came easy to her. She was too strong and resolute, she was too frankly generous to harbour any petty resentment against her lot.

In twenty-one years she had grown to superb womanhood, healthy in mind, healthy in a wonderful degree in body. Her father had seen something of her splendid development before he died, but it was left to her mother to witness the final reality of it. To the latter her child was the most beautiful creature in all the world. Her wide blue eyes, and her wealth of flaming red hair, her shapely body, so tall, and vigorous, and straight; then her sun-tanned, rounded cheeks, and her well-chiselled nose, and broad, even brows; were they not all something of a reflection of the early youth of the man who had given her her own life’s happiness? Time and again her mother had rejoiced that she had had her christened with so choice a name as “St. Claire.” True, the “Saint” had been permitted to fall into disuse. But it still belonged to her, and nothing could rob her of it. And the mother only regretted that the girl herself refused to permit its revival.

Just now the girl had given herself up to idle moments of delicious dreaming. And why not? Difficulties and troubles had beset them for so long; oh, yes. She had no scruple in admitting the bald, hard truth. Not alone was her joy at the prospect of Jim’s return. He was returning with some sort of fortune, for them as well as himself.

It would mean so much to them. Her mother would know ease and peace of mind after all her heroic struggles with adversity. Jim would be freed from his great responsibility for their care. And she—she—well, there were so many great and wonderful things in the world she wanted to do and see.

And dreaming of all that this splendid return meant to them her mind went back to the interview she had had only that morning in Beacon Glory with the man everybody called “Bad” Booker, the chief real estate man in the city.

Her journey into town had been inspired by their necessity. Her mother still owned a small block of property in Beacon Glory, the last remaining asset left to her by her gambler husband. It was mortgaged to Booker, himself, but only lightly, and she had visited him to endeavour to sell it right out. Without Booker’s help they possessed less than twenty dollars with which to face the winter, and await Jim’s return. She took no account of the played-out gold claim on the creek below her. That had ceased to yield a pennyweight of gold more than two years back, a fact which had been the inspiration of her brother’s going.

She remembered Booker’s smiling fat face and bald head as she offered him her proposition. He always smiled, and it was a hateful, greasy, fixed sort of smile. She believed he was a Jew. But Jew or Gentile, he was a merciless money-spinner, ready to rob the world of its last dollar.

Her anger surged even now with her thought of the man. He had offered to take the block off her mother’s hands for two thousand dollars cash. It was the limit to which he would go. It was mortgaged for two thousand dollars to him. It was in the very centre of Beacon Glory, next to the Speedway Dance Hall. And even though the city was dead flat as a reaction from its early boom, the property was worth not a cent less than ten thousand dollars. It was maddening. It was a sheer “hold-up.” But she knew they were helpless in the man’s hands. Oh, if they could only tide over until Jim got back!

She had told her mother not a word of the man’s offer yet. Somehow she felt she had not the courage to tell her. Yet she would have to do so, and, worst of all, she knew they would have to accept the man’s offer or starve.

Well, she would have one slight consolation. Once the deed was signed, and the money was in her hands, she would tell “Bad” Booker all that was in her mind. She——

The sound of a footstep behind her broke up the half-fierce, almost tearful train of her thought. She turned sharply to discover Ivor McLagan breathing heavily after his climb.

“Say, Claire,” he cried, while he spread out his hands deprecatingly, and his smallish eyes twinkled humorously, “why in the name of everything holy make this darn country worse than it is? Why you need to climb a mile high to enjoy the thought of your Jim, boy, coming along, I just can’t see. I surely can’t!” Then he glanced quickly out to sea and took a deep breath. “My, but this is a swell spot!” he added soberly.

The girl’s bad time had passed. Her smile came on the instant.

“That’s quite a contradiction,” she said slily.

“Sure. Well, we’ll cut the first part right out.” McLagan’s twinkling gaze came back to the girl’s face, and he drank in the fresh beauty of it. “I couldn’t pass along into that nightmare city of ours without speaking my piece of gladness for your news. It’s bully! It certainly is. The boy’s made good. An’ for you folks, I guess, only just in time.”

The girl nodded as she looked up into the man’s plain face, and a flash of thoughtful regret for its plainness broke in on all the rest that preoccupied her.

“I doubt if it’s even that, Ivor,” she said, a little desperately.

“How?”

The man’s interrogation was a return to his roughness of manner.

“Why, Bad Booker’s got us right in his clutches, and we can’t even wriggle. He reckons to hand Mum two thousand on top of his two thousand mortgage for a block of stuff you could market free for ten thousand. It’s his two thousand or—or starve.”

The girl finished up with a smile that failed to hide her feelings, and McLagan’s eyes hardened.

“The man’s a swine,” he said, and his voice grated harshly.

“That don’t help.”

“No. Don’t accept, Claire. Don’t you sell.”

“But we’ve got to eat.”

“Sure, an’ you’re going to. Here.” Just for a second the man hesitated, and shifted his gaze from the beautiful urgent face that never more deeply appealed to him than now. Then it came back on the instant. “It’s no use,” he cried, and his tone was rough. “You’re not going to starve. You and your mother can have all the cash you need till Jim comes, and—and I want nothing in return. Do you get my meaning, Claire? If you take money on loan from me till Jim gets home you’ll never have need to worry. You can just shut it right out of your head and forget it—till Jim comes home. I mean that just plain an’ straight. And there isn’t a thing behind it.”

They stood eye to eye while the girl swiftly read the sheer honesty lying behind the man’s eyes. Then she shook her head.

“No,” she said, “I’m going to sell. I’m going to sell, and I’ll just wait around after, hoping for the day to come when the Aurora Clan will reckon that Bad Booker’s a sort of nightmare disease an’ needs plenty good med’cine. Thanks, Ivor. It’s just a real kind thought of yours, and the thing that makes me glad is I know you mean it just as you’ve said it. But I don’t want your money. I—I wouldn’t take it if it was that or—or starve.”

For all there was something of roughness in the girl’s choice of words for her refusal, there was none in her manner. Even her hope that one day Booker would receive his medicine at the hands of the secret Aurora Clan was without undue feeling. The man was deeply stirred.

They were great friends, these two. But for the man’s peace of mind the frank nature of their friendship was deplorable. He loved the girl with all the strength of his manhood. He held a big position with the Mountain Oil Corporation of Ohio as their consulting engineer, and his whole desire was to take this child of the northern wilderness away to his far-off home in the sunlit valleys of California. She had refused to marry him more than once. But somehow her refusal had left their friendship unaffected. She liked him whole-heartedly in a manner that to her precluded all possibility of regard of a deeper nature, but which in the man only contrived to strengthen his natural persistence.

The leaping fires of the man’s passion surged up in face of the rebuff. For a brief moment he contemplated the smiling eyes in their wonderful framing of vivid hair, which the slouch-brimmed hat she was wearing failed to conceal. Then his lips obeyed his impulse.

“Yes, I know, Claire,” he said, his voice harshened by emotion. “You won’t, you can’t accept my help. Why? I’ll tell you. Because I don’t belong to you. Because I want to marry you, am crazy with love for you, and you don’t feel like falling for my notion. So you can’t have the thing I want to do for you like I never wanted to do for anybody ever before. I guess you’re right enough in your own lights, sure you are. You’re not putting yourself under obligation to the feller you don’t fancy to marry. But why not marry me, Claire? Maybe I’m not a thing of beauty. But I guess I just love you to death. Maybe you don’t care a thing for the picture I make now, but you’ll get used to it. Sure you will.” He laughed a little bitterly. “I guess folks can get used to most things after a while.” Then his smile passed. “But, my dear, ther’s not a thing in the world I wouldn’t do to give you a real dandy life. These oil wells out here are going to pass me a fortune that I’m crazy to share with you. Won’t you? No. You won’t. I can see it in your eyes, the same as I’ve seen it before. But—but if I’ve still got to stand for that, there’s things I won’t stand for. You need help and I’ll raise all the hell I can to pass it you.”

Claire shook her head a shade impatiently.

“It’s no use, Ivor. Why—why can’t we be friends? True, I haven’t a thing against you in the world, not a thing, not even”—she smiled gently—“the looks which you don’t seem to set much stock by. No, it isn’t anything like that. True it isn’t. I like you, but—— Here, you don’t get the things lying back of my fool head. Guess I’m my father’s daughter. You knew him for what he was. He was a gambler. And maybe, in a way, I’m a gambler, too. I want life with all its chances. I want to reach out an’ hug it all. I want to take every chance coming, and do something, and be something in the game of it all. I don’t want to marry. Sure not yet. I don’t want to share in any man’s home, and—and grow on like a cabbage. There’s too much of the big adventure in life for me to miss it all. Maybe I’ll get sort of disillusioned later—maybe. I can’t help that. But I mean to take a hand in the game meanwhile.”

There was such a ring of final resolution in the girl’s smiling denial that the man realised his momentary defeat. So he offered no further protest. He made no attempt at argument. He shrugged his great shoulders, and the happy twinkle returned to his eyes.

“Don’t say another word, Claire,” he said gently. “Maybe I understand the thing lying back of your mind. Forget my break. It was a bad one, and I shouldn’t have made it, but—but I sort of just had to. I won’t do it again. There isn’t some other feller, is there?”

The girl laughed happily in her relief at his manner.

“Not a soul,” she cried, unhesitatingly.

“That’s all right.” The man’s eyes smiled responsively. “I can wait. I’m going to, and I’ll make no more bad breaks. And maybe when you’ve hit your adventures, and kind of tired of them, and feel you’d like the rest you’ll have maybe earned, why I’ll be waiting around, and I’ll surely be ready to hand it you when you raise a finger, a sign. An’ meanwhile, my dear, I’d be glad to have you feel ther’s no sort of trouble in the world so big I wouldn’t be glad to smooth out for you.” He suddenly spread out his muscular hands. “These two hands are for you, night or day, all the time, and I’ve two ears that’ll hear the faintest whisper of trouble that’s worrying you. Say, come along right down. Your mother’s crazy to talk your Jim to you and she asked me to bring you to home.”

The man’s whole manner was so gentle as to be irresistible. For all the thing that lay between them there had never been a moment when he had made so great an appeal to the girl. His normal roughness she knew to be but an unfortunate garment in which he clothed himself. Now, as times before, she was listening to the real man so surely hidden from the world that looked on. She was not without a shadow of regret that she could not see in him the man of her desire. Without a word of protest she permitted him to lead the way down from the bald crest of the headland.

CHAPTER III
In Beacon Glory

IVOR McLAGAN eased his great body in the groaning wicker chair, and his eyes snapped with something like irritation. The long, lean cigar it was his habit to smoke he removed from between his lips, and indicated the main thoroughfare beyond the window behind him.

“Don’t tell me you’ve a hunch for this muck-hole, Victor,” he said sharply. “Take a pull at yourself, man. Get a cold douche, if you can find a thing so wholesome in Beacon Glory, and wake yourself right up. Take a look out there. Take a peek around you, and if you aren’t as blind as a dead mule, and a sure candidate for the foolish place, you’ll see this darnation monument to human vanity as it is. I tell you there’s no sort of limit to human vanity when it gets a-riot fixing cities. Beacon Glory? Did you ever call a hogpen by any other fancy name? Sure you didn’t. You aren’t plumb crazed yet for all you’re talking this burg as though winter had no right hiding it up for six months of the year. Get a look at the garbage lying around even the business avenue. Avenue! Sounds fine, doesn’t it? And then think of the hell of flies and skitters you got to live through next summer. Look at the shanties lying scattered around desecrating a swell picture of Nature’s painting. They’re enough to insult a half-breed settlement that don’t know better. But that’s no circumstance to the folks who’re to blame for despoiling God Almighty’s decent earth with a pestilential collection of man’s assorted junk. The moral atmosphere of Beacon Glory would leave the hottest oven in hell hollering. There’s more dirt an’ dishonesty to the square inch in Beacon Glory than you’d ever find in any mediæval Turkish penitentiary, kept especially for housing the folks they don’t like the faces of. And they call this quagmire of corruption ‘Beacon Glory’! They laid it out in Avenues! They filled it up with garbage an’ human junk, an’ folk like you sit around with your hat in one hand and the other on your left chest and breathe the word ‘city’ in the sort of tone you’d hand out over a deathbed. That’s you, who don’t belong to it. You, who aren’t any sort of part of it, except you’re here to collect any stray gold lying around, and pass it back to your home city. You, a banker! My, it’s queer how folks can fall for their surroundings!”

Victor Burns laughed cordially at his friend’s diatribe. It amused him thoroughly. McLagan was on his pet theme, which was an utter contempt and detestation of the city of Beacon Glory.

“That’s all right, Ivor,” he said. “You can’t run a branch of your bank and shout at the folks you do business with. For just as long as it’s my job collecting the dust folks don’t know better than to waste their lives chasing, Beacon Glory’s a deal bigger than ‘ace high’ to me. It’s a swell city that does a mighty big credit to the folks whose enterprise set it up—and made my living possible. You’re collecting oil in the big valleys, which is liable to leave you finding a queer sort of human fog lying about our principal avenue, but I’d like to say the ‘muck-hole’ of Beacon Glory don’t hurt your prospect a cent, and you’d miss its ‘beauties’ if the foolish ones had never dumped it down.”

McLagan laughed good-naturedly, and returned his cigar to its place in the corner of his capacious mouth. They were lounging in the office of Beacon Glory’s principal hotel, this engineer of the Mountain Oil Corporation and the chief banker of the place. They were something more than business acquaintances. A pleasant friendship existed between them, inspired perhaps by mutual esteem for the other’s integrity in surroundings which each knew to be something morally deplorable.

The hotel—the Plaza by name—was an angular three-storied, wooden-frame building that had once been well and truly painted. But that was in the boom days. It had a verandah fronting on the city’s only business avenue, a long, unpaved thoroughfare that had wrecked the running gear of more vehicles in its time than any roadway the world had ever known. Over the verandah, on a level with the first floor, was a wide balcony of similar proportions. In the heyday of prosperity this had been covered by a brilliant striped awning, but that, like the outside paint, had long since yielded to the weather. But for all its dreary, derelict appearance the Plaza stood out amongst the rest of the city’s buildings, with one or two exceptions, as something rather magnificent, if only for its proportions.

McLagan and the banker had the office with its decayed furniture and spluttering wood stove to themselves. That is, they only shared it with its atmosphere of general uncleanness. It was the hour immediately before supper, a meal which Abe Cranfield’s fly-blown menu described as “dinner,” a title his boarders refused to accept. Soon contingents of humanity would foregather in anticipation of a meal to sustain stomachs which had long since learned to satisfy themselves on a diet of unsavoury monotony.

“That’s all right, Victor,” McLagan said readily. “You’re a banker, I’m not. I’m just a hard citizen the same as the rest, and don’t need to worry to keep my notions of Beacon Glory to myself. And if any feller feels like disputing, why, I can argue it out any old way he fancies. But I’m sick with this city the same as I’m sick with most things unclean. I guess it isn’t altogether the fault of folks so much as the times, and the thing life’s drifted into. Does it ever worry you thinking of modern conditions and the crazy scramble of it all? You know, I ought to’ve been born two or three centuries back before some fool guy invented the words ‘democracy’ and ‘proletariat.’ You can’t run a thing right by committees and assemblies set up by any popular vote. Think of me trying to locate oil in the hills back here with a bunch of guys sitting around telling me how I need to go about it, and where to start my drills. No, sir. It’s the same with countries and cities and Sunday schools. You need one head and one hand. And whether for good or bad you’ll get some sort of order and discipline and things’ll move quick. I’d say it’s better, seeing human nature is what it is, to let one feller graft than a government of hundreds, and it’s cheaper. This territory’s run by a government that only cares for its job and legislates thousands of miles away. What’s the result? Why—Beacon Glory, an undisciplined quagmire of human muck!”

Victor Burns lit a cigarette and grinned through the smoke. He was a small, round, sleek little man, clean-shaven and with a pleasant face that looked to be made for smiling. He was almost in ridiculous contrast to the huge frame and rugged exterior of the other.

“That’s all so, all right,” Burns nodded. “I’ve thought heaps more than that lying awake at nights wondering how far the other feller’s got me beat. But a grouch in this office isn’t going to fix things right.” He glanced alertly round the room which still remained empty. “And that’s why I’m kind of glad for that bunch of boys who got together to try and clean things up. It don’t matter to me who or what the folks of the Aurora Clan are, or the ultimate purpose lying back of their game. They started out a year ago to clean things up some and they got half the toughs of this burg scared to foolishness. There hasn’t been a hold-up in months, and only a week back these white-gowned purifiers burnt out stark that drug den of Bernard’s where Charlie O’Byrne was done to death for his wad. Say, those boys are right if they just stick right to the game they started on. The danger is, when they got Beacon where they need it and have cleaned up the tougher stuff of the place, they may be looking for payment.”

Ivor shook his head.

“You never can tell, Victor,” he said seriously. “They’re a terror to the muck of this place now, I agree. Maybe later they’ll be a terror, anyway, that’s the way of these things. So long as they act the way they are we’re all glad, we must be. Any feller with a wide mind would be crazy to feel bad about them, but,” he shook his head and flung the stump of his cigar almost viciously into the stove, “maybe it’ll just drift into the usual. With the others out of the way they’ll do the hold-up. Then the Government, thousands of miles away’ll butt in. The Aurora Clan will get cleaned right up and back we’ll fall into the muck those boys did their best to haul us out of. No, I’ve a brief for them. I surely have. But when they’ve done their work and start getting gay for themselves, I’ll be as ready as any one to start cleaning them up. It’s a hell of a place, anyway!”

McLagan remained gazing into the stove with eyes that had lost their usual twinkle. He was a man of immense resolution and capacity. A brilliant mining engineer, he yearned for wider scope in the affairs of life. So far all his energies had been directed to the earth’s remote places, seeking those treasures for his Corporation which at any cost must be acquired for the purposes of satisfying voracious shareholders. And Victor Burns, watching him, understood something of the restless, dissatisfied spirit driving him. He was a shrewd judge of men, as are most real bankers, and this burly, plain creature, all energy and capacity, more than usually interested him.

“How’s oil?” he asked quietly, as the other remained silent.

“Just about the same.” Ivor laughed in his short way. “Oh, it’s there all right. It’s there plenty. The Alsek valley’s full of it—when we can reach it. That’s one of the things makes me feel bad for this place. When we strike it, as we’re sure to, the old gold boom that bred this city won’t be any sort of circumstance.”

“When’ll that be?”

Burns’ eyes were shrewdly inquiring. It was his business to be well-informed.

“Any old time, maybe a month, maybe two years.” McLagan shook his head. “You can’t just say. But two years from now is our limit. That’ll make a seven-year prospect.”

“I see.” Burns nodded and glanced round. The door had opened to admit the first arrival of the boarders. “Well, we need it. There’s some gold flowing in slowly from the country. But things are dead flat, and I can’t even begin to guess where the folks collect the dollars spent at the Speedway every night. Max, there, tells me he’s looking to a big spending winter, but I don’t see how he figures it. Howdy, Tilbury,” he nodded at the new arrival. “Where’s your partner, Allison?”

The newcomer, slight, short and with greying hair, nodded back a greeting.

“Oh, I guess he’s on the bum around. He’ll be along. Glad to see you, Mr. McLagan,” he said, turning quickly and almost deferentially to the engineer. “Opened up a gusher yet?”

McLagan’s eyes twinkled as he rose from his protesting chair.

“Guess I’ll be asked that haf a century of times before the night’s out. No, boy,” he said. “The old earth’s holding up her secrets and looks like holding ’em years. An’ say, you’ll be doing me real service putting that news around when the boys come in to feed. Put it round quick, while I go and wash. Travelling’s a mighty dirty pastime around Beacon Glory, which is only reasonable.” And he passed out of the office just as a distant bell rang announcing the evening meal.

“Bad” Booker was sitting in his private room behind the outer office. It was a comfortable apartment, almost sumptuous, and seemed to be the natural setting for the personality of this real estate man. He was a heavy creature with a flowing moustache, of which, to judge by the inordinate care he bestowed upon it, he was exceedingly proud. He was fat and everything about him was gross. His general appearance and manner were of extreme good nature, and his smile to this end was of a quality admirably calculated to emphasise it. But Beacon Glory knew the man because, whatever other things Beacon Glory may have lacked, it had a swift estimate of those who were part of its public life. Those whose misfortune made it necessary to come into business contact with Bad Booker hated and detested the man, and more particularly his smile, for they quickly found that the real estate mask was incapable of long concealing the ugly features of the usurer underneath.

He was smoking a pungent Turkish cigarette liberally besprinkled with gold lettering, and the while he was studying the extensive deed of title relating to a corner block in the chief avenue of the city. An air of calm satisfaction pervaded the man, for he knew that the property under consideration was about to fall into his hands at a price which even he regarded as advantageous. It was what he desired.

He was a shrewd creature with a wide vision in the matter of self-interest. Whatever others might think of Beacon Glory, he, at least, had no doubts. He realised with absolute certainty that the place was there to stay. It was within twenty miles of a fine, wide harbour for shipping from the South. It was built on the shores of a large lake whose name, since the city’s building, had become associated with the place, and it occupied a site in the heart of a splendid valley which ran right down to the sea and was the highway to the interior of Alaska through the otherwise almost impassable world of the southern hills. It was the centre of a gold region that was as yet in its infancy. Furthermore, there was coal and iron, and undoubtedly oil in abundance in the broken world about it. The place was “flat” now as a reaction from its original boom, but it was moving steadily if slowly, and the right men were drifting in with a view to exploring its resources.

Very quietly and unostentatiously he was acquiring every property that fell into the market so long as the price met his ideas of investment. He was ready to mortgage for any town property. Smiling at all times, his purse was always open for any proprietor of a town lot who needed temporary assistance. The man was a merciless money-spinner of the worst type. Disaster and misfortune to others were the conditions under which his real business prospered.

He laid the documents aside and lit a fresh cigarette from the remains of the other, which he dropped thoughtfully into the silver-mounted ash-tray on the desk beside him. Then he sat back in his chair, and, with his fleshy hands clasped over his ample stomach, gave himself up to a few moments of rapid mental calculation.

But his efforts were broken in upon. There was a light tap on the opaque glass of the door that shut him off from the outer office, and a clerk pushed his way in.

In an instant his smiling habit returned, but his tone of greeting was sharp.

“What in hell is it this time, Jake?” he demanded, while his hands fell away from his stomach.

Jake Forner was a mild-looking creature whose face gave no true indication of the man behind it. He was broad and angular, with shoulders that looked sizes too big for the rest of his body. He was clean-shaven, with the wide brow and big dark eyes of the student. But his mouth and jaws were firmly set and suggested possibilities.

“It’s an open letter,” he said, “and it was handed in by a kid I just didn’t seem to rec’nise. I didn’t feel like worrying you with it till I opened it, then I guessed I’d best pass it in to you right away.”

He came over to the desk and held out an open sheet of paper, while his dark eyes closely scrutinised the smiling features of his employer.

Booker took the paper without interest for all the other’s quietly impressive manner. He glanced at the open sheet casually, and, in a moment, his attention became profoundly absorbed.

Jake Forner was watching him. His eyes had something in them that suggested smiling thought behind them. He was noting his employer’s expression and saw it change rapidly from its habitual smile to complete seriousness, and, finally, to something that seemed to suggest anger not undriven by alarm.

It was a curious document, littered with a scrawling writing made up of rough block capital letters and evidently indited by some rough instrument, possibly a piece of sharpened wood. The lettering was red and at the bottom of it, underneath the signature, was the rough outline of a skull and crossbones, a flamboyant, melodramatic finish that might well have inspired derision. But somehow, the thing inspired nothing of the sort in the mind of the man to whom it was addressed. He read it carefully:

Bad Booker,

You are trying to steal a city block from a helpless client. You have a mortgage on it for two thousand dollars. You are offering two thousand dollars more to wipe out the mortgage and possess the lot. The lowest market value of the property is ten thousand dollars. You will pay the difference between your mortgage and ten thousand dollars, namely, eight thousand dollars for the site. You have twenty-four hours in which to make a written offer of this amount. If you fail to do this, and to complete the deal in one week from this date, you will be hanged on the site in question.

Sgd. Chief Light of the Aurora.

Booker did not look up as he finished the reading. He sat gazing at the paper, and once or twice Jake Forner observed that he swallowed drily. Then, as the man remained furiously silent, the clerk cleared his throat.

“That’s about as ugly as I’ve known ’em to play,” he said in a tone of mild sympathy.

Booker laid the paper down and raised a pair of angry eyes. The clerk saw the storm in them and waited for it to break. It came on the instant.

“The swines!” Booker’s body was squared in the well-padded chair. He was sitting up and breathing heavily. “The dirty, low-down swines!” he cried. Then a heavy fist was raised and fell with a crash on the ill-drawn sign of the skull. “If they think they can scare me with a bluff like that I reckon they’re crazy. It’s a hold-up, and I’m falling for no hold-up. By God! I’ll fight them! Eight thousand? Not on your life. I’ll press that two thousand home right away and show ’em they can’t throw a bluff at me and get away with it. They want a written offer. Well, I guess they’ll get it. I’ll write it now an’ you can beat it out to the Carver woman, and put it right into her hands. But it’s for two thousand dollars. And I guess she’ll fall for it quick or—starve.”

He pushed the Aurora Clan’s document roughly aside and started to write out his offer, but Jake anxiously intervened; he quickly raised a white hand and passed it across his broad forehead.

“I wouldn’t act in a hurry,” he said quickly. “You’re bucking a tough game with the ‘aces’ against you. The Aurora bunch have been mighty busy in the past weeks. Is it worth it? Just look back an’ see. Bernard’s gone. Clean wiped out, an’ he’s had to beat it out of Beacon looking like a black rooster that hasn’t moulted right. Then there was Pat Herne who robbed Len Sitwell when he was soused at the Speedway. They hanged him right outside the town limits. Then don’t forget Dick Mansell, who held up the stage coming in from Ranger. He was left pumped full of lead till you couldn’t tell his guts from an ash riddle. I’m scared for you, boss. I surely am. Ther’s a terror creepin’ through this place scares me plumb to death. These guys are a citizen bunch and no sort of ordinary toughs. They’re acting seemingly with some sort of slab-sided purpose. They’re wise to every move going on, an’ I can’t reckon how they get hold of things. But there it is, and when they hand in a brief on a boy they put through the thing it says. We’re a business enterprise, boss, and it’s our job to beat the other feller if we can. But I sort of feel when ther’s a hanging bee at the end of it, business goes right out. Don’t you jump, boss. Sure I’m scared. I haven’t your nerve. But I got it right here,” and he tapped his forehead with a forefinger, “this is no sort of bluff. It’s dead straight. An’ I’m not yearning to see you swinging on the wrong end of a rawhide rope.”

Jake spoke quietly but urgently, and his usually mild eyes were a match for his manner. He was Booker’s confidential clerk, a man of quiet efficiency and whose vision was unusually clear. So, for all his swift wrath, Booker had let him talk. Now, however, the usurer leapt uppermost and his reply was swift and biting.

“You want me to hand out eight thousand at the orders of this gang?” he cried, furiously. “You want me to pass eight thousand good dollars to Rebecca Carver when she’s ready to close for two? You’re crazy, Jake! Crazy as a bed-bug! If that’s the sort of business we’re to do, I guess the sooner we close our doors and beat it the better. Besides——”

“And the hanging bee?”

The eyes of the clerk were steadily regarding his furious chief, and somehow the quiet reminder was not without effect. Booker shifted his gaze and it fell on the lamentable design of the skull.

“This thing sets me crazy mad,” he protested, and his tone had somehow fallen from its original bluster.

“But you’ll be madder—for a while—at the hanging bee.”

Booker broke into a short, harsh laugh at his clerk’s persistence in dwelling upon the thing he saw lying ahead.

“That stunt has got you scared all right, Jake,” Booker said, with a world of contempt in the quick look he raised to the man’s pale face. “Maybe you’re guessing, seeing you’re my clerk, they’ll need you to be present to share in the game.”

A flush mounted to the clerk’s cheeks.

“You can guess that way if you fancy, boss,” he retorted, in a pronounced change of tone. Then his eyes searched the fat, unsmiling face before him. “But you best get this right now and get it quick. I’m out for your profit as well as my own. I’m out to see this business go right on without any interruption in the nature of a hanging bee. If you collected that chunk of real estate for two thousand dollars on top of the mortgage it would be a swell profit. Some folks might call it robbery, seeing they ain’t in it. But ten thousand dollars is bedrock just now as they say in that brief, and, when boom time comes again, you won’t miss the six thousand dollars’ difference they’re demanding. Well, I guess I’d buy off a hanging bee, with me as the centrepiece, any old time for six thousand dollars. And if you’re wise, I guess you’ll act that way, too.”

“But you’re forgetting the bluff of it all,” Booker said, without looking up. Then he raised his hard eyes. “Gee, haven’t you any sort of old guts makes you want to kick? Can you stand for a thing like that?” he cried, holding up the ill-written document. “Are we men, or——?”

“We certainly wouldn’t be men for long if we didn’t stand for it. You don’t seem to get a grip of this thing, boss. I’ve watched it all the time. This Aurora bunch is as real as the old Ku-Klux Klan, that cleaned up the south in the nigger days. You’re wondering if we’re men. Well, I’d say right here, let’s be. Don’t write your offer in a hurry. Think awhile. An’ when you’ve thought good I’ll saddle my pony and ride out to Rebecca Carver with the result. It won’t hurt us to get that block at the price they say. But it will at any other. I’m making that tracing of the new city limits and need to get right on with it. Maybe in a while you’ll let me know the thing you’ve decided.”

Jake turned away and passed quickly into the outer office, closing the partition door carefully behind him. Booker watched him go with eyes which had doubt in them for the first time. Yielding was utterly foreign to his nature where advantage in a transaction lay within his grasp. But the mild-eyed clerk had driven home his argument in a fashion all the more relentless for its sobriety. And for once in his life Bad Booker, the usurer, was thinking more of the vision of a hanging as conjured by his subordinate than he was of robbing a helpless widow of six thousand dollars.

[CHAPTER IV]
The Great Disaster

THE mother was sitting over her cookstove. She was almost crouching over it. With her hands tightly clasped she seemed as though she was striving with every resource of her being to support herself under the crushing weight of the great grief with which she was beset. Her widely gazing eyes were straining with the mental anguish behind them. And they were utterly unseeing for all they stared into the ruddy heart of the fire shining between the upright bars. Stony misery looked out of them, that dreadful expression of heartbreak which seems to leave a woman powerless, helpless.

The living room about her was neat, and of its usual orderliness. It lacked nothing of the housewifely care that was usually bestowed upon it. For all the poverty of its furnishing, it was a place of comfort, which, even under Rebecca Carver’s suddenly imposed grief, had not been allowed to suffer. Her daughter Claire had seen to that. For the time her mother was submerged in her trouble, and the girl herself was no less stricken, but will and youth in the latter had overridden every weakness of the moment.

Thus the mother had sat for many hours. And the transformation which had taken place in her in twenty-four hours was something almost horrifying to the devoted daughter.

During the long hours of night the still, silent figure had nursed her despair. Claire, no less sleepless, had discovered her in precisely the same position each time she had left her bed in an adjoining room. She had prayed her mother, she had sought to persuade her by every means in her power, to seek her bed, and such peace as sleep might afford her. But it had all been useless. Each time her mother had obeyed her submissively, meekly, almost mechanically, only to return again to her vigil at the fireside the moment she had been left alone.

The grey afternoon was far advanced when Claire returned from the creek below with her arms full of a snowy laundry. Work! It had been the same all day with her. It was her only defence. She pushed her way in through the half-open door, and one swift glance and the sound of rustling paper as she deposited her burden on the well-worn table, told her of the unchanged mental attitude of her mother.

Just for a moment she stood regarding the bowed figure with troubled eye. She saw the crumpled news-sheet, one of the papers which Ivor had left with them the day before. It was crushed under her arms as they rested in her lap. And she understood. Her mother had been reading again, perhaps for the hundredth time, that brief newspaper story which was the source of the nightmare of disaster which had fallen upon them.

The girl was tired and utterly dispirited. Somehow her tall, graceful figure seemed slightly bowed out of its usual courageous bearing. Her pretty eyes were ringed about, as though, in the absence of observation, she had yielded to her woman’s expression of grief. But now, at the sight of the silent, tearless figure at the stove, she summoned every ounce of her youthful courage to her aid. She moved across the room quickly, and deliberately removed the paper from beneath the yielding arms.

“Must you, mother?” she said quietly, but with a sharpness she was wholly unaware of. Then she added as she smoothed out the paper, “Will it do any good? You’ve read the story till—till you’re nigh sick. You’ve read it till I just can’t bear seeing you read it any longer. I guess I’ll need to burn it if I don’t want to have you set crazy.”

But she made no attempt to burn the paper, and all her courage seemed to fade completely out as her mother raised to hers a pair of eyes that were filled with a world of piteousness.

The latter shook her greying head.

“I won’t go crazy, child,” she said in a low, monotonous voice. “Give me time, dear. You see, he was my boy—my Jim. He was everything to me—my son, and—and he’s gone.”

Something stirred in the girl—something suddenly spurred her. It was an expression of youthful hope, which, in calmer moments, she would have realised was ill-enough founded.

“But has he?” she demanded, almost vehemently. “You don’t know—we don’t know! You’ve read that story till you can’t read it right. Our judgment’s been snowed under in the scare of it. That’s so, sure! What is it? Why, it’s just a news story,” she cried, flinging scornful emphasis into her tone. “It’s a fool news story they love to scare folks with, an’ later they’ll contradict it without pity for the worry and grief it’s caused to the folks who’ve read it. I’ve thought and thought and I tell you it’s—it’s not real. I don’t believe he’s dead. Here, I’ll show you. I’ll read it. You sit there and just listen. Will you? Then you’ll see.”

She smoothed the paper again and moved away to the open doorway. Then she read in a strident voice and commented as she read:

“‘Disaster at Sea? Urgent SOS.’

“That’s the headline, mum dear, and there’s a question marked against it,” she cried. “You get that? Even the paper asks the question.”

The girl had looked up. She was urgently regarding the figure at the stove. She was seeking a sign and seemed to find it in the fact that her mother had sat up.

“Listen,” she went on quickly. “You need to get the words just as they are.

“‘The S. S. Arbuthnot of Liverpool, bound for Sydney, N.S.W., picked up the following wireless on the morning of 27th inst.: “Sailing-ship Imperial, Bristol. Steering gear carried away. Cargo shifted. Plates badly sprung. Sinking. Send help. Possibly last twenty-four hours.”’”

Again the girl looked up.

“Then there’s figgers I don’t understand,” she said. “Maybe they’re her position. But you see she’s going to last twenty-four hours. Anything, I guess, could happen in that time. There’s the boats. Maybe if there’s storm, it’ll let up. We’ve seen it storm nigh a hurricane on the sea back of here and flatten out in twelve hours——”

The mother shook her head despairingly. “I’ve thought all that,” she said, in a low voice. Then she seemed to pull herself together for a supreme effort. “It’s kind of you, Claire, to—to—say all this. I know, my dear. You’re feeling just as badly, and you’re trying to help us both. But I feel it right here,” she went on, clasping her bosom with both hands. “He’s gone—our Jim. It just wasn’t meant for him to get back with——”

“That’s fool talk, mother, and I won’t listen,” Claire broke in roughly. “You’ve thought yourself into that. But there’s the rest.

“‘The Arbuthnot, steamed at once to the rescue. She arrived on the scene at the position indicated, and, though the weather had improved, no trace of the Imperial was discovered.’

“You see, mum? The weather had improved.

“‘Similarly, the Argonaut, bound from Shanghai to New Zealand, picked up the Imperial’s message and hurried to the rescue. She apparently arrived at the given position some hours later. She reports no better success. There was no trace of the distressed vessel, and it is presumed she must have foundered. The best hope lies in the fact that, with the storm abating and twenty-four hours’ grace, the crew of the foundering vessel was able to get away in the boats, although as yet none of these are reported having been picked up.

“‘The Imperial of Bristol is a full-rigged ship of three thousand tons engaged in a West Australian coasting trade. She carried a crew of eighteen or twenty.’

“No, no, mum, dear,” Claire cried, forcing a smile to her tired eyes. “We mustn’t lose hope. We surely mustn’t. Why, even the paper reckons the crew must have got away. Just think. Twenty-four hours and the storm quitting. You know Jim. I reckon he isn’t the boy to lie around waiting to drown. I’d bet our last cent they got the boats out, and——”

“What then, Claire?” cried the mother, in a sudden passionate outburst. “I’ve looked up those figgers on the map. That boat, with our Jim on it, was right out in mid-ocean, thousands of miles from land. Think of it, girl, and don’t talk foolish. Mid-ocean! Open boats that couldn’t stand half a gale! And they’re not reported picked up. I tell you——”

But the girl had turned to the doorway. A horse-man had just ridden up and flung out of the saddle. It was Jake Forner, Bad Booker’s clerk, and he came straight to the doorway where Claire was standing.

It was a moment of complete reaction. The sight of the broad shoulders of the real estate man’s clerk, with his dark, mild eyes and mild, almost gentle manner, did that for the troubled women which no effort of their own could have achieved. The pressure of despairing thought was flung into the background in face of the urgency of the thing which this man’s arrival heralded. Even, perhaps, because of the enormity of the trouble which had befallen, this man’s coming was of greater significance.

The mother remained unmoving. But Claire bravely faced the newcomer with a smile that had no inspiration from any pleasurable emotion.

“How do, Mr. Forner,” she said, with a cheerfulness that had seemed impossible seconds ago. “Guess you’ve come along for my mother’s answer? Will you come right in?”

Then she turned swiftly to the woman at the stove. She moved over to her and stood close beside her as though to protect her as the man obeyed her invitation.

“I’m kind of sorry, dear,” she said quickly. “I didn’t tell you about it before because—because—Mr. Booker offered you two thousand dollars for that city block he has a mortgage on. Guess Mr. Forner has ridden out for his answer.”

Then she looked straight into the man’s dark eyes while she went on speaking to her mother.

“It’s a real tough proposition,” she said slowly, and with all the biting emphasis she could fling into the words. “It’s so tough I feel like telling Booker the things a girl ’ud hate to say. The block is worth ten thousand dollars on the market to-day, which means eight thousand dollars to him, and he wants to hand you two thousand dollars for it. Are you going to take the money or starve—which is Booker’s pleasant alternative? I guess we need to decide right away.”

“Ther’s no need for a decision on those figgers, Miss Claire,” Jake said quickly, his usually impassive face flushing under the sting of this beautiful girl’s words.

“How d’you mean?”

Claire’s demand came sharply. It came in that startled fashion which suggested apprehension lest Booker had withdrawn even his usurious offer.

Jake’s flush had faded out. He stood just within the doorway, a curiously ungainly figure in his simple city tweed suit which seemed to belong to another world than that of this primitive log home built by folks who had lived their lives in the golden wilderness of the North. His fine eyes were smiling kindly in the manner of one who feels himself to be something in the nature of a ministering, beneficent angel rather than the executioner of the will of an unscrupulous usurer.

“Why, he’s reconsidered his proposal,” he said quietly, his smile communicating itself to the rest of his face. “I guess he’s sounded the market and feels he wants to treat you right. Maybe he didn’t just remember the exact position of that swell corner block when he made his offer to you yesterday. He knows about it now,” he went on drily, “and fancies handing you eight thousand dollars for complete reversion. I kind of think that’s a square deal, Mrs. Carver. Here’s his ‘brief’ to that effect and the cash, in dollars, is enclosed. You’ll just need to sign the deed I’ll hand you as a preliminary, and the transfer can go through next time you’re along in town. Do you feel like closing?”

There was much more in the man’s simply spoken statement than he realised. There was much more, too, in his manner, and somehow the unexpectedness of Booker’s change of attitude held Claire silent while she regarded the smiling face of the man who brought the pleasant news.

Rebecca Carver’s interest, however, had fallen back before the mother grief which had only been deposed from its supremacy for a few moments. She made no attempt to reply in any form, while her gaze was turned once more to her stove.

Claire suddenly urged her.

“You’ll accept, mother?” she said quickly, and the other nodded.

Then the girl turned again to the waiting man who had withdrawn a letter and the document that must be signed, from an inner pocket.

Claire forced a laugh to her lips.

“It seems queer, Mr. Forner,” she said shrewdly. “Yes, surely we’ll accept, and mother’ll sign. But I’m kind of glad you came, and I’m real glad to hear you say that piece, especially seeing Booker and I discussed the market value of the block and he was fully aware of its position. I’d made a guess you’ve somehow had a deal to do with changing his mind. It isn’t easy for a decent man to sit around while his boss is trying to rob a helpless woman. I’ll just get a pen—oh, you’ve a fountain pen. Well, mother’ll sign right away, and our blessing’ll surely follow you on your way right back to the city.”

Jake Forner had departed and his coming had done more for the two bereft women than either of them was aware of. The paralysing effect of the newspaper story had given place to the reality of things. Grief was still driving them hard, but its pressure had somehow become less devastating, less numbing—more particularly was this the case with Claire.

She was still standing in the open doorway gazing out into the grey light of the dying fall day whence she had passed her “God-speed” to the man who had executed his mission with so much obvious goodwill and pleasure.

Had the girl possessed half the woman’s vanity to which she was entitled, she might have understood something of the ungainly man’s feelings in visiting her home. But Claire had not as yet discovered in herself that dormant self-appreciation which is so essentially an expression of all human nature. She had learned little or nothing from the faithful, if inadequate, mirror in her small lean-to sleeping quarters. Her wide blue eyes were simply a feature with which to witness the wonders of the world about her, just as her mass of ruddy hair was a something to brush laboriously and to fret over. Her slim, girlish figure she had only learned to deplore in the arduous labours which her life entailed, and its effect upon the men with whom she came into contact concerned her not at all. As yet her woman’s charm was a negative factor in her life.

But she was thinking hard as she gazed out upon the grey and russet of the fall world about her. Her gaze was upon the familiar, wood-clad slopes beyond the creek, on which was situated their spent gold claim. The slowly meandering waters that murmured their ceaseless song on the still air helped to impress the loneliness that for the first time in her life had suddenly made itself felt. And somehow, it set up an almost irresistible longing to flee from the sound of it.

For all her brave effort to help her mother she knew her beloved brother had been completely swept out of their lives. The hungry, merciless waters had swallowed him up. She would never, never, never see him again, or listen to his quiet, confident words. Never again would she witness those unobtrusive little acts of devotion which had been so unfailing in their home life with him. No, he was gone out of their lives completely, utterly. It was the end of a long chapter of youthful dreaming. And ahead lay an impenetrable future in which care and responsibility must be shouldered, and hers must be the burden of it.

For a moment something like panic surged in her heart. Before, only grief had stirred her. But, of a sudden now, grief receded into the background, a depressing shadow always threatening, whilst a wholly new emotion took possession of her. Her moment of panic passed. Her thought cleared of all confusion and a swift, keen resolution descended upon her and brought her calmness of spirit.