The distinct picture that was firmly fixed in his unimaginative mind before Bruce was born was still there; the picture of that little girl with flaxen hair that had blue ribbons in it, with a laughing mouth that had tiny sharp teeth like pearls, and who was to come dancing to meet him with her arms outstretched each time that he rode into the yard.

That the dream was never realized was one of the real disappointments of Burt's life. Inexplicably he saw that little girl again as he looked at Helen's upturned face with its quivering chin and swimming, reproachful eyes.

John Burt had a queer feeling of something wilting, crumbling inside of him, something hard and cold giving way around his heart. He could not have explained it, it was not his way to try, but he took an impulsive step toward her and called out:

"Wait a minute! Go on in the house till I put up my horse, I'll hear what you have to say."

XXVII

UNCLE BILL IS OSTRACIZED

Uncle Bill Griswold sat by the window in the office of the Hinds House where he could watch the stage road, and, as usual this winter, he was sitting by himself. It was thus that Ore City punished reticence.

Uncle Bill was suspected of _knowing something_--of having _business_--of his own--and keeping it to himself. A display of friendly interest in his affairs having received no encouragement and various lines of adroit cross-examination having been successfully blocked, Ore City was forced to regard his stubborn reserve as a hostile act for which it was tacitly agreed he should be disciplined. Therefore it withdrew its own confidences and company. Uncle Bill was shunned, left alone to enjoy his secret. The heavy hand of Public Opinion was upon him. Socially he was an outcast. Conversation ceased when he approached as if he had been a spy. Games of solo, high-five, and piute went on without him and in heated arguments no one any longer asked his views.

This latter offense however was only an aggravation of the real one which dated back to the memorable occasion when Wilbur Dill had asked his opinion of the "secondary enrichment." It was held that a man who would tell the truth at a time like that was a menace to the camp and the sooner he moved on the better.

In the early spring the old man had disappeared into the mountain with powder, drills, and a three months' grub-stake. He had told no one of his destination, and when he had returned the most he would say was that he had "been peckin' on a ledge all summer." He sent samples of his rock outside but did not show the a.s.says. He wrote letters and began to get mail in blank, non-committal envelopes and added to the general feeling of exasperation by always being at the desk before even the clerk had time to make out the postmarks. Oh, he was up to something--that was certain--something that would "knock" the camp no doubt. They wouldn't put it past him.

If Uncle Bill felt his exile or harbored resentment at being treated like a leper he was too proud to give any sign.

There had been but little change in the Hinds House in a year. Only a close observer would have noted that it had changed at all. There was a trifle more baling-wire intertwined among the legs of the office chairs and a little higher polish on the seats. The grease spots on the unbleached muslin where Ore City rested its head were a shade darker and the monuments of "spec'mins" were higher. The Jersey organ had lost two stops and a wooden stalagmite was broken. "Old Man" Hinds in a praiseworthy attempt to clean his solitaire deck had washed off the spots or at least faded them so that no one but himself could tell what they were. The office was darker, too, because of the box-covers nailed across the windows where a few more panes had gone out. Otherwise it might have been the very day a year ago that Judge George Petty had lurched through the snow tunnel jubilantly announcing the arrival of the stage.

Only this year there was no snow tunnel and the Judge was sober--sober and despondent.

His att.i.tude of depression reflected more or less the spirit of the camp, which for once came near admitting that "if Capital didn't take holt in the Spring they _might_ have to quit."

"Anyway," Yankee Sam was saying, lowering his voice to give the impression to Uncle Bill at the window that he, too, had affairs of a private nature, "I learnt my lesson good about givin' options. That were our big mistake--tyin' ourselves up hand and foot with that feller Dill.

Why, if a furrin' syndicate had walked in here and offered me half a million fer my holdin's in that porphory dike I couldn't a done a stroke of business. Forfeit money in the bank after this for Samuel. But if ever I lays eyes on that rat--" Yankee Sam glared about the circle--"you watch my smoke! Mind what I tell you."

"What about the deal he give me on The Prince o' Peace?" demanded Lannigan. "Look what he cost me! The money I spent on them stamps writin' to know what was doin' would a kept me eatin' for a month. Maybe you think because I don't roar much I ain't angery. If I had the price I'd hire somebudy regalar to help me hate that feller!"

"I hold that he's worse than robbed me!" Judge Petty struck his knee with a tremulous fist. "He took one whole year off'n my life, that's what he's done--pure murder, ain't it? Expectin' to sell every mail, all summer, and then bein' disappinted has sh.o.r.e took it out of me. Made an ol' man of me, as you might say, as was hale and hearty. I might have knowed, too; you had only to look in his face to see what he was!

'Crook' was wrote all over him. There's a law for the likes o' Wilbur Dill--false pretenses."

"Law!" contemptuously. "Pa" Snow spent more of his time downstairs now in a rocking chair upholstered with a soogan, where he could vent his bitterness at short range. Disappointment over the sale of "The Bay Horse" had made a socialist of him. "The law--a long way we'd get havin'

the law on him! The law's no use to the poor man--he's only got one weapon he can count on; and while I've never set out to let no man's blood, if that skunk ever pokes his nose inside these premises he'll find a red-hot _Southerner_ waitin' for him!" Mr. Snow looked so altogether ferocious that Ore City more than half believed him.

"Seems like everything this year has been agin us." The despondent voice behind the stove sounded hopeless. "Burt's proposition fizzlin' out on the river is goin' to hurt this camp wonderful. It's surprisin' how fast the news of a failure gits around among Capital. I knew the way he was startin' in to work--in fact I told him--that he never could make nothin'."

"When I first went down to work for him I advised steam but he goes ahead, and look what's happened--broke down and you can gamble he won't start up again." Lannigan added confidently as though he spoke from personal knowledge--"Them stockholders is done puttin' up money."

"I warned him about the grade he was givin' them sluice-boxes--I went to him first off, didn't I?" Yankee Sam looked around for confirmation. "Do you mind I said at the time he wasn't warshin' that dirt fast enough?"

"Anyhow," declared the Judge querulously, "he ought to 'a piped it off.

T'were a hydraulickin' proposition. He could handle it just twice as fast at half the cost. I sent him down word when I heard what he was doin'."

"And wastin' money like he did on all them new style riffles--expanded metal and cocoa matting! Gimme pole riffles with a little strap-iron on the top and if you can't ketch it with that you can't ketch it with nothin'."

"Mostly," said Ma Snow who had come up behind the critic's chair unnoticed, "you've ketched nothin'." She went on in her plaintive voice:

"It's a shame, that's what it is, that Bruce Burt didn't just turn over his business to you-all this summer. With shining examples of success to advise him, like's sittin' here burnin' up my wood t'hout offerin' to split any, he _couldn't_ have failed. Personally, I wouldn't think of makin' a business move without first talkin' it over with the financiers that have made Ore City the money centre that it is!"

"Everybody can learn something," Yankee Sam retorted with a show of spirit.

"Not everybody," Ma Snow's voice had an ominous quaver, "or you'd a learned long ago that you can't knock that young man in my hearin'. _I_ haven't forgot if _you_ have, that the only real money that's been in the camp all Summer has come up from the river."

"We wasn't sayin' anything against him personal," the brash Samuel a.s.sured her hastily; but Bruce's champion refused to be mollified.

"What if he _did_ shut down? What of it?" She glared defiance until her pale eyes watered with the strain. "I don't notice anybody here that's ever had gumption enough even to start up. What do you do?" She answered for them--"Jest scratch a hole in the ground, then set and wait for Capital to come and hand you out a million. I dast you to answer!"

It was plain from the silence that no one cared to remove the chip on Ma Snow's shoulder.

"I hear he aims to stay down there all winter alone and trap." Judge Petty made the observation for the sake of conversation merely, as the fact was as well known as that there were four feet of snow outside or that the camp was "busted."

"And it's to his credit," Ma Snow snapped back. "When he's doin' that he ain't runnin' up board bills he cain't pay."

"It's as good a place as any," admitted the Judge, "providin' he don't go nutty." He raised his voice and added with a significant look at Uncle Bill: "Bachin' alone makes some fellers act like a bull-elk that's been whipped out of the herd."

"It takes about four months before you begin to think that somebudy's layin' out in the brush watchin' you--waitin' to rob you even if you haven't got anything to steal but a slab of swine-buzzum and a sack of flour. The next stage," went on the citizen behind the stove speaking with the voice of authority, "is when you pack your rifle along every time you go for a bucket of water, and light you palouser in the middle of the night to go around the cabin lookin' for tracks. Yes, sir,"

emphatically, "and the more brains you got the quicker you go off."

"You seemed about the same when you got back as when you left that time you wintered alone on the left fork of Swift.w.a.ter," Ma Snow commented.

"Like as not you remember that spell I spent t'other side of Sheep-eater Ridge when I druv that fifty foot tunnel single-handed into the Silver King?"

"You've never give us no chance to forgit it," responded an auditor.

"We've heard it reg'lar every day since."

"I hadn't seen n.o.body fer clost to three months," Lemonade Dan continued "when a feller come along, and says: 'I'd like to stop with ye but I'm short of cash.' I counted out a dollar-thirty and I says 'Stranger,' I says, 'that's all I got but it's yourn if you'll stay!'"

"And you'll jump for a new seed catalogue or an Agricultural Bulletin like it was a novel just out," contributed Yankee Sam from his experience. "I've allus been a great reader. I mind how I come clost to burnin' myself out on account of it the fall of '97 when I was ground-sluicin' down there on Snake river. I had a tidy cabin papered with newspapers and one week when 'twere stormin' I got interested in a serial story what was runnin'. It started back of the stove and they was an installment pasted in the cupboard, they was a piece upside down clost to the floor so I had to stand on my head, as you might say, to read it, and the end was on the ceilin'. One evenin' I was standin' on a box with my mouth open and my neck half broke tryin' to see how it come out when I tipped the lamp over. I'm a reg'lar book-worm, when I gits where they's readin'."

"I mind the winter I bached on Crooked Crick I tamed a mouse," ventured Lannigan. "He got so sociable he et out of my fingers."

"He sh.o.r.ely must have been fond of you." Ma Snow looked fixedly at Lannigan's hands. "Mistah Hinds," turning sharply upon that person, who was endeavoring by close inspection to tell whether the last card was a king or queen, "the bacon's froze and there ain't a knife in yoah ol'

kitchen that will cut."

"Yes ma'am," murmured Mr. Hinds, hoping against hope that the statement was not a command with his luck just beginning to turn and a sequence in sight.

"If there ain't an aidge on one of them butcher knives that'll cut bread when I start in to get supper--"

But Ma Snow did not deliver her ultimatum. In the first place it was not necessary, for the cowed owner of the Hinds House knew perfectly well what it was, and in the second, Uncle Bill arose suddenly and stood on tiptoe looking through the window in something that approached excitement. Nothing ordinary could jar Uncle Bill's composure--chairs went over in the rush to join him at the window.

The stage was coming--with pa.s.sengers! It was almost in--they could hear the driver's--"Git ep, Eagle! Git ep, Nig! Git ep--git ep--git ep!"