The tempest of the forest was upon her, and her eyes blazed as she hastened around the house.

V

Jeffery Neilson and Chan Heminway were already in session when Ray Brent, his face flushed and his eyes still angry and red, joined them.

Neilson was a tall, gaunt man, well past fifty--from his manner evidently the leader of the three. He had heavy, grizzled brows and rather quiet eyes, a man of deep pa.s.sions and great resolve. Yet his lean face had nothing of the wickedness of Brent's. There had evidently been some gentling, redeeming influence in his life, and although it was not in the ascendancy, it had softened his smile and the hard lines about his lips. Notorious as he was through the northern provinces he was infinitely to be preferred to Chan Heminway, who sat at his left who, a weaker man than either Ray or Neilson, was simply a tool in the latter's hand,--a smashing sledge or a cruel blade as his master wished.

He was vicious without strength, brutal without self-control. Locks of his blond hair, unkempt, dropped over his low forehead into his eyes.

"Where's Beatrice?" Neilson asked at once. "I thought I heard her voice."

Ray searched for a reply, and in the silence all three heard the girl's tread as she went around the house. "She's going in the back door.

Likely she didn't want to disturb us."

Ray looked up to find Neilson's eyes firmly fixed upon his face. Try hard as he might he couldn't restrain a surge of color in his cheeks.

"Yes, and what's the rest of it?" Neilson asked.

"Nothing--I know of."

"You've got some white marks on your cheeks--where it ain't red. The kid can slap, can't she--"

Ray flushed deeper, but the lines of Neilson's face began to deepen and draw. Then his voice broke in a great, hearty chuckle. He had evidently tried to restrain it--but it got away from him at last. No man could look at him, his twinkling eyes and his joyous face, and doubt but that this soft-eyed, strong-handed daughter of his was the joy and pride of his life. He had heard the ringing slap through the ramshackle walls of the house, and for all that he favored Ray as his daughter's suitor, the independence and spirit behind the action had delighted him to the core.

But Ray's sense of humor did not run along these lines. The first danger signal of rising anger leaped like a little, hot spark into his eyes.

Many times before Ray had been obliged to curb his wrath against Neilson: to-night he found it more difficult than ever. The time would come, he felt, when he would no longer be obliged to submit to Neilson's dictation. Sometime the situation would be reversed; he would be leader instead of underling, taking the lion's share of the profit of their enterprises instead of the left-overs, and when that time came he would not be obliged to endure Neilson's jests in silence. Neilson himself, as he eyed the stiffening figure, had no realization of Ray's true att.i.tude toward him. He thought him a willing helper, a loyal partner, and he would not have sat with such content in his chair if he could have beheld the smoldering fires of jealousy and ambition in the other's b.r.e.a.s.t.s The time would come when Ray would a.s.sert himself, he thought--when Beatrice was safe in his hands.

"It may seem like a joke to you, but it doesn't to me," he answered shortly. Nor was he able to keep his anger entirely from his voice.

"Everything that girl does you think is perfect. Instead of encouraging her in her meanness you ought to help me out." His tones harshened, and he lost the fine edge of his self-control. "I've stood enough nonsense from that little--"

Seemingly, Neilson made no perceptible movement in his chair. What change there was showed merely in the lines of his face, and particularly in the light that dwelt in the gray, straightforward eyes.

"Don't finish it," he ordered simply.

For an instant eyes met eyes in bitter hatred--and Chan Heminway began to wonder just where he would seek cover in case matters got to a shooting stage. But Ray's gaze broke before that of his leader. "I'm not going to say anything I shouldn't," he protested sullenly. "But this doesn't look like you're helping out my case any. You told me you'd do everything you could for me. You even went so far as to say you'd take matters in your own hands--"

"And I will, in reason. I'm keeping away the rest of the boys so you can have a chance. But if you think I'm going to tie her up to anybody against her will, you're barking up the wrong tree. She's my daughter, and her happiness happens to be my first object." Then his voice changed, good-humored again. "But cool down, boy--wait till you hear everything I've got to tell you, and you'll feel better. Of course, you know what it's about--"

"I suppose--Hiram Melville's claim."

"That's it. Of course we don't know that he had a claim--but he had a pocket full of the most beautiful nuggets you ever want to see. No one knows that fact but me--I saw 'em by accident--and I got 'em now. You know he's always had an idea that the Yuga country was worth prospecting, but we always laughed at him. Of course it is a pocket country; but it's my opinion he found a pocket that would make many a placer look sick, before he died."

"But he might have got the nuggets somewheres else--"

"Hold your horses. Where would he get 'em? There's something else suspicious too. He wrote a letter, the day before he died, and addressed it to Ezra Melville, somewhere in Oregon. He must just about got it by now--maybe a few days ago. He had the clerk mail it for him, and got him to witness it, saying it was his will--and what did that old hound have to will except a mine? Next day he wrote another letter somewhere too--but I didn't find out who it was to. If I'd had any gumption I'd got ahold of 'em both. The point is--I'm convinced it's worth a trip, at least."

"I should say it was worth a trip," Ray agreed. "And a fast one, too.

There might be some compet.i.tion--"

"There won't be a rush, if that's what you mean. Everybody knows it's a pocket country, and the men in this town wouldn't any more get excited about the Yuga River--"

"True enough--but that Ezra Melville will be showin' up one of these days. We want to be settin' pretty when he comes."

"You've got the idea. It ought to be the easiest job we ever did. It's my idea he had his claim all laid out, monuments up and everything, and was on his way down to Bradleyburg to record it when he died. He just went out before he could make the rest of the trip. All we'll have to do is go up there, locate in his cabin, and sit tight."

"Wait just a second." Ray was lost in thought. "There's an old cabin up that way somewhere--along that still place--on the river. It was a trapping cabin belonging to old Bill Foulks."

"That's true enough--but it likely ain't near his mine. Boys, it's a clean, open-and-shut job--with absolutely nothing to interfere. If his brother does come up, he'll find us in possession--and nothing to do but go back. So to-morrow we'll load up and pack horses and light out."

"Up Poor Man creek, through Spruce Pa.s.s--"

"Sure. Then over to the Yuga. Old Hiram was hunting down some kind of a scent in the vicinity of that old cabin you speak of, last heard of him.

And I wouldn't be surprised, on second thought, if it wasn't his base of operations."

"All easy enough," Ray agreed. He paused, and a queer, speculative look came into his wild-beast's eyes. "But what I don't see--how you can figure all this is going to help me out with Beatrice."

Jeffery Neilson turned in his chair. "You can't, eh? You need spectacles. Just think a minute--say you had fifty or sixty thousand all your own--to spend on a wife and buy her clothes and automobiles. Don't you think that would make you more attractive to the feminine eye?"

At first Ray made no apparent answer. He merely sat staring ahead. But plainly the words had wakened riot in his imagination. Such a sum meant _wealth_, the power his ambitious nature had always craved, idleness and the gratification of all his l.u.s.ts. He was no stranger to greed, this degenerate son of the North. "It'd help some," he admitted in a low voice. "But what makes you think it would be worth that much?"

"Because old Hiram talked a little, half-delirious, before he died. 'A quarter of a million,' he kept saying. 'Right there in sight--a quarter of a million.' If he really found that much stowed away in the rocks, that's fifty or sixty apiece for you and Chan."

Ray's mind worked swiftly. Sixty thousand apiece--and that left one hundred and thirty thousand for their leader's portion. The old rage and jealousy that had preyed upon his mind so long swept over him, more compelling than ever. "Go on," he urged. "What's the rest of it?"

"The second thing is--we'll need some one to cook, and look after us, when we get up there. Who should it be but Beatrice? She wouldn't want to stay here; you know how she loves the woods. And if you know anything about girls, you know that nothing counts like having 'em alone. There wouldn't be any of the other boys up there to trouble you. You'd have a clear field."

Ray's dark eyes shone. "It'd help some," he admitted. "That means--hunt up an extra horse for her to-morrow."

"No. I don't intend she should come up now. Not till we're settled."

"Why not?"

"Think a minute, and you'll see why not. You know how she regards this business of jumping claims. She's dead against it if any one could be--bless her heart!"

"Don't go getting sentimental, Neilson."

"And don't let that mouth of yours get you into trouble, either." Once more their eyes locked: once more Ray looked away. "I hope she'll always stay that way, too. As I say, she's dead against it, and she's been a little suspicious ever since that Jenkins deal. Besides, it wouldn't be any pleasure for her until we find a claim and get settled. When she comes up we'll be established in a couple of cabins--one for her and me and one for you two--and she won't know but that we made the original find."

"How will she know just where to find us?"

"We're bound to be somewhere near that old cabin on the Yuga. We'll set a date for her to come, and I can meet her there."

It was, Ray was forced to admit, a highly commendable scheme. He sat back, contemplating all its phases. "It's slick enough," he agreed. "It ought to do the trick."

But if he had known the girl's thoughts, as she sat alone in the back part of the house, he wouldn't have felt so confident. She was watching the moon over the spruce forest, and she was thinking, with repugnance in her heart, of the indignity to which she had been subjected at her father's door. Yet the kisses Ray had forced on her were no worse than his blasphemy of her dreams. The spirit of romance was abroad to-night--in the enchantment of the moon--and she was wistful and imaginative as never before. This was just the normal expression of her starved girlhood--the same childlike wistfulness with which a Cinderella might long for her prince--just as natural and as wholesome and as much a part of youth as laughter and happiness.

"I won't believe him, I won't believe him," she told herself. Her thought turned to other channels, and her heart spoke its wish.

"Wherever he is--sometime he'll come to me."