Patty promised, and unsaddling, picketed her horse, and joined the girl in the dusty interior of the cabin. The musty hay, the discarded garments, and the two bushels or more of odds and ends with which the pack rats had filled the cupboard made a smudgy, smelly bonfire beside which Patty paused with an armful of discarded magazines. "Wouldn't you like to take these home?" she asked.

"Which?" inquired Microby, deftly picking a small stick from the ground with her bare toes and tossing it into the fire.

"These magazines. There are stories and pictures in them."

"No, I don't want none. We-alls cain't read, 'cept Ma, an' she's got a book--an' a bible, too," she added, with a touch of pride. "Davey, he kin mos' read, an' he kin drawer pitchers, too. Reckon he'll be a preacher when he's grow'd up, like Preacher Christie. He done read outen a book when he babitized us-uns. I don't like to read. Ma, she aimed to learn me onct, but I'd ruther shuck beans."

"Maybe you didn't keep at it long enough," suggested Patty.

"Yes, we did! We kep' at hit every night fer two nights 'til hit come bedtime. I cain't learn them letters--they's too many diffe'nt ones, an' all mixed up."

Patty smiled, but she did not toss the magazines into the fire.

Instead she laid them aside with the resolve that when opportunity afforded, she would carry on the interrupted education.

Microby's literary delinquency in no wise impaired her willingness to work. She had inherited none of her father's predilection toward eternal rest, and all day, side by side with Patty, she sc.r.a.ped, and scoured, and scrubbed, and washed, until the little cabin and its contents fairly radiated cleanliness. The moving in was great fun for the mountain girl. Especially the unpacking of the two trunks that resisted all efforts to lift them until their contents had been removed. But at last the work was finished even to the arrangement of dishes and utensils, the stowing of supplies, and the blowing up of the air mattress that replaced the musty hay of the sheep herder. And as the long shadows of mountains crept slowly across the little valley and began to climb the opposite slope, Patty stood in the door of her cabin and watched Microby mount the superannuated Indian pony and proceed slowly down the creek, her bare feet swinging awkwardly in the loops of rope that served as stirrups of her dilapidated stock saddle.

When horse and rider disappeared into a grove of cottonwoods, Patty's gaze returned to her immediate surroundings--her saddle-horse contentedly snipping gra.s.s, the waters of the shallow creek burbling noisily over the stones, the untidy scattering of tin cans, and the leaning panels of the old sheep corral. She frowned at the panels.

"I'll just use you for firewood," she muttered. "And that reminds me that I've got to wake up to my responsibility as head of the household--even if the household does only consist of one bay cayuse, named Dan, and a tiny one-room cabin, and two funny little squirrel-tailed pack rats, and me." She reached for her brand new ax, and picking her way from stone to stone, crossed the creek, and attacked a sagging panel.

Patty Sinclair was no hot-house flower, and the hand that gripped the ax was strong and brown and capable. Back home she had been known to the society reporters as "an out-door girl," by which it was understood that rather than afternoon auction at henfests, she affected tennis, golf, swimming, and cross-country riding. She could saddle her own horse, and paddle a canoe for hours on end. Even the ax was no stranger to her hand, for upon rare occasions when her father had returned during the summer months from his everlasting prospecting, he had taken her to camp in the mountains, and there from the quiet visionary whom she loved more than he ever knew, she learned the ax, and the compa.s.s, and a hundred tricks of camp lore that were to stand her well in hand. Partly inherited, partly acquired through a.s.sociation with her father upon those never-to-be-forgotten pilgrimages to the shrine of nature, her love of the vast solitudes shone from her uplifted eyes as she stood for a moment, ax in hand, and let her gaze travel slowly from the sun-gilded peaks of the mountains, down their darkening sides, to the dusk-enshrouded reaches of her valley. "He used to watch the sun go down, and he never wearied at the wonder of it," she breathed, softly. "And then, as the darkness deepened and the bull-bats came wheeling overhead, and the whip-poor-wills began calling from the thickets, he would light his pipe, and I would cuddle up close to him, and the firelight would grow redder and brighter and the soft warm dark would grow blacker. The pine trees would lose their shapes and blend into the formless night and mysterious shadow shapes would dance to the flicker of the little flames. It was then he would talk of the things he loved; of quartz, and drift, and the mother lode; of storms, and bears, and the scent of pines; of reeking craters, parched deserts, ice-locked barrens, and the wind-lashed waters of lakes. 'And some day, little daughter,' he would say, 'some day you are going with daddy and see all these things for yourself--things whose grandeur you have never dreamed. It won't be long, now--I'm on the right track at last--only till I've made my strike.' Always--'it won't be long now.' Always--'I'm on the right track, at last.' Always--'just ahead is the strike'--that lure, that mocking chimera that saps men's lives! And now, he is--gone, and I am chasing the chimera." Salt tears stung her eyes and blurred the timbered slopes. "They said he was a--a ne'er-do-well. He became almost a joke--" the words ended in a dry sob, as the bright blade of the ax crashed viciously into the rotting panel. A few moments later she picked up an armful of wood, and retracing her steps, piled it neatly behind the stove. She lighted the fire, fetched a pail of water from the spring, and moved the picketed cayuse to a spot beside the creek where the gra.s.s was green and lush. She had intended after supper to study her map and familiarize herself with the two small photographs that were pinned to it. But, when the meal was over and the dishes washed and put away she was too sleepy to do anything but drop the huge wooden bar that the sheep herder had contrived to insure himself against a possible night attack from his enemies into its place and crawl into her bunk. How good it felt, she thought, sleepily--the yielding air mattress, and the soft, clean blankets, after the straw tick on the floor, and the course sour blankets in the Wattses' stuffy room.

Somewhere, way off in the hills, a wolf howled and almost before the sound had died away the girl was asleep.

CHAPTER VI

BETHUNE PAYS A CALL

It was past noon when Patty sank into the chair beside her table and glanced about her with a sigh of satisfaction. Warm June sunlight streamed through the open door and lay in a bright oblique patch upon the scrubbed floor. The girl's glance strayed past the door and rested with approval upon the little flat across the creek where a neat pile of panels replaced the broken sheep corral. She had spent hours in untwisting the baling wire with which they had been fastened to the posts and dragging them to the pile, and other hours in chopping a supply of firewood, and picking up the cans and broken bottles and pitching them into the deep ravine of a side coulee. Also she had built a little reservoir of rocks about her spring, and had found time to add a few touches to the interior of the cabin. "It's just as homey and cozy as it can be," she murmured, as her eyes strayed from the little window where the colored chintz curtain stirred lightly in the breeze, to the neatly arranged "dressing table" that she had contrived with the aid of four light packing boxes and a bit of figured cretonne. Another packing case, covered to match, served as a stool, and upon the wall above the table hung a small mirror. Four or five prints, looking oddly out of place, hung upon the dark log walls--pictures that had always hung in her room at Aunt Rebecca's, and which she had managed to crowd into one of the trunks. A fond imagination had pictured them adorning the walls of her "apartment"

which was to be located in a s.p.a.cious wing of the great Watts ranch house. "I don't care, I'm glad there wasn't any big ranch house," she muttered. "It's lots nicer this way, and I'm absolutely independent.

We prospectors can't hope to be regular in our habits--and I've always wanted a house of my very own. Ten times better!" she exclaimed vehemently. "There won't be anybody to ask me every day or two if I've made my strike yet? And how much gold I brought back to-day? And all the other fool questions that seem so humorous to questioners and hearers, but which hurt and sting and rankle when you're sick at heart with disappointment, and gritting your teeth to keep up your courage and your belief in yourself. Oh I know! Daddy didn't know I knew, but I did--how it hurt when the village wits would slyly wink at each other as they asked their cruel questions. Even when I was a little girl I knew, and I could have _killed_ them!" Her glance rested upon the canvas covered pack that lay in the corner at the foot of the bunk. "There are his things--his outfit, they call it here. I'm going to examine it." The sack of stiff oiled canvas, with its contents, was heavy, but the girl dragged it to the middle of the floor and squatting beside it, stared in dismay at the stout padlock and the chain that threaded a set of grommets. She was about to search for the key among the contents of her father's pockets which she had placed in the tray of her trunk, when her eye fell upon a thin slit close along the edge of the hem that held the grommets--a slit that, pulled wide, disclosed an aperture through which the contents of the sack could be easily removed but withal so cunningly contrived as to escape casual inspection. With an angry exclamation the girl stared at the gaping hole. "Someone has cut it!" she cried. "He doesn't seem to have taken much, though. It's about as full as it can be." She began hurriedly to remove the contents, piling them about her upon the floor. "I wonder if--if he left any papers, or note books, or maps, or things that would enable anyone to locate the claim? If he did," she muttered, peering into the empty sack, "they're gone, now."

One by one, she returned the belongings, handling them tenderly, now, and examining them lovingly, and many an article was returned to the sack, wet with its splash of hot tears. "Here's his coffee pot, and his plate, and frying pan, and his old pipe--" the pipe she did not replace, but put it with the other things in her trunk. "And here--why, it's a revolver and a belt of cartridges--like Vil Holland's! And a hat like his, too! And I thought he was a desperado because he wore them!" She jumped to her feet and, hurrying to the mirror, tried on the hat, pinching the crown into a peak, tilting it this way and that, and arranging and rearranging the soft roll brim.

"It fits!" she cried, delighted as a child, and then with eyes sparkling, picked up the belt with its row of yellow cartridges and its ivory handled six gun dangling in the holster. Buckling the belt about her waist, she laughed aloud as the buckle tongue came to rest a full six inches beyond the last hole. "I'll look just as desperate as he does, now--except for his old jug. Daddy didn't have any jug, and I'm glad--that's where the difference is--it's the jug. But, I wish he had had one of those black horn effects for his scarf." She knotted the brilliant red scarf with its zigzag border of yellow, about her neck, and s.n.a.t.c.hing a small pair of scissors from the dressing table, removed the heavy belt, and proceeded to bore a tongue hole at the point she had marked with her finger nail. So engrossed she became in the work, that she failed to hear the approach of horses' feet, and started violently at the sound of a voice from the doorway. "Permit me." The six shooter thudded to the floor, and sweeping the hat from his head, Monk Bethune crossed the room, and replaced it upon the table. He smiled as he noticed the scar left upon the thick leather by the scissor points; and repeated. "Permit me, please." He drew a penknife from his pocket, and picked up the belt. "A knife is so much better."

Ashamed of having been startled, Patty smiled. "Yes, please do. I had no idea it was so tough, or that scissors could be so dull."

Deftly twirling the penknife, Bethune bored a neat hole in the leather. "There should be several holes," he smiled, "for there are occasions in the hill country when one fails to connect with the commissary, and then it is that the tightening of the belt answers the purpose of a meal." Drilling as he talked, he soon finished the task and held up the belt for inspection. "Rod Sinclair's gun," he commented, sorrowfully. "And Rod's scarf, and hat, too. Ah, there was a man, Miss Sinclair! I doubt if even you yourself knew him as I knew him. You must ride and work with a man, in fair weather and foul; you must share his hardships, and his disappointments, yes and his joys, too, to really know him." A look of genuine affection shone from the man's eyes as he stood drawing his fingers gently along the rims of the shiny cartridges. He seemed to be speaking more to himself than to the girl. His manner, the look in his eyes, the very tone of his voice, were so intrinsically honest in their expression of unbounded sympathy with his subject, and his mood fitted so thoroughly with her own, that the girl's heart suddenly warmed toward this man who spoke so feelingly of her father. She flushed slightly as she remembered that upon the occasion of their previous meeting, his words had engendered a feeling of distrust.

"You knew him--well?" she asked.

"Like a brother. For two years we have worked together in our search for the mother lode that both believed lay concealed deep within the bosom of these hills. A dozen times during those two years our hopes have risen, as only the hopes can rise, of those who seek gold. A dozen times it seemed certain that at last we had reached our goal.

But, always it was the same--a false lead--shattered hopes--and a fresh start. Those were the times, Miss Sinclair, that your father showed the stuff that was in him. He was a better man than I. It was his Spartan acceptance of disappointment, his optimism, and his unshaken faith in ultimate success, that kept me going. I suppose it is my French ancestry that is responsible for my lack of just the qualities that made your father the man he was. I lacked his stability--his balance. I had imagination--vision, possibly greater than his. And under the stimulus of apparent success, my spirits would rise to heights his never knew. But I paid for it--no one knows how bitterly I paid. For when apparent success turned into failure, mine were depths of despair he never descended to. At first, before I learned that his disappointment was as bitter as my own, his smiling acceptance of failure, used to goad me to fury. There were times I could have killed him with pleasure--but that was only at first.

Before we had been long together G.o.d knows how I came to depend on those smiles. Then, at last, we struck it--and poor Rod--" The man's voice which had dropped very low, broke suddenly. He cleared his throat and turning abruptly, stared out the door toward the green sweep of pines on the mountain slopes.

There was a long silence during which the words kept repeating themselves in the girl's brain. "_Then, at last, we struck it._" What did he mean? His back was toward her, and she saw that the muscles of his neck worked slowly, as though he were swallowing repeatedly.

When at last she spoke, her voice sounded strangely dull to her own ears. "Do you mean that you and my father were partners, and that you know the location of his mine?"

Bethune faced her, laying the belt gently upon the table. "Partners?"

He repeated the word as though questioning himself. "Hardly partners, I should say. We were--it is hard to define the exact relationship that existed between Rod Sinclair and me. There was never any agreement of partnership, rather a sort of tacit understanding, that when we struck the lode, we should work it together. Your father knew vastly more about rock than I, although I had long suspected the existence of this lode. But extensive interests to the northward prevented me from making any continued search for it. However, I found time at intervals to spend a month or six weeks in these hills, and it was upon one of these occasions that we struck up the acquaintance that ripened into a sort of mutuality of interest. Neighbors are few and far between in the hill country, and those not exactly of the type that attract men of education. I think each found in the other a man of his own stripe, and thus a friendship sprang up between us that gradually led to a merging of interests. His were by far the most valuable activities in the field, while I, from time to time, advanced certain funds for the carrying on of the work.

"But let us not talk of business matters. Time enough for that." He stepped to the doorway and glanced down the creek. "Here comes Clen and we must be going. While he stopped at Watts's to reset a shoe I rode on to inquire if there is any way in which I may serve the daughter of my friend.

"Oh-ho! I see Clen is carrying something very gingerly. He has prevailed upon the good Mrs. Watts to sell him some eggs. A great gourmand--but a good fellow at heart. I think a great deal of Clen, even though it was he who----"

"But tell me, before you go," interrupted the girl. "Do you know the location of my father's mine?"

Bethune turned from the door, smiling. Patty noticed with surprise that the dark, handsome features looked almost boyish when he smiled.

There had been no hint of boyishness before, in fact something of baffling inscrutability in the black eyes, gave the man an expression of extreme sophistication. "Do not call it a mine," he laughed. "At least, not yet. A mine is a going proposition. If your father actually succeeded in locating the lode, it is a strike. Had he filed, it would be a claim. Had he started operation it would be a proposition--but not until there is ore on the dump will it be a mine."

"If he actually succeeded!" cried Patty. "I thought you said----"

The man interrupted with a wave of the hand. "So I did, for I believe he did succeed. In fact, knowing Rod Sinclair as I did, I am certain of it."

"But the location of the--the strike," she persisted, "do you know it?"

Bethune shook his head sadly. "Had your father filed the claim, all would have been well. But, who am I to question Rod's judgment? For on the other hand, if he had filed, word of the strike would have spread broadcast, and the whole hill country would immediately have been overrun by stampeders--those vultures that can scent a gold strike for five thousand miles. No one knows where they come from, and no one knows where they go. It was to guard our secret from these that prompted your father not to file. We had planned to establish our friends on the adjoining claims, and thus build up a syndicate of our own choosing. So he did not file, but it was through no fault of his that I remain ignorant of the location, but rather it was the result of a combination of unforeseen circ.u.mstances. You shall judge for yourself.

"I was deep in the wilds of British Columbia, upon another matter, when Rod unearthed the lode, and, not knowing this, he hastened at once to my camp. He found Clen there and after expressing disappointment at my absence, sat down and hurriedly sketched a map, and taking from his pocket a photograph, he wrapped both in a piece of oilskin, and handed them to Clen, with instructions to travel night and day until he had delivered the packet to me. He told him that he had located the lode and was hurrying East to procure the necessary capital and would return in the early spring for immediate operation."

Bethune paused and, with his eyes upon the Englishman who was dismounting, continued:

"Poor Clen! He did his best, and I do not hold his failure against him, for his was a journey of hardship and peril such as few men could have survived. Upon receiving the packet he started within the hour.

That night he camped at the line, and that night, too, came the first snow of the season. He labored on next day to the railway and took a train to Edmonton, and from there, to Fort George, where he succeeded in procuring an Indian guide for the dash into the wilderness beyond the railway. The early months of last winter were among the most terrible in the history of the North. Storm after storm hurtled out of the Arctic, and between storms the bitter winds from the barrens to the eastward roared with unabated fury. Yet Clen and his guide pushed on, fighting the cold and the snow. Up over the Height of Land, to the Hudson Bay Post at the head of the Parsnip, where I was making my headquarters, and where I had lain s...o...b..und for ten days. It was during the descent of Crooked River, a quick water, treacherous stream, whose thin ice was covered with snow, that the accident happened that cost me the loss of the location, and nearly cost Clen his life. The Indian guide was mushing before, bent low with the weight of his pack, and head lowered to the sweep of the wind. Clen followed. At the head of a newly frozen rapid, the Englishman suddenly broke through and was plunged into the icy waters. Grasping the ice, he managed to draw himself up so that his elbows rested upon the edge, and in this position he called again and again to the guide. But the Indian was far ahead, his ears were m.u.f.fled in his fur cap, and the wind roared through the scrub, drowning Clen's voice. The icy waters numbed him and sucked at his body seeking to drag him to his doom. The heavy pack was dragging him slowly backward, and his hold upon the ice was slipping. Then, and not until then, Clen did what any other man who possessed the strength, would have done. He worked the knife from his belt and cut the straps of his pack sack. In an instant it disappeared beneath the ice, and with it the location of your father's strike. Relieved of the weight upon his shoulders, Clen had a fighting chance for his life, but it is doubtful if he would have won had it not been that the Indian, missing him at last, returned in the nick of time, and with the aid of a loop of _babiche_, succeeded in drawing him from the water. The rest of the day was spent in drying Clen's clothing beside a miserable fire of brushwood, and the next day they made Fort McLeod, more dead than alive."

"Lord" Clendenning had dismounted, deposited his precious basket of eggs upon the ground, and stood in the doorway as Bethune concluded his narrative. When the man ceased speaking the Englishman shook his head sadly. "Yes, yes, it seemed to me then, as I clung to the edge of the bloomin' ice, freezin' from my feet up, that my only chance was in bein' rid of the pack. But, I've thought since that maybe if I'd held on just a few minutes longer, the b.l.o.o.d.y Injun would have got there in time to save both me an' the pack to boot."

"There you go again!" exclaimed Bethune, with a trace of impatience in his voice. "How many times have I told you to quit this self-accusation. A man who covered fifty miles on horseback, seven hundred on the train, and then nearly a hundred a-foot, under conditions such as you faced, has nothing to be ashamed of in the failure of his mission. It is your loss as well as mine, for you also were to have profited by the strike. It is possible, however, that all will be well--that Miss Sinclair has her father's original map, and a duplicate of the photograph, or better yet, the film from which the print was made."

Pausing he glanced at the girl significantly, but she was gazing past him--past Clendenning, her eyes upon the giant up-sweep of the hills.

He hurried on, "So now you have the whole story. I had not meant to speak of it, to-day. Really, we must be going. If I can be of service to you in any way, Miss Sinclair, I am yours to command. We will drop in again, after you have had time to get used to your surroundings, and lay our plans for the rediscovery of the mother lode." Smiling he pointed to the canvas bag upon the floor. "Your father's pack sack,"

he said. "I should know it in a thousand. He devised it himself. It is a clever combination of the virtues of several of the standard packs, and an elimination of the evils of all." He stooped closer. "What's this? You should not have cut it! Couldn't you find the key? If not, it would have been a simple matter to file a link of the chain, and leave the sack undamaged." He laughed, shortly. "But, that, I suppose, is a woman's way."

"I did not cut it. It was cut before it came here. My father left it in Mr. Watts's care and he stored it in the barn. Look at the edges, it is an old cut."

"So it is!" exclaimed Bethune, as he and Lord Clendenning bent close to examine it. "So it is. I wonder who--" Suddenly he ceased speaking, and stood for a moment with puckered brows. "I wonder," he muttered.

"I wonder if he would have dared? Yes, I think he would. He knew of Rod's strike, and he would stop at nothing to steal the secret."

"I don't believe Mr. Watts, nor any of the Wattses cut that pack,"

defended the girl.

"Neither do I. Watts has his faults, but dishonesty is not one of them. No. The man who cut that pack, was the man who carried it there----"

"Vil Holland!" exclaimed Lord Clendenning. "My word, d'ye think he'd dare? Yes, Watts told us that he brought in the pack because Sinclair was in a hurry. The b.l.o.o.d.y scamp! He should be jolly well trounced!

I'll do it myself if I see him, so help me Bob, I will!"