"I can't," he cried. "I can't without seeing her, and learning the truth from her own lips."

"That you'll never do, boy, if I know Eve."

But Jim became obstinate.

"I'll try," he declared, with an ugly threat in his pa.s.sionate eyes.

"And if it's Will--if he's----"

"You're talking foolish." The sharpness of Peter's voice silenced him.

But it was only for a moment, and later he broke out afresh.

"It's no use, Peter, I can't and won't listen to reason on this matter. Eve is before all things in my life. I can't help loving her, even if she is another's wife, and I wouldn't if I could. See here,"

he went on, letting himself go as his feelings took fresh hold of him, "if Eve's unhappy there must be some way of helping her. If he's ruining her life he must be dealt with. If he's brutal to her, if he's hurting her, I mean knocking her about, Peter, I'll--I'll--smash him, if I swing for it! She's all the world to me, and by Heavens I'll rid her of him!"

Peter suddenly drew out his watch; he seemed wholly indifferent to the other's storming.

"We'll go and see her now," he said. "Will 'll be down at the saloon playing 'draw.' He don't generally get home till Rocket closes down.

Come on."

And the two pa.s.sed out into the night.

CHAPTER XIV

THE BREAKING POINT

Eve and Will were at supper. The girl's brown eyes had lost their old gentle smile. Their soft depths no longer contained that well of girlish hope, that trusting joy of life. It seemed as if the curtain of romance had been torn aside, and the mouldering skeleton of life had been laid bare to her. There was trouble and pain in her look, there was fear, too; nor was it quite plain the nature of her fear. It may have been that fear of the future which comes to natures where love is the mainspring of responsibility. It may have been the fear of the weaker vessel, where harshness and brutality are threatened. It may have been a fear inspired by health already undermined by anxiety and worry. The old happy light was utterly gone from her eyes as she silently partook of the frugal supper her own hands had prepared.

Will Henderson moodily devoured his food at the opposite end of the table. The third of their household was not there. Elia rarely took his meals with them. He preferred them by himself, for he hated and dreaded Will's tongue, which, though held in some check when he was sober, never failed to sting the boy when Silas Rocket's whiskey had done its work.

The meal was nearly finished, and husband and wife had exchanged not a single word. Eve wished to talk; there was so much she wanted to say to him. The flame of her love still burned in her gentle bosom, but it was a flame sorely blown about by the storm winds of their brief married life. But somehow she could not utter the words she wanted to.

There was no encouragement. There was a definite but intangible bar to their expression. The brutal silence of the man chilled her, and frightened her.

Finally it was he who spoke, and he made some sort of effort to hide the determination lying behind his words.

"How much money have you got, Eve?" he demanded, pushing his plate away with a movement which belied his tone. It was a question which had a familiar ring to the ears of the troubled girl.

"Thirty dollars," she said patiently. Then she sighed.

The man promptly threw aside all further mask.

"For G.o.d's sake don't sigh like that! You'll be sniveling directly.

One would think I was doin' you an injury asking you a simple question."

"It's not that, Will. I'm thinking of what's going to happen when that's gone. It's got to last us a month. Then I get my money from Carrie Horsley and Mrs. Crombie. They owe me seventy dollars between them for their summer suits. I've got several orders, but folks are tight here for money, and it's always a matter of waiting."

"Can't you get an advance from 'em?"

That frightened look suddenly leaped again into the girl's eyes.

"Oh, Will!"

"Oh, don't start that game!" the man retorted savagely. "We've got to live, I s'pose. You'll earn the money. That sort of thing is done in every business. You make me sick." He lit his pipe and blew great clouds of smoke across the table. "I tell you what it is, we can't afford to keep your brother doing nothing all the time. If you insist on keeping him you must find the money--somewhere. It's no use being proud. We're hard up, and if people owe you money, well--dun 'em for it. I don't know how it is, but this darned business of yours seems to have gone to pieces."

"It's not gone to pieces, Will," Eve protested. "I've made more money this last four months than ever before." The girl's manner had a patience in it that came from her brief but bitter experiences.

"Then what's become of the money?"

But Eve's patience had its limits. The cruel injustice of his sneering question drove her beyond endurance.

"Oh, Will," she cried, "and you can sit there and ask such a question! Where has it gone?" She laughed without any mirth. "It's gone with the rest, down at the saloon, where you've gambled it away. It's gone because I've been a weak fool and listened to your talk of gambling schemes which have never once come off. Oh, Will, I don't want to throw this all up at you. Indeed, indeed, I don't. But you drive me to it with your unkindness, which--which I can't understand. Don't you see, dear, that I want to make you happy, that I want to help you? You must see it, and yet you treat me worse--oh, worse than a n.i.g.g.e.r! Why is it? What have I done? G.o.d knows you can have all, everything I possess in the world. I would do anything for you, but--but--you---- Sometimes I think you have learned to hate me. Sometimes I think the very sight of me rouses all that is worst in you. What is it, dear? What is it that has come between us? What have I done to make you like this?"

She paused, her eyes full of that pain and misery which her tongue could never adequately express. She wanted to open her heart to him, to let him see all the gold of her feelings for him, but his moody unresponsiveness set her tongue faltering and left her groping blindly for the cause of the trouble between them.

It was some moments before Will answered her. He sat glaring at the table, the smoke of his pipe clouding the still air of the neat kitchen. He knew he was facing a critical moment in their lives. He saw dimly that he had, for his own interests, gone a shade too far.

Eve was not a weakling, she was a woman of distinct character, and even in his dull, besotted way he detected at last that note of rebellion underlying her appeal. Suddenly he looked up and smiled.

But it was not altogether a pleasant smile. It was against his inclination, and was ready to vanish on the smallest provocation.

"You're taking things wrong, Eve," he said, and the strain of attempting a conciliatory att.i.tude made the words come sharply. "What do I want your money for, but to try and make more with it? Do you think I want you to keep me? I haven't come to that yet." His tone was rapidly losing its veneer of restraint. "Guess I can work all right.

No, no, my girl, you haven't got to keep me yet. But money gets money, and you ought to realize it. I admit my luck at 'draw' has been bad--rotten!" He violently knocked his pipe out on a plate. "But it's got to change. I can play with the best of 'em, an' they play a straight game. What's losing a few nights, if, in the end, I get a big stake? Why Restless helped himself to a hundred dollars last night.

And I'm going to to-night."

[Ill.u.s.tration: He sat glaring at the table, the smoke of his pipe clouding the still air of the neat kitchen.]

"But, Will, you've said that every night for the last month. Why not be fair with yourself? Your luck is out; give it up. Will, give up the saloon for--for my sake. Do, dear." Eve rose and went round to the man's side, and laid a tenderly persuasive hand upon his shoulder. She was only waiting for a fraction of encouragement. But that fraction was not forthcoming. Instead he shook her off. But he tried to do it pleasantly.

"Here, sit you down, Eve, and listen to me. I'm going to tell you something that I hadn't intended to, only--only you're bothering such a h.e.l.l of a lot."

His language pa.s.sed. She was used to it now. And she sat shrinking at his rebuff, but curious and half fearful at what he might have to tell her.

"I'm going to have a flutter to-night, no matter what comes, make your mind up to that. And, win or lose, it's my last. Get that? But I've got a definite reason for it. You see I haven't been as idle as you think. I've been hunting around on the trail of Peter Blunt. Folks all think him a fool, and cranky some. I never did. He's been a gold prospector most of his life. And it's not likely he don't know. Well, I'm not giving you a long yarn, and to cut it short, I'm right on to a big find. At least I've got color in a placer up at the head waters, and to-morrow I go out to work it for all it's worth. No, I'm not going to tell even you where it is. You see it's a placer, and anybody could work it, and I'd be cut clean out if others got to know where it was. You savvee?"

Eve nodded, but without conviction. The man detected her lack of belief, and that brutal light which was so often in his eyes now suddenly flamed up. But after a moment of effort he banished it, and resorted to an imitation of jocularity.

"So now, old girl, hand over that thirty dollars. I'm going to make a 'coup,' and to-morrow begins a period of--gold. I give you my word you shall get it--sure as I'm a living man. I'm not talking foolish. The shining yellow stuff is there for the taking. And so easy, too."

He waited with a grin of cunning on his lips. He was intoxicated with his own surety. And, curiously, well as Eve knew him, that certainty communicated itself to her in spite of her reason. But the matter of handing over the thirty dollars was different.

A hard light crept into her eyes as she looked down at him from where she stood. Though he did not know it, he was rapidly killing all the love she had for him. Eve was one of those women who can love with every throb of their being. Self had no place in her. The man she loved was, as a natural consequence, her all. Kill her love and she could be as cold and indifferent as marble. At one time in their brief married life those dollars would never have been considered. They would have been his without the asking. Now----

She shook her head decidedly.

"You can't have them," she said firmly. "They've got to keep us for a month. If you depend on them for a game, you had better wait till you get the gold from your placer." She moved away, talking as she went.

"There's not only ourselves to consider. There's Elia. I----"

But she got no further. The mention of her brother's name suddenly infuriated the man.