XIX.

BROOKE'S BARGAIN.

There was a portentous quietness in the little wooden town which did not exactly please Mr. Faraday Sloc.u.m, the somewhat discredited local agent of Grant Devine, as he ascended the steep street from the grocery store.

The pines closed in upon it, but their sombre spires were growing dim, and the white mists clung about them, for dusk was creeping up the valley. The latter fact brought Sloc.u.m a sense of satisfaction, and at the same time a growing uneasiness. He had, as it happened, signally failed to collect a certain sum from the store-keeper, who had expressed his opinion of him and his doings with vitriolic candor, and it was partly as the result of this that very little escaped his notice as he proceeded with an ostentatious leisureliness towards his dwelling.

A straggling row of stores and houses, log and frame and galvanized iron, jumbled all together in unsightly confusion, stretched away before him towards the gap in the forest where the railroad track came in, but it was the little groups of men who hung about them which occupied his quiet attention. He saluted them with somewhat forced good-humor as he went by, but there was no great cordiality in their responses, and some of them stared at him in uncompromising silence. There was, he felt, a certain tension in the atmosphere, and it was not without a purpose he stopped in front of the wooden hotel, where a little crowd had collected upon the verandah.

"It's kind of sultry to-night, boys," he said.

n.o.body responded for a moment or two, and then there was an unpleasant laugh as somebody said, "You've hit it; I guess it is."

Sloc.u.m remembered that most of those loungers had been glad to greet him, and even hand him their spare dollars, not long ago; but there was a decided difference now. He was a capable business man, who could make the most of an opportunity, and the inhabitants of the little wooden town had shown themselves disposed to regard certain trifling obliquities leniently, while they or their friends made satisfactory profits on the deals in ranching land and building lots he recommended.

That, however, was while the boom lasted, but when the bottom had, as they expressed it, dropped out, and a good many of them found themselves saddled with unmarketable possessions, they commenced to be troubled with grave doubts concerning the rect.i.tude of his conduct. Sloc.u.m was naturally quite aware of this, but he was a man of nerve, and quietly walked up the verandah steps.

"It's that hot I must have a drink, boys. Who's coming in with me?" he said, genially.

A few months ago a good many of them would have been willing to profit by the invitation, but that night n.o.body moved, and Sloc.u.m laughed softly.

"Well," he said, "I'm not going to worry you. This is evidently a temperance meeting."

He pa.s.sed into the empty bar alone, and a man who leaned upon the counter in his shirt sleeves shook his head as he glanced towards the verandah.

"They're not in a good humor to-night. It looks very much as if someone has been talking to them?" he said.

Sloc.u.m smiled a little, though he had already noticed this, and taken precautions the bar-keeper never suspected.

"I guess they'll simmer down. Who has been talking to them?" he said.

"The two ranchers you sold the Hemlock Range to. There was another man who'd bought a piece of natural prairie, and it cost him most of five dollars before he got through telling them what he thought of you. Now, I don't know what their notion is, but I'd light out for a little if I was you."

Sloc.u.m appeared to reflect. "Well," he said, "I may go to-morrow."

"I'd go to-night," said the bar-keeper, significantly. "I guess it would be wiser."

Sloc.u.m, who did not consider it necessary to tell him that he quite agreed with this, went out, and a few minutes later stopped outside his house, which was the last one in the town. A big, rudely-painted sign, nailed across the front of it, recommended any one who desired to buy or sell land and mineral properties or had mortgages to arrange, to come in and confer with the agent of Grant Devine. He glanced back up the street, and was relieved to notice that there was n.o.body loitering about that part of it. Then he looked at the forest the trail led into, which was shadowy and still, and, slipping round the building, went in through the back of it. A woman stood waiting him in a dimly-lighted room, which was littered with feminine clothing besides two big valises and an array of bulky packages. She was expensively dressed, but her face was anxious, and he noticed that her fingers were quivering.

"You're quite ready, Sue?" he said.

The woman pointed to the packages with a little dramatic gesture. "Oh, yes," she said. "I'm ready, though I'll have to leave most two hundred dollars' worth of clothes behind me. I've no use for taking in plain sewing while you think over what you've brought me to in the penitentiary."

Sloc.u.m smiled drily. "If you hadn't wanted quite so many dry goods, I'm not sure it would have come to this, but we needn't worry about that just now. Tom will have the horses round in 'bout five minutes. You don't figure on taking all that truck along with you?"

"I do," said the woman. "I've got to have something to put on when we get to Oregon!"

"Well," said Sloc.u.m, grimly, "I'll be quite glad to get out with a whole hide, and I guess it couldn't be done if we started with a packhorse train or a wagon. I hadn't quite fixed to light out until I got the message that Devine, who didn't seem quite pleased with the last accounts, was coming in."

"Could you have stood the boys off?"

"I might have done," said Sloc.u.m, reflectively. "Still, I couldn't stand off Devine. It's dollars he's coming for, and I've got 'bout half the accounts call for here."

"You're going to leave him them?"

Sloc.u.m laughed. "No," he said. "I guess they'll come in handy in Oregon.

I'm going to leave him the boys to reckon with. They'll be here with clubs soon after the cars come in, and we'll be a league away down the trail by then."

A patter of horse hoofs outside cut short the colloquy, though there was a brief altercation when the woman once more insisted on taking all the packages with her. Sloc.u.m terminated it by bundling her out of the door, and, when she tearfully consented to mount a kicking pony, swung himself to the saddle. Still, for several minutes his heart was in his mouth, as he picked his way through the blacker shadows on the skirt of the beaten trail, until a man rose suddenly out of them.

"Hallo!" he said. "Where're you going?"

Sloc.u.m, leaning sideways, gave his wife's pony a cut with the switch he held, and then laughed as he turned to the man.

"I guess that's my business, but I'm going out of town."

"Quite sure?" said the other, who made a sudden clutch at his bridle.

He did not reach it, for Sloc.u.m was ready with hand and heel, and the switch came down upon the outstretched arm. Then there was a plunge and a rapid beat of hoofs, and Sloc.u.m, swinging half round in his saddle, swept off his hat to the gasping man.

"I guess I am," he said. "You'll tell the boys I'm sorry I couldn't wait for them."

Then he struck his wife's horse again. "Let him go," he said. "We'll have three or four of them after us in about ten minutes."

The woman said nothing, but braced herself to ride, and, while the beat of hoofs grew fainter among the silent pines, the man on foot ran gasping up the climbing trail. There was bustle and consternation when he reached the wooden town, and, while two or three men who had good horses hastily saddled them, the rest collected in cl.u.s.ters which coalesced, and presently a body of silent men proceeded towards the Sloc.u.m dwelling. As they stopped in front of it, the hoot of a whistle came ringing across the pines, and there was an increasing roar as a train came up the valley. That, however, did not, so they fancied, concern them, and they commenced a parley with the local constable, who came hurrying after them. His duties consisted chiefly in the raising and peddling of fruit, and he had been recommended for the post by popular acclaim as the most tolerant man in the settlement, but he was, it seemed, not without a certain sense of responsibility.

"What d'you figure on doing with those clubs, boys?" he said.

"Seasoning them," said somebody. "Mine's quite soft and green. Now, why're you not taking the trail after Sloc.u.m? The province allows you for a horse, and Hake Guffy's has three good legs on him, anyway."

The constable waved his hand, deprecatingly. "He fell down and hurt one of them hauling green stuff to the depot. I guess I'd have to shove him most of the way."

There was a little laughter, which had, however, a trace of grimness in it, and one of the men grasped the constable's shoulder.

"Hadn't you better go round and run Jean Frenchy's hogs out of your citron patch?" he said.

For a moment the constable appeared about to go, and then his face expanded into a genial grin.

"That's not good enough, boys," he said. "I'm not quite so fresh that the cows would eat me. What've you come round here for, anyway?"

The man who had spoken made a little gesture of resignation. "Well," he said, "if you have got to know, we are going in to see if Sloc.u.m has left any of the dollars he beat us out of behind him."

"No," said the constable, stoutly. "n.o.body's going in there without a warrant, unless it's me."

There was a little murmur. The man was elderly, and a trifle infirm, which was partly why it had been decided that he was most likely to find a use for the provincial pay, but he turned upon the threshold and faced the crowd resolutely. Had he been younger, it is very probable that he would have been hustled away, but a Western mob is usually, to some extent, at least, chivalrous, and there was another murmur of protest.

"Go home!" said one man. "They're not your dollars, anyway."

"Boys," and the old man swung an arm aloft, "I'm here, and I'm going to make considerable trouble for the man who lays a hand on me. This is a law-abiding country, and Sloc.u.m wasn't fool enough to leave anything he could carry off."