The Three Partners / Harte, Bret, 1836-1902

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Title: The Three Partners

Author: Bret Harte

Release Date: May 18, 2006 [EBook #2560]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Donald Lainson





THE THREE PARTNERS

By Bret Harte




PROLOGUE.


The sun was going down on the Black Spur Range. The red light it had
kindled there was still eating its way along the serried crest, showing
through gaps in the ranks of pines, etching out the interstices of
broken boughs, fading away and then flashing suddenly out again like
sparks in burnt-up paper. Then the night wind swept down the whole
mountain side, and began its usual struggle with the shadows upclimbing
from the valley, only to lose itself in the end and be absorbed in the
all-conquering darkness. Yet for some time the pines on the long slope
of Heavy Tree Hill murmured and protested with swaying arms; but as the
shadows stole upwards, and cabin after cabin and tunnel after tunnel
were swallowed up, a complete silence followed. Only the sky remained
visible--a vast concave mirror of dull steel, in which the stars did not
seem to be set, but only reflected.

A single cabin door on the crest of Heavy Tree Hill had remained open to
the wind and darkness. Then it was slowly shut by an invisible figure,
afterwards revealed by the embers of the fire it was stirring. At first
only this figure brooding over the hearth was shown, but as the flames
leaped up, two other figures could be seen sitting motionless before it.
When the door was shut, they acknowledged that interruption by slightly
changing their position; the one who had risen to shut the door sank
back into an invisible seat, but the attitude of each man was one of
profound reflection or reserve, and apparently upon some common subject
which made them respect each other's silence. However, this was at last
broken by a laugh. It was a boyish laugh, and came from the youngest of
the party. The two others turned their profiles and glanced inquiringly
towards him, but did not speak.

"I was thinking," he began in apologetic explanation, "how mighty queer
it was that while we were working like niggers on grub wages, without
the ghost of a chance of making a strike, how we used to sit here, night
after night, and flapdoodle and speculate about what we'd do if we ever
DID make one; and now, Great Scott! that we HAVE made it, and are just
wallowing in gold, here we are sitting as glum and silent as if we'd
had a washout! Why, Lord! I remember one night--not so long ago,
either--that you two quarreled over the swell hotel you were going to
stop at in 'Frisco, and whether you wouldn't strike straight out for
London and Rome and Paris, or go away to Japan and China and round by
India and the Red Sea."

"No, we didn't QUARREL over it," said one of the figures gently; "there
was only a little discussion."

"Yes, but you did, though," returned the young fellow mischievously,
"and you told Stacy, there, that we'd better learn something of the
world before we tried to buy it or even hire it, and that it was just
as well to get the hayseed out of our hair and the slumgullion off our
boots before we mixed in polite society."

"Well, I don't see what's the matter with that sentiment now," returned
the second speaker good-humoredly; "only," he added gravely, "we didn't
quarrel--God forbid!"

There was something in the speaker's tone which seemed to touch a common
chord in their natures, and this was voiced by Barker with sudden and
almost pathetic earnestness. "I tell you what, boys, we ought to swear
here to-night to always stand by each other--in luck and out of it! We
ought to hold ourselves always at each other's call. We ought to have
a kind of password or signal, you know, by which we could summon each
other at any time from any quarter of the globe!"

"Come off the roof, Barker," murmured Stacy, without lifting his eyes
from the fire. But Demorest smiled and glanced tolerantly at the younger
man.

"Yes, but look here, Stacy," continued Barker, "comrades like us, in
the old days, used to do that in times of trouble and adventures. Why
shouldn't we do it in our luck?"

"There's a good deal in that, Barker boy," said Demorest, "though, as
a general thing, passwords butter no parsnips, and the ordinary,
every-day, single yelp from a wolf brings the whole pack together for
business about as quick as a password. But you cling to that sentiment,
and put it away with your gold-dust in your belt."

"What I like about Barker is his commodiousness," said Stacy. "Here he
is, the only man among us that has his future fixed and his preemption
lines laid out and registered. He's already got a girl that he's going
to marry and settle down with on the strength of his luck. And I'd like
to know what Kitty Carter, when she's Mrs. Barker, would say to her
husband being signaled for from Asia or Africa. I don't seem to see her
tumbling to any password. And when he and she go into a new partnership,
I reckon she'll let the old one slide."

"That's just where you're wrong!" said Barker, with quickly rising
color. "She's the sweetest girl in the world, and she'd be sure to
understand our feelings. Why, she thinks everything of you two; she was
just eager for you to get this claim, which has put us where we are,
when I held back, and if it hadn't been for her, by Jove! we wouldn't
have had it."

"That was only because she cared for YOU," returned Stacy, with a
half-yawn; "and now that you've got YOUR share she isn't going to take
a breathless interest in US. And, by the way, I'd rather YOU'D remind us
that we owe our luck to her than that SHE should ever remind YOU of it."

"What do you mean?" said Barker quickly. But Demorest here rose lazily,
and, throwing a gigantic shadow on the wall, stood between the two with
his back to the fire. "He means," he said slowly, "that you're talking
rot, and so is he. However, as yours comes from the heart and his from
the head, I prefer yours. But you're both making me tired. Let's have a
fresh deal."

Nobody ever dreamed of contradicting Demorest. Nevertheless, Barker
persisted eagerly: "But isn't it better for us to look at this
cheerfully and happily all round? There's nothing criminal in our having
made a strike! It seems to me, boys, that of all ways of making money
it's the squarest and most level; nobody is the poorer for it; our luck
brings no misfortune to others. The gold was put there ages ago for
anybody to find; we found it. It hasn't been tarnished by man's touch
before. I don't know how it strikes you, boys, but it seems to me
that of all gifts that are going it is the straightest. For whether we
deserve it or not, it comes to us first-hand--from God!"

The two men glanced quickly at the speaker, whose face flushed and then
smiled embarrassedly as if ashamed of the enthusiasm into which he had
been betrayed. But Demorest did not smile, and Stacy's eyes shone in the
firelight as he said languidly, "I never heard that prospecting was a
religious occupation before. But I shouldn't wonder if you're right,
Barker boy. So let's liquor up."

Nevertheless he did not move, nor did the others. The fire leaped
higher, bringing out the rude rafters and sternly economic details of
the rough cabin, and making the occupants in their seats before the fire
look gigantic by contrast.

"Who shut the door?" said Demorest after a pause.

"I did," said Barker. "I reckoned it was getting cold."

"Better open it again, now that the fire's blazing. It will light the
way if any of the men from below want to drop in this evening."

Stacy stared at his companion. "I thought that it was understood that
we were giving them that dinner at Boomville tomorrow night, so that we
might have the last evening here by ourselves in peace and quietness?"

"Yes, but if any one DID want to come it would seem churlish to shut him
out," said Demorest.

"I reckon you're feeling very much as I am," said Stacy, "that this good
fortune is rather crowding to us three alone. For myself, I know," he
continued, with a backward glance towards a blanketed, covered pile
in the corner of the cabin, "that I feel rather oppressed by--by its
specific gravity, I calculate--and sort of crampy and twitchy in the
legs, as if I ought to 'lite' out and do something, and yet it holds
me here. All the same, I doubt if anybody will come up--except from
curiosity. Our luck has made them rather sore down the hill, for all
they're coming to the dinner to-morrow."

"That's only human nature," said Demorest.

"But," said Barker eagerly, "what does it mean? Why, only this
afternoon, when I was passing the 'Old Kentuck' tunnel, where those
Marshalls have been grubbing along for four years without making a
single strike, I felt ashamed to look at them, and as they barely nodded
to me I slinked by as if I had done them an injury. I don't understand
it."

"It somehow does not seem to square with this 'gift of God' idea of
yours, does it?" said Stacy. "But we'll open the door and give them a
show."

As he did so it seemed as if the night were their only guest, and had
been waiting on the threshold to now enter bodily and pervade all things
with its presence. With that cool, fragrant inflow of air they breathed
freely. The red edge had gone from Black Spur, but it was even more
clearly defined against the sky in its towering blackness. The
sky itself had grown lighter, although the stars still seemed mere
reflections of the solitary pin-points of light scattered along the
concave valley below. Mingling with the cooler, restful air of the
summit, yet penetratingly distinct from it, arose the stimulating breath
of the pines below, still hot and panting from the day-long sun. The
silence was intense. The far-off barking of a dog on the invisible
river-bar nearly a mile beneath them came to them like a sound in a
dream. They had risen, and, standing in the doorway, by common consent
turned their faces to the east. It was the frequent attitude of the
home-remembering miner, and it gave him the crowning glory of the view.
For, beyond the pine-hearsed summits, rarely seen except against the
evening sky, lay a thin, white cloud like a dropped portion of the Milky
Way. Faint with an indescribable pallor, remote yet distinct enough to
assert itself above and beyond all surrounding objects, it was always
there. It was the snow-line of the Sierras.

They turned away and silently reseated themselves, the same thought
in the minds of each. Here was something they could not take away,
something to be left forever and irretrievably behind,--left with the
healthy life they had been leading, the cheerful endeavor, the undying
hopefulness which it had fostered and blessed. Was what they WERE taking
away worth it? And oddly enough, frank and outspoken as they had always
been to each other, that common thought remained unuttered. Even Barker
was silent; perhaps he was also thinking of Kitty.

Suddenly two figures appeared in the very doorway of the cabin. The
effect was startling upon the partners, who had only just reseated
themselves, and for a moment they had forgotten that the narrow band
of light which shot forth from the open door rendered the darkness on
either side of it more impenetrable, and that out of this darkness,
although themselves guided by the light, the figures had just emerged.
Yet one was familiar enough. It was the Hill drunkard, Dick Hall, or,
as he was called, "Whiskey Dick," or, indicated still more succinctly by
the Hill humorists, "Alky Hall."

Everybody had seen that sodden, puffy, but good-humored face; everybody
had felt the fiery exhalations of that enormous red beard, which always
seemed to be kept in a state of moist, unkempt luxuriance by liquor;
everybody knew the absurd dignity of manner and attempted precision of
statement with which he was wont to disguise his frequent excesses.
Very few, however, knew, or cared to know, the pathetic weariness and
chilling horror that sometimes looked out of those bloodshot eyes.

He was evidently equally unprepared for the three silent seated figures
before the door, and for a moment looked at them blankly with the doubts
of a frequently deceived perception. Was he sure that they were quite
real? He had not dared to look at his companion for verification, but
smiled vaguely.

"Good-evening," said Demorest pleasantly.

Whiskey Dick's face brightened. "Good-evenin', good-evenin' yourselves,
boys--and see how you like it! Lemme interdrush my ole frien' William
J. Steptoe, of Red Gulch. Stepsho--Steptoe--is shtay--ish stay--"
He stopped, hiccupped, waved his hand gravely, and with an air of
reproachful dignity concluded, "sojourning for the present on the Bar.
We wish to offer our congrashulashen and felish--felish--" He paused
again, and, leaning against the door-post, added severely, "--itations."

His companion, however, laughed coarsely, and, pushing past Dick,
entered the cabin. He was a short, powerful man, with a closely cropped
crust of beard and hair that seemed to adhere to his round head like
moss or lichen. He cast a glance--furtive rather than curious around
the cabin, and said, with a familiarity that had not even good humor
to excuse it, "So you're the gay galoots who've made the big strike?
Thought I'd meander up the Hill with this old bloat Alky, and drop in
to see the show. And here you are, feeling your oats, eh? and not caring
any particular G-d d--n if school keeps or not."

"Show Mr. Steptoe--the whiskey," said Demorest to Stacy. Then quietly
addressing Dick, but ignoring Steptoe as completely as Steptoe had
ignored his unfortunate companion, he said, "You quite startled us at
first. We did not see you come up the trail."

"No. We came up the back trail to please Steptoe, who wanted to see
round the cabin," said Dick, glancing nervously yet with a forced
indifference towards the whiskey which Stacy was offering to the
stranger.

"What yer gettin' off there?" said Steptoe, facing Dick almost brutally.
"YOU know your tangled legs wouldn't take you straight up the trail,
and you had to make a circumbendibus. Gosh! if you hadn't scented this
licker at the top you'd have never found it."

"No matter! I'm glad you DID find it, Dick," said Demorest, "and I hope
you'll find the liquor good enough to pay you for the trouble."

Barker stared at Demorest. This extraordinary tolerance of the drunkard
was something new in his partner. But at a glance from Demorest he led
Dick to the demijohn and tin cup which stood on a table in the corner.
And in another moment Dick had forgotten his companion's rudeness.

Demorest remained by the door, looking out into the darkness.

"Well," said Steptoe, putting down his emptied cup, "trot out your
strike. I reckon our eyes are strong enough to bear it now." Stacy drew
the blanket from the vague pile that stood in the corner, and discovered
a deep tin prospecting-pan. It was heaped with several large fragments
of quartz. At first the marble whiteness of the quartz and the
glittering crystals of mica in its veins were the most noticeable, but
as they drew closer they could see the dull yellow of gold filling the
decomposed and honeycombed portion of the rock as if still liquid and
molten. The eyes of the party sparkled like the mica--even those of
Barker and Stacy, who were already familiar with the treasure.

"Which is the richest chunk?" asked Steptoe in a thickening voice.

Stacy pointed it out.

"Why, it's smaller than the others."

"Heft it in your hand," said Barker, with boyish enthusiasm.

The short, thick fingers of Steptoe grasped it with a certain aquiline
suggestion; his whole arm strained over it until his face grew purple,
but he could not lift it.

"Thar useter be a little game in the 'Frisco Mint," said Dick, restored
to fluency by his liquor, "when thar war ladies visiting it, and that
was to offer to give 'em any of those little boxes of gold coin, that
contained five thousand dollars, ef they would kindly lift it from the
counter and take it away! It wasn't no bigger than one of these chunks;
but Jiminy! you oughter have seed them gals grip and heave on it, and
then hev to give it up! You see they didn't know anything about the
paci--(hic) the speshif--" He stopped with great dignity, and added with
painful precision, "the specific gravity of gold."

"Dry up!" said Steptoe roughly. Then turning to Stacy he said abruptly,
"But where's the rest of it? You've got more than that."

"We sent it to Boomville this morning. You see we've sold out our claim
to a company who take it up to-morrow, and put up a mill and stamps.
In fact, it's under their charge now. They've got a gang of men on the
claim already."

"And what mout ye hev got for it, if it's a fair question?" said
Steptoe, with a forced smile.

Stacy smiled also. "I don't know that it's a business question," he
said.

"Five hundred thousand dollars," said Demorest abruptly from the
doorway, "and a treble interest."

The eyes of the two men met. There was no mistaking the dull fire of
envy in Steptoe's glance, but Demorest received it with a certain cold
curiosity, and turned away as the sound of arriving voices came from
without.

"Five hundred thousand's a big figger," said Steptoe, with a coarse
laugh, "and I don't wonder it makes you feel so d----d sassy. But it WAS
a fair question."

Unfortunately it here occurred to the whiskey-stimulated brain of Dick
that the friend he had introduced was being treated with scant courtesy,
and he forgot his own treatment by Steptoe. Leaning against the wall he
waved a dignified rebuke. "I'm sashified my ole frien' is akshuated by
only businesh principles." He paused, recollected himself, and added
with great precision: "When I say he himself has a valuable claim in
Red Gulch, and to my shertain knowledge has received offers--I have said
enough."

The laugh that broke from Stacy and Barker, to whom the infelicitous
reputation of Red Gulch was notorious, did not allay Steptoe's
irritation. He darted a vindictive glance at the unfortunate Dick, but
joined in the laugh. "And what was ye goin' to do with that?" he said,
pointing to the treasure.

"Oh, we're taking that with us. There's a chunk for each of us as a
memento. We cast lots for the choice, and Demorest won,--that one which
you couldn't lift with one hand, you know," said Stacy.

"Oh, couldn't I? I reckon you ain't goin' to give me the same chance
that they did at the Mint, eh?"

Although the remark was accompanied with his usual coarse, familiar
laugh, there was a look in his eye so inconsequent in its significance
that Stacy would have made some reply, but at this moment Demorest
re-entered the cabin, ushering in a half dozen miners from the Bar
below. They were, although youngish men, some of the older locators in
the vicinity, yet, through years of seclusion and uneventful labors,
they had acquired a certain childish simplicity of thought and manner
that was alternately amusing and pathetic. They had never intruded upon
the reserve of the three partners of Heavy Tree Hill before; nothing but
an infantine curiosity, a shy recognition of the partners' courtesy in
inviting them with the whole population of Heavy Tree to the dinner the
next day, and the never-to-be-resisted temptation of an evening of "free
liquor" and forgetfulness of the past had brought them there now.
Among them, and yet not of them, was a young man who, although speaking
English without accent, was distinctly of a different nationality and
race. This, with a certain neatness of dress and artificial suavity
of address, had gained him the nickname of "the Count" and "Frenchy,"
although he was really of Flemish extraction. He was the Union Ditch
Company's agent on the Bar, by virtue of his knowledge of languages.

Barker uttered an exclamation of pleasure when he saw him. Himself the
incarnation of naturalness, he had always secretly admired this young
foreigner, with his lacquered smoothness, although a vague consciousness
that neither Stacy nor Demorest shared his feelings had restricted their
acquaintance. Nevertheless, he was proud now to see the bow with which
Paul Van Loo entered the cabin as if it were a drawing-room, and perhaps
did not reflect upon that want of real feeling in an act which made the
others uncomfortable.

The slight awkwardness their entrance produced, however, was quickly
forgotten when the blanket was again lifted from the pan of treasure.
Singularly enough, too, the same feverish light came into the eyes of
each as they all gathered around this yellow shrine. Even the polite
Paul rudely elbowed his way between the others, though his artificial
"Pardon" seemed to Barker to condone this act of brutal instinct. But it
was more instructive to observe the manner in which the older locators
received this confirmation of the fickle Fortune that had overlooked
their weary labors and years of waiting to lavish her favors on the new
and inexperienced amateurs. Yet as they turned their dazzled eyes upon
the three partners there was no envy or malice in their depths, no
reproach on their lips, no insincerity in their wondering satisfaction.
Rather there was a touching, almost childlike resumption of hope as they
gazed at this conclusive evidence of Nature's bounty. The gold had been
there--THEY had only missed it! And if there, more could be found! Was
it not a proof of the richness of Heavy Tree Hill? So strongly was this
reflected on their faces that a casual observer, contrasting them with
the thoughtful countenances of the real owners, would have thought them
the lucky ones. It touched Barker's quick sympathies, it puzzled Stacy,
it made Demorest more serious, it aroused Steptoe's active contempt.
Whiskey Dick alone remained stolid and impassive in a desperate attempt
to pull himself once more together. Eventually he succeeded, even to the
ambitious achievement of mounting a chair and lifting his tin cup with a
dangerously unsteady hand, which did not, however, affect his precision
of utterance, and said:--

"Order, gentlemen! We'll drink success to--to"--

"The next strike!" said Barker, leaping impetuously on another chair
and beaming upon the old locators--"and may it come to those who have so
long deserved it!"

His sincere and generous enthusiasm seemed to break the spell of silence
that had fallen upon them. Other toasts quickly followed. In the general
good feeling Barker attached himself to Van Loo with his usual boyish
effusion, and in a burst of confidence imparted the secret of his
engagement to Kitty Carter. Van Loo listened with polite attention,
formal congratulations, but inscrutable eyes, that occasionally wandered
to Stacy and again to the treasure. A slight chill of disappointment
came over Barker's quick sensitiveness. Perhaps his enthusiasm had bored
this superior man of the world. Perhaps his confidences were in bad
taste! With a new sense of his inexperience he turned sadly away. Van
Loo took that opportunity to approach Stacy.

"What's all this I hear of Barker being engaged to Miss Carter?" he
said, with a faintly superior smile. "Is it really true?"

"Yes. Why shouldn't it be?" returned Stacy bluntly.

Van Loo was instantly deprecating and smiling. "Why not, of course? But
isn't it sudden?"

"They have known each other ever since he's been on Heavy Tree Hill,"
responded Stacy.

"Ah, yes! True," said Van Loo. "But now"--

"Well--he's got money enough to marry, and he's going to marry."

"Rather young, isn't he?" said Van Loo, still deprecatingly. "And
she's got nothing. Used to wait on the table at her father's hotel in
Boomville, didn't she?"

"Yes. What of that? We all know it."

"Of course. It's an excellent thing for her--and her father. He'll have
a rich son-in-law. About two hundred thousand is his share, isn't it? I
suppose old Carter is delighted?"

Stacy had thought this before, but did not care to have it corroborated
by this superfine young foreigner. "And I don't reckon that Barker is
offended if he is," he said curtly as he turned away. Nevertheless, he
felt irritated that one of the three superior partners of Heavy Tree
Hill should be thought a dupe.

Suddenly the conversation dropped, the laughter ceased. Every one turned
round, and, by a common instinct, looked towards the door. From
the obscurity of the hill slope below came a wonderful tenor voice,
modulated by distance and spiritualized by the darkness:--

     "When at some future day
     I shall be far away,
     Thou wilt be weeping,
     Thy lone watch keeping."

The men looked at one another. "That's Jack Hamlin," they said. "What's
he doing here?"

"The wolves are gathering around fresh meat," said Steptoe, with his
coarse laugh and a glance at the treasure. "Didn't ye know he came over
from Red Dog yesterday?"

"Well, give Jack a fair show and his own game," said one of the old
locators, "and he'd clean out that pile afore sunrise."

"And lose it next day," added another.

"But never turn a hair or change a muscle in either case," said a third.
"Lord! I've heard him sing away just like that when he's been leaving
the board with five thousand dollars in his pocket, or going away
stripped of his last red cent."

Van Loo, who had been listening with a peculiar smile, here said in his
most deprecating manner, "Yes, but did you never consider the influence
that such a man has on the hard-working tunnelmen, who are ready to
gamble their whole week's earnings to him? Perhaps not. But I know the
difficulties of getting the Ditch rates from these men when he has been
in camp."

He glanced around him with some importance, but only a laugh followed
his speech. "Come, Frenchy," said an old locator, "you only say that
because your little brother wanted to play with Jack like a grown
man, and when Jack ordered him off the board and he became sassy, Jack
scooted him outer the saloon."

Van Loo's face reddened with an anger that had the apparent effect of
removing every trace of his former polished repose, and leaving only a
hard outline beneath. At which Demorest interfered:--

"I can't say that I see much difference in gambling by putting money
into a hole in the ground and expecting to take more from it than by
putting it on a card for the same purpose."

Here the ravishing tenor voice, which had been approaching, ceased, and
was succeeded by a heart-breaking and equally melodious whistling to
finish the bar of the singer's song. And the next moment Jack Hamlin
appeared in the doorway.

Whatever was his present financial condition, in perfect self-possession
and charming sang-froid he fully bore out his previous description. He
was as clean and refreshing looking as a madrono-tree in the dust-blown
forest. An odor of scented soap and freshly ironed linen was wafted from
him; there was scarcely a crease in his white waistcoat, nor a speck
upon his varnished shoes. He might have been an auditor of the previous
conversation, so quickly and completely did he seem to take in the
whole situation at a glance. Perhaps there was an extra tilt to his
black-ribboned Panama hat, and a certain dancing devilry in his brown
eyes--which might also have been an answer to adverse criticism.

"When I, his truth to prove, would trifle with my love," he warbled
in general continuance from the doorway. Then dropping cheerfully into
speech, he added, "Well, boys, I am here to welcome the little stranger,
and to trust that the family are doing as well as can be expected. Ah!
there it is! Bless it!" he went on, walking leisurely to the treasure.
"Triplets, too!--and plump at that. Have you had 'em weighed?"

Frankness was an essential quality of Heavy Tree Hill. "We were just
saying, Jack," said an old locator, "that, giving you a fair show
and your own game, you could manage to get away with that pile before
daybreak."

"And I'm just thinking," said Jack cheerfully, "that there were some of
you here that could do that without any such useless preliminary." His
brown eyes rested for a moment on Steptoe, but turning quite abruptly
to Van Loo, he held out his hand. Startled and embarrassed before the
others, the young man at last advanced his, when Jack coolly put his
own, as if forgetfully, in his pocket. "I thought you might like to know
what that little brother of yours is doing," he said to Van Loo, yet
looking at Steptoe. "I found him wandering about the Hill here quite
drunk."

"I have repeatedly warned him"--began Van Loo, reddening.

"Against bad company--I know," suggested Jack gayly; "yet in spite of
all that, I think he owes some of his liquor to Steptoe yonder."

"I never supposed the fool would get drunk over a glass of whiskey
offered in fun," said Steptoe harshly, yet evidently quite as much
disconcerted as angry.

"The trouble with Steptoe," said Hamlin, thoughtfully spanning his slim
waist with both hands as he looked down at his polished shoes, "is that
he has such a soft-hearted liking for all weaknesses. Always wanting
to protect chaps that can't look after themselves, whether it's Whiskey
Dick there when he has a pull on, or some nigger when he's made a little
strike, or that straying lamb of Van Loo's when he's puppy drunk. But
you're wrong about me, boys. You can't draw me in any game to-night.
This is one of my nights off, which I devote exclusively to
contemplation and song. But," he added, suddenly turning to his three
hosts with a bewildering and fascinating change of expression, "I
couldn't resist coming up here to see you and your pile, even if I never
saw the one or the other before, and am not likely to see either again.
I believe in luck! And it comes a mighty sight oftener than a fellow
thinks it does. But it doesn't come to stay. So I'd advise you to keep
your eyes skinned, and hang on to it while it's with you, like grim
death. So long!"

Resisting all attempts of his hosts--who had apparently fallen as
suddenly and unaccountably under the magic of his manner--to detain him
longer, he stepped lightly away, his voice presently rising again in
melody as he descended the hill. Nor was it at all remarkable that the
others, apparently drawn by the same inevitable magnetism, were impelled
to follow him, naturally joining their voices with his, leaving Steptoe
and Van Loo so markedly behind them alone that they were compelled at
last in sheer embarrassment to close up the rear of the procession. In
another moment the cabin and the three partners again relapsed into the
peace and quiet of the night. With the dying away of the last voices on
the hillside the old solitude reasserted itself.

But since the irruption of the strangers they had lost their former
sluggish contemplation, and now busied themselves in preparation for
their early departure from the cabin the next morning. They had arranged
to spend the following day and night at Boomville and Carter's Hotel,
where they were to give their farewell dinner to Heavy Tree Hill.
They talked but little together: since the rebuff his enthusiastic
confidences had received from Van Loo, Barker had been grave and
thoughtful, and Stacy, with the irritating recollection of Van Loo's
criticisms in his mind, had refrained from his usual rallying of Barker.
Oddly enough, they spoke chiefly of Jack Hamlin,--till then personally
a stranger to them, on account of his infelix reputation,--and even the
critical Demorest expressed a wish they had known him before. "But you
never know the real value of anything until you're quitting it or it's
quitting you," he added sententiously.

Barker and Stacy both stared at their companion. It was unlike Demorest
to regret anything--particularly a mere social diversion.

"They say," remarked Stacy, "that if you had known Jack Hamlin earlier
and professionally, a great deal of real value would have quitted you
before he did."

"Don't repeat that rot flung out by men who have played Jack's game and
lost," returned Demorest derisively. "I'd rather trust him than"--He
stopped, glanced at the meditative Barker, and then concluded abruptly,
"the whole caboodle of his critics."

They were silent for a few moments, and then seemed to have fallen into
their former dreamy mood as they relapsed into their old seats again.
At last Stacy drew a long breath. "I wish we had sent those nuggets off
with the others this morning."

"Why?" said Demorest suddenly.

"Why? Well, d--n it all! they kind of oppress me, don't you see. I seem
to feel 'em here, on my chest--all the three," returned Stacy only half
jocularly. "It's their d----d specific gravity, I suppose. I don't like
the idea of sleeping in the same room with 'em. They're altogether too
much for us three men to be left alone with."

"You don't mean that you think that anybody would attempt"--said
Demorest.

Stacy curled a fighting lip rather superciliously. "No; I don't think
THAT--I rather wish I did. It's the blessed chunks of solid gold that
seem to have got US fast, don't you know, and are going to stick to us
for good or ill. A sort of Frankenstein monster that we've picked out of
a hole from below."

"I know just what Stacy means," said Barker breathlessly, rounding
his gray eyes. "I've felt it, too. Couldn't we make a sort of cache of
it--bury it just outside the cabin for to-night? It would be sort of
putting it back into its old place, you know, for the time being. IT
might like it."

The other two laughed. "Rather rough on Providence, Barker boy," said
Stacy, "handing back the Heaven-sent gift so soon! Besides, what's to
keep any prospector from coming along and making a strike of it? You
know that's mining law--if you haven't preempted the spot as a claim."

But Barker was too staggered by this material statement to make any
reply, and Demorest arose. "And I feel that you'd both better be turning
in, as we've got to get up early." He went to the corner of the cabin,
and threw the blanket back over the pan and its treasure. "There
that'll keep the chunks from getting up to ride astride of you like a
nightmare." He shut the door and gave a momentary glance at its cheap
hinges and the absence of bolt or bar. Stacy caught his eye. "We'll miss
this security in San Francisco--perhaps even in Boomville," he sighed.

It was scarcely ten o'clock, but Stacy and Barker had begun to undress
themselves with intervals of yawning and desultory talk, Barker
continuing an amusing story, with one stocking off and his trousers
hanging on his arm, until at last both men were snugly curled up in
their respective bunks. Presently Stacy's voice came from under the
blankets:--

"Hallo! aren't you going to turn in too?"

"Not yet," said Demorest from his chair before the fire. "You see it's
the last night in the old shanty, and I reckon I'll see the rest of it
out."

"That's so," said the impulsive Barker, struggling violently with his
blankets. "I tell you what, boys: we just ought to make a watch-night of
it--a regular vigil, you know--until twelve at least. Hold on! I'll get
up, too!" But here Demorest arose, caught his youthful partner's bare
foot which went searching painfully for the ground in one hand, tucked
it back under the blankets, and heaping them on the top of him, patted
the bulk with an authoritative, paternal air.

"You'll just say your prayers and go to sleep, sonny. You'll want to be
fresh as a daisy to appear before Miss Kitty to-morrow early, and you
can keep your vigils for to-morrow night, after dinner, in the back
drawing-room. I said 'Good-night,' and I mean it!"

Protesting feebly, Barker finally yielded in a nestling shiver and a
sudden silence. Demorest walked back to his chair. A prolonged snore
came from Stacy's bunk; then everything was quiet. Demorest stirred up
the fire, cast a huge root upon it, and, leaning back in his chair, sat
with half-closed eyes and dreamed.

It was an old dream that for the past three years had come to him
daily, sometimes even overtaking him under the shade of a buckeye in his
noontide rest on his claim,--a dream that had never yet failed to wait
for him at night by the fireside when his partners were at rest; a dream
of the past, but so real that it always made the present seem the dream
through which he was moving towards some sure awakening.

It was not strange that it should come to him to-night, as it had often
come before, slowly shaping itself out of the obscurity as the vision of
a fair young girl seated in one of the empty chairs before him. Always
the same pretty, childlike face, fraught with a half-frightened,
half-wondering trouble; always the same slender, graceful figure,
but always glimmering in diamonds and satin, or spiritual in lace and
pearls, against his own rude and sordid surroundings; always silent with
parted lips, until the night wind smote some chord of recollection,
and then mingled a remembered voice with his own. For at those times
he seemed to speak also, albeit with closed lips, and an utterance
inaudible to all but her.

"Well?" he said sadly.

"Well?" the voice repeated, like a gentle echo blending with his own.

"You know it all now," he went on. "You know that it has come at
last,--all that I had worked for, prayed for; all that would have made
us happy here; all that would have saved you to me has come at last, and
all too late!"

"Too late!" echoed the voice with his.

"You remember," he went on, "the last day we were together. You remember
your friends and family would have you give me up--a penniless man. You
remember when they reproached you with my poverty, and told you that it
was only your wealth that I was seeking, that I then determined to
go away and never to return to claim you until that reproach could be
removed. You remember, dearest, how you clung to me and bade me stay
with you, even fly with you, but not to leave you alone with them. You
wore the same dress that day, darling; your eyes had the same wondering
childlike fear and trouble in them; your jewels glittered on you as
you trembled, and I refused. In my pride, or rather in my weakness and
cowardice, I refused. I came away and broke my heart among these rocks
and ledges, yet grew strong; and you, my love, YOU, sheltered and
guarded by those you loved, YOU"--He stopped and buried his face in his
hands. The night wind breathed down the chimney, and from the stirred
ashes on the hearth came the soft whisper, "I died."

"And then," he went on, "I cared for nothing. Sometimes my heart awoke
for this young partner of mine in his innocent, trustful love for a girl
that even in her humble station was far beyond his hopes, and I pitied
myself in him. Home, fortune, friends, I no longer cared for--all were
forgotten. And now they are returning to me--only that I may see the
hollowness and vanity of them, and taste the bitterness for which I
have sacrificed you. And here, on this last night of my exile, I
am confronted with only the jealousy, the doubt, the meanness and
selfishness that is to come. Too late! Too late!"

The wondering, troubled eyes that had looked into his here appeared to
clear and brighten with a sweet prescience. Was it the wind moaning in
the chimney that seemed to whisper to him: "Too late, beloved, for ME,
but not for you. I died, but Love still lives. Be happy, Philip. And in
your happiness I too may live again"?

He started. In the flickering firelight the chair was empty. The wind
that had swept down the chimney had stirred the ashes with a sound like
the passage of a rustling skirt. There was a chill in the air and a
smell like that of opened earth. A nervous shiver passed over him. Then
he sat upright. There was no mistake; it was no superstitious fancy,
but a faint, damp current of air was actually flowing across his feet
towards the fireplace. He was about to rise when he stopped suddenly and
became motionless.

He was actively conscious now of a strange sound which had affected him
even in the preoccupation of his vision. It was a gentle brushing of
some yielding substance like that made by a soft broom on sand, or the
sweep of a gown. But to his mountain ears, attuned to every woodland
sound, it was not like the gnawing of gopher or squirrel, the scratching
of wildcat, nor the hairy rubbing of bear. Nor was it human; the long,
deep respirations of his sleeping companions were distinct from that
monotonous sound. He could not even tell if it were IN the cabin or
without. Suddenly his eye fell upon the pile in the corner. The blanket
that covered the treasure was actually moving!

He rose quickly, but silently, alert, self-contained, and menacing. For
this dreamer, this bereaved man, this scornful philosopher of riches had
disappeared with that midnight trespass upon the sacred treasure. The
movement of the blanket ceased; the soft, swishing sound recommenced. He
drew a glittering bowie-knife from his boot-leg, and in three noiseless
strides was beside the pile. There he saw what he fully expected to
see,--a narrow, horizontal gap between the log walls of the cabin and
the adobe floor, slowly widening and deepening by the burrowing of
unseen hands from without. The cold outer air which he had felt before
was now plainly flowing into the heated cabin through the opening. The
swishing sound recommenced, and stopped. Then the four fingers of a
hand, palm downwards, were cautiously introduced between the bottom
log and the denuded floor. Upon that intruding hand the bowie-knife of
Demorest descended like a flash of lightning. There was no outcry.
Even in that supreme moment Demorest felt a pang of admiration for
the stoicism of the unseen trespasser. But the maimed hand was quickly
withdrawn, and as quickly Demorest rushed to the door and dashed into
the outer darkness.

For an instant he was dazed and bewildered by the sudden change. But the
next moment he saw a dodging, doubling figure running before him, and
threw himself upon it. In the shock both men fell, but even in that
contact Demorest felt the tangled beard and alcoholic fumes of Whiskey
Dick, and felt also that the hands which were thrown up against his
breast, the palms turned outward with the instinctive movement of a
timid, defenseless man, were unstained with soil or blood. With an oath
he threw the drunkard from him and dashed to the rear of the cabin.
But too late! There, indeed, was the scattered earth, there the widened
burrow as it had been excavated apparently by that mutilated hand--but
nothing else!

He turned back to Whiskey Dick. But the miserable man, although still
retaining a look of dazed terror in his eyes, had recovered his feet
in a kind of angry confidence and a forced sense of injury. What did
Demorest mean by attacking "innoshent" gentlemen on the trail outside
his cabin? Yes! OUTSIDE his cabin, he would swear it!

"What were you doing here at midnight?" demanded Demorest.

What was he doing? What was any gentleman doing? He wasn't any
molly-coddle to go to bed at ten o'clock! What was he doing? Well--he'd
been with men who didn't shut their doors and turn the boys out just
in the shank of the evening. He wasn't any Barker to be wet-nursed by
Demorest.

"Some one else was here!" said Demorest sternly, with his eyes fixed on
Whiskey Dick. The dull glaze which seemed to veil the outer world from
the drunkard's pupils shifted suddenly with such a look of direct horror
that Demorest was fain to turn away his own. But the veil mercifully
returned, and with it Dick's worked-up sense of injury. Nobody was
there--not "a shole." Did Demorest think if there had been any of
his friends there they would have stood by like "dogsh" and seen him
insulted?

Demorest turned away and re-entered the cabin as Dick lurched heavily
forward, still muttering, down the trail. The excitement over, a
sickening repugnance to the whole incident took the place of Demorest's
resentment and indignation. There had been a cowardly attempt to rob
them of their miserable treasure. He had met it and frustrated it in
almost as brutal a fashion: the gold was already tarnished with blood.
To his surprise, yet relief, he found his partners unconscious of the
outrage, still sleeping with the physical immobility of over-excited
and tired men. Should he awaken them? No! He should have to awaken
also their suspicions and desire for revenge. There was no danger of
a further attack; there was no fear that the culprit would disclose
himself, and to-morrow they would be far away. Let oblivion rest upon
that night's stain on the honor of Heavy Tree Hill.

He rolled a small barrel before the opening, smoothed the dislodged
earth, replaced the pan with its treasure, and trusted that in the
bustle of the early morning departure his partners might not notice any
change. Stopping before the bunk of Stacy he glanced at the sleeping
man. He was lying on his back, but breathing heavily, and his hands were
moving towards his chest as if, indeed, his strange fancy of the golden
incubus were being realized. Demorest would have wakened him, but
presently, with a sigh of relief, the sleeper turned over on his side.
It was pleasanter to look at Barker, whose damp curls were matted over
his smooth, boyish forehead, and whose lips were parted in a smile under
the silken wings of his brown mustache. He, too, seemed to be trying to
speak, and remembering some previous revelations which had amused them,
Demorest leaned over him fraternally with an answering smile, waiting
for the beloved one's name to pass the young man's lips. But he only
murmured, "Three--hundred--thousand dollars!" The elder man turned away
with a grave face. The influence of the treasure was paramount.

When he had placed one of the chairs against the unprotected door at
an angle which would prevent any easy or noiseless intrusion, Demorest
threw himself on his bunk without undressing, and turned his face
towards the single window of the cabin that looked towards the east. He
did not apprehend another covert attempt against the gold. He did not
fear a robbery with force and arms, although he was satisfied that there
was more than one concerned in it, but this he attributed only to the
encumbering weight of their expected booty. He simply waited for the
dawn. It was some time before his eyes were greeted with the vague
opaline brightness of the firmament which meant the vanishing of the
pallid snow-line before the coming day. A bird twittered on the roof.
The air was chill; he drew his blanket around him. Then he closed his
eyes, he fancied only for a moment, but when he opened them the door
was standing open in the strong daylight. He sprang to his feet, but
the next moment he saw it was only Stacy who had passed out, and was
returning fully dressed, bringing water from the spring to fill the
kettle. But Stacy's face was so grave that, recalling his disturbed
sleep, Demorest laughingly inquired if he had been haunted by the
treasure. But to his surprise Stacy put down the kettle, and, with a
hurried glance at the still sleeping Barker, said in a low voice:--

"I want you to do something for me without asking why. Later I will tell
you."

Demorest looked at him fixedly. "What is it?" he said.

"The pack-mules will be here in a few moments. Don't wait to close up or
put away anything here, but clap that gold in the saddle-bags, and take
Barker with you and 'lite' out for Boomville AT ONCE. I will overtake
you later."

"Is there no time to discuss this?" asked Demorest.

"No," said Stacy bluntly. "Call me a crank, say I'm in a blue funk"--his
compressed lips and sharp black eyes did not lend themselves much to
that hypothesis--"only get out of this with that stuff, and take Barker
with you! I'm not responsible for myself while it's here."

Demorest knew Stacy to be combative, but practical. If he had not been
assured of his partner's last night slumbers he might have thought he
knew of the attempt. Or if he had discovered the turned-up ground in
the rear of the cabin his curiosity would have demanded an explanation.
Demorest paused only for a moment, and said, "Very well, I will go."

"Good! I'll rouse out Barker, but not a word to him--except that he must
go."

The rousing out of Barker consisted of Stacy's lifting that young
gentleman bodily from his bunk and standing him upright in the open
doorway. But Barker was accustomed to this Spartan process, and after a
moment's balancing with closed lids like an unwrapped mummy, he sat
down in the doorway and began to dress. He at first demurred to their
departure except all together--it was so unfraternal; but eventually
he allowed himself to be persuaded out of it and into his clothes. For
Barker had also had HIS visions in the night, one of which was that they
should build a beautiful villa on the site of the old cabin and solemnly
agree to come every year and pass a week in it together. "I thought at
first," he said, sliding along the floor in search of different articles
of his dress, or stopping gravely to catch them as they were thrown to
him by his partners, "that we'd have it at Boomville, as being handier
to get there; but I've concluded we'd better have it here, a little
higher up the hill, where it could be seen over the whole Black Spur
Range. When we weren't here we could use it as a Hut of Refuge for
broken-down or washed-out miners or weary travelers, like those hospices
in the Alps, you know, and have somebody to keep it for us. You see I've
thought even of THAT, and Van Loo is the very man to take charge of it
for us. You see he's got such good manners and speaks two languages.
Lord! if a German or Frenchman came along, poor and distressed, Van Loo
would just chip in his own language. See? You've got to think of all
these details, you see, boys. And we might call it 'The Rest of the
Three Partners,' or 'Three Partners' Rest.'"

"And you might begin by giving us one," said Stacy. "Dry up and drink
your coffee."

"I'll draw out the plans. I've got it all in my head," continued the
enthusiastic Barker, unheeding the interruption. "I'll just run out and
take a look at the site, it's only right back of the cabin." But here
Stacy caught him by his dangling belt as he was flying out of the door
with one boot on, and thrust him down in a chair with a tin cup of
coffee in his hand.

"Keep the plans in your head, Barker boy," said Demorest, "for here
are the pack mules and packer." This was quite enough to divert the
impressionable young man, who speedily finished his dressing, as a mule
bearing a large pack-saddle and two enormous saddle-bags or pouches
drove up before the door, led by a muleteer on a small horse. The
transfer of the treasure to the saddle-bags was quickly made by their
united efforts, as the first rays of the sun were beginning to paint
the hillside. Shading his keen eyes with his hand, Stacy stood in the
doorway and handed Demorest the two rifles. Demorest hesitated. "Hadn't
YOU better keep one?" he said, looking in his partner's eyes with his
first challenge of curiosity. The sun seemed to put a humorous twinkle
into Stacy's glance as he returned, "Not much! And you'd better take
my revolver with you, too. I'm feeling a little better now," he said,
looking at the saddlebags, "but I'm not fit to be trusted yet with
carnal weapons. When the other mule comes and is packed I'll overtake
you on the horse."

A little more satisfied, although still wondering and perplexed,
Demorest shouldered one rifle, and with Barker, who was carrying the
other, followed the muleteer and his equipage down the trail. For a
while he was a little ashamed of his part in this unusual spectacle of
two armed men convoying a laden mule in broad daylight, but, luckily,
it was too early for the Bar miners to be going to work, and as the
tunnelmen were now at breakfast the trail was free of wayfarers. At the
point where it crossed the main road Demorest, however, saw Steptoe
and Whiskey Dick emerge from the thicket, apparently in earnest
conversation. Demorest felt his repugnance and half-restrained
suspicions suddenly return. Yet he did not wish to betray them before
Barker, nor was he willing, in case of an emergency, to allow the young
man to be entirely unprepared. Calling him to follow, he ran quickly
ahead of the laden mule, and was relieved to find that, looking
back, his companion had brought his rifle to a "ready," through some
instinctive feeling of defense. As Steptoe and Whiskey Dick, a moment
later discovering them, were evidently surprised, there seemed, however,
to be no reason for fearing an outbreak. Suddenly, at a whisper from
Steptoe, he and Whiskey Dick both threw up their hands, and stood
still on the trail a few yards from them in a burlesque of the usual
recognized attitude of helplessness, while a hoarse laugh broke from
Steptoe.

"D----d if we didn't think you were road-agents! But we see you're only
guarding your treasure. Rather fancy style for Heavy Tree Hill, ain't
it? Things must be gettin' rough up thar to hev to take out your guns
like that!"

Demorest had looked keenly at the four hands thus exhibited, and was
more concerned that they bore no trace of wounds or mutilation than at
the insult of the speech, particularly as he had a distinct impression
that the action was intended to show him the futility of his suspicions.

"I am glad to see that if you haven't any arms in your hands you're not
incapable of handling them," said Demorest coolly, as he passed by them
and again fell into the rear of the muleteer.

But Barker had thought the incident very funny, and laughed effusively
at Whiskey Dick. "I didn't know that Steptoe was up to that kind of
fun," he said, "and I suppose we DID look rather rough with these guns
as we ran on ahead of the mule. But then you know that when you called
to me I really thought you were in for a shindy. All the same, Whiskey
Dick did that 'hands up' to perfection: how he managed it I don't know,
but his knees seemed to knock together as if he was in a real funk."

Demorest had thought so too, but he made no reply. How far that
miserable drunkard was a forced or willing accomplice of the events
of last night was part of a question that had become more and more
repugnant to him as he was leaving the scene of it forever. It had
come upon him, desecrating the dream he had dreamt that last night and
turning its hopeful climax to bitterness. Small wonder that Barker,
walking by his side, had his quick sympathies aroused, and as he saw
that shadow, which they were all familiar with, but had never sought to
penetrate, fall upon his companion's handsome face, even his youthful
spirits yielded to it. They were both relieved when the clatter of
hoofs behind them, as they reached the valley, announced the approach of
Stacy. "I started with the second mule and the last load soon after you
left," he explained, "and have just passed them. I thought it better
to join you and let the other load follow. Nobody will interfere with
THAT."

"Then you are satisfied?" said Demorest, regarding him steadfastly.

"You bet! Look!"

He turned in his saddle and pointed to the crest of the hill they had
just descended. Above the pines circling the lower slope above the bare
ledges of rock and outcrop, a column of thick black smoke was rising
straight as a spire in the windless air.

"That's the old shanty passing away," said Stacy complacently. "I reckon
there won't be much left of it before we get to Boomville."

Demorest and Barker stared. "You fired it?" said Barker, trembling with
excitement.

"Yes," said Stacy. "I couldn't bear to leave the old rookery for coyotes
and wild-cats to gather in, so I touched her off before I left."

"But"--said Barker.

"But," repeated Stacy composedly. "Hallo! what's the matter with that
new plan of 'The Rest' that you're going to build, eh? You don't want
them BOTH."

"And you did this rather than leave the dear old cabin to strangers?"
said Barker, with kindling eyes. "Stacy, I didn't think you had that
poetry in you!"

"There's heaps in me, Barker boy, that you don't know, and I don't
exactly sabe myself."

"Only," continued the young fellow eagerly, "we ought to have ALL been
there! We ought to have made a solemn rite of it, you know,--a kind of
sacrifice. We ought to have poured a kind of libation on the ground!"

"I did sprinkle a little kerosene over it, I think," returned Stacy,
"just to help things along. But if you want to see her flaming, Barker,
you just run back to that last corner on the road beyond the big red
wood. That's the spot for a view."

As Barker--always devoted to a spectacle--swiftly disappeared the two
men faced each other. "Well, what does it all mean?" said Demorest
gravely.

"It means, old man," said Stacy suddenly, "that if we hadn't had nigger
luck, the same blind luck that sent us that strike, you and I and that
Barker over there would have been swirling in that smoke up to the
sky about two hours ago!" He stopped and added in a lower, but earnest
voice, "Look here, Phil! When I went out to fetch water this morning I
smelt something queer. I went round to the back of the cabin and found
a hole dug under the floor, and piled against the corner wall a lot of
brush-wood and a can of kerosene. Some of the kerosene had been already
poured on the brush. Everything was ready to light, and only my coming
out an hour earlier had frightened the devils away. The idea was to set
the place on fire, suffocate us in the smoke of the kerosene poured into
the hole, and then to rush in and grab the treasure. It was a systematic
plan!"

"No!" said Demorest quietly.

"No?" repeated Stacy. "I told you I saw the whole thing and took away
the kerosene, which I hid, and after you had gone used it to fire the
cabin with, to see if the ones I suspected would gather to watch their
work."

"It was no part of their FIRST plan"' said Demorest, "which was only
robbery. Listen!" He hurriedly recounted his experience of the preceding
night to the astonished Stacy. "No, the fire was an afterthought and
revenge," he added sternly.

"But you say you cut the robber in the hand; there would be no
difficulty in identifying him by that."

"I wounded only a HAND," said Demorest. "But there was a HEAD in that
attempt that I never saw." He then revealed his own half-suspicions, but
how they were apparently refuted by the bravado of Steptoe and Whiskey
Dick.

"Then that was the reason THEY didn't gather at the fire," said Stacy
quickly.

"Ah!" said Demorest, "then YOU too suspected them?"

Stacy hesitated, and then said abruptly, "Yes."

Demorest was silent for a moment.

"Why didn't you tell me this this morning?" he said gently.

Stacy pointed to the distant Barker. "I didn't want you to tell him. I
thought it better for one partner to keep a secret from two than for the
two to keep it from one. Why didn't you tell me of your experience last
night?"

"I am afraid it was for the same reason," said Demorest, with a faint
smile. "And it sometimes seems to me, Jim, that we ought to imitate
Barker's frankness. In our dread of tainting him with our own knowledge
of evil we are sending him out into the world very poorly equipped, for
all his three hundred thousand dollars."

"I reckon you're right," said Stacy briefly, extending his hand. "Shake
on that!"

The two men grasped each other's hands.

"And he's no fool, either," continued Demorest. "When we met Steptoe on
the road, without a word from me, he closed up alongside, with his hand
on the lock of his rifle. And I hadn't the heart to praise him or laugh
it off."

Nevertheless they were both silent as the object of their criticism
bounded down the trail towards them. He had seen the funeral pyre. It
was awfully sad, it was awfully lovely, but there was something grand
in it! Who could have thought Stacy could be so poetic? But he wanted to
tell them something else that was mighty pretty.

"What was it?" said Demorest.

"Well," said Barker, "don't laugh! But you know that Jack Hamlin? Well,
boys, he's been hovering around us on his mustang, keeping us and that
pack-mule in sight ever since we left. Sometimes he's on a side trail
off to the right, sometimes off to the left, but always at the same
distance. I didn't like to tell you, boys, for I thought you'd laugh
at me; but I think, you know, he's taken a sort of shine to us since he
dropped in last night. And I fancy, you see, he's sort of hanging round
to see that we get along all right. I'd have pointed him out before
only I reckoned you and Stacy would say he was making up to us for our
money."

"And we'd have been wrong, Barker boy," said Stacy, with a heartiness
that surprised Demorest, "for I reckon your instinct's the right one."

"There he is now," said the gratified Barker, "just abreast of us on the
cut-off. He started just after we did, and he's got a horse that could
have brought him into Boomville hours ago. It's just his kindness."

He pointed to a distant fringe of buckeye from which Jack Hamlin had
just emerged. Although evidently holding in a powerful mustang, nothing
could be more unconscious and utterly indifferent than his attitude. He
did not seem to know of the proximity of any other traveler, and to care
less. His handsome head was slightly thrown back, as if he was caroling
after his usual fashion, but the distance was too great to make his
melody audible to them, or to allow Barker's shout of invitation to
reach him. Suddenly he lowered his tightened rein, the mustang sprang
forward, and with a flash of silver spurs and bridle fripperies he had
disappeared. But as the trail he was pursuing crossed theirs a mile
beyond, it seemed quite possible that they should again meet him.

They were now fairly into the Boomville valley, and were entering a
narrow arroyo bordered with dusky willows which effectually excluded the
view on either side. It was the bed of a mountain torrent that in winter
descended the hillside over the trail by which they had just come, but
was now sunk into the thirsty plain between banks that varied from
two to five feet in height. The muleteer had advanced into the narrow
channel when he suddenly cast a hurried glance behind him, uttered a
"Madre de Dios!" and backed his mule and his precious freight against
the bank. The sound of hoofs on the trail in their rear had caught his
quicker ear, and as the three partners turned they beheld three horsemen
thundering down the hill towards them. They were apparently Mexican
vaqueros of the usual common swarthy type, their faces made still darker
by the black silk handkerchief tied round their heads under their stiff
sombreros. Either they were unable or unwilling to restrain their horses
in their headlong speed, and a collision in that narrow passage was
imminent, but suddenly, before reaching its entrance, they diverged
with a volley of oaths, and dashing along the left bank of the arroyo,
disappeared in the intervening willows. Divided between relief at their
escape and indignation at what seemed to be a drunken, feast-day freak
of these roystering vaqueros, the little party re-formed, when a cry
from Barker arrested them. He had just perceived a horseman motionless
in the arroyo who, although unnoticed by them, had evidently been seen
by the Mexicans. He had apparently leaped into it from the bank, and had
halted as if to witness this singular incident. As the clatter of
the vaqueros' hoofs died away he lightly leaped the bank again and
disappeared. But in that single glimpse of him they recognized Jack
Hamlin. When they reached the spot where he had halted, they could see
that he must have approached it from the trail where they had previously
seen him, but which they now found crossed it at right angles. Barker
was right. He had really kept them at easy distance the whole length of
the journey.

But they were now reaching its end. When they issued at last from
the arroyo they came upon the outskirts of Boomville and the great
stage-road. Indeed, the six horses of the Pioneer coach were just
panting along the last half mile of the steep upgrade as they
approached. They halted mechanically as the heavy vehicle swayed
and creaked by them. In their ordinary working dress, sunburnt with
exposure, covered with dust, and carrying their rifles still in their
hands, they, perhaps, presented a sufficiently characteristic appearance
to draw a few faces--some of them pretty and intelligent--to the windows
of the coach as it passed. The sensitive Barker was quickest to feel
that resentment with which the Pioneer usually met the wide-eyed
criticism of the Eastern tourist or "greenhorn," and reddened under the
bold scrutiny of a pair of black inquisitive eyes behind an eyeglass.
That annoyance was communicated, though in a lesser degree, even to the
bearded Demorest and Stacy. It was an unexpected contact with that great
world in which they were so soon to enter. They felt ashamed of
their appearance, and yet ashamed of that feeling. They felt a secret
satisfaction when Barker said, "They'd open their eyes wider if they
knew what was in that pack-saddle," and yet they corrected him for what
they were pleased to call his "snobbishness." They hurried a little
faster as the road became more frequented, as if eager to shorten their
distance to clean clothes and civilization.

Only Demorest began to linger in the rear. This contact with the
stagecoach had again brought him face to face with his buried past. He
felt his old dream revive, and occasionally turned to look back upon
the dark outlines of Black Spur, under whose shadow it had returned so
often, and wondered if he had left it there forever, and it were now
slowly exhaling with the thinned and dying smoke of their burning cabin.

His companions, knowing his silent moods, had preceded him at some
distance, when he heard the soft sound of ambling hoofs on the thick
dust, and suddenly the light touch of Jack Hamlin's gauntlet on his
shoulder. The mustang Jack bestrode was reeking with grime and sweat,
but Jack himself was as immaculate and fresh as ever. With a delightful
affectation of embarrassment and timidity he began flicking the side
buttons of his velvet vaquero trousers with the thong of his riata.
"I reckoned to sling a word along with you before you went," he said,
looking down, "but I'm so shy that I couldn't do it in company. So I
thought I'd get it off on you while you were alone."

"We've seen you once or twice before, this morning," said Demorest
pleasantly, "and we were sorry you didn't join us."

"I reckon I might have," said Jack gayly, "if my horse had only made up
his mind whether he was a bird or a squirrel, and hadn't been so various
and promiscuous about whether he wanted to climb a tree or fly. He's
not a bad horse for a Mexican plug, only when he thinks there is
any devilment around he wants to wade in and take a hand. However, I
reckoned to see the last of you and your pile into Boomville. And I DID.
When I meet three fellows like you that are clean white all through I
sort of cotton to 'em, even if I'M a little of a brunette myself. And
I've got something to give you."

He took from a fold of his scarlet sash a small parcel neatly folded in
white paper as fresh and spotless as himself. Holding it in his fingers,
he went on: "I happened to be at Heavy Tree Hill early this morning
before sun-up. In the darkness I struck your cabin, and I reckon--I
struck somebody else! At first I thought it was one of you chaps down on
your knees praying at the rear of the cabin, but the way the fellow lit
out when he smelt me coming made me think it wasn't entirely fasting and
prayer. However, I went to the rear of the cabin, and then I reckoned
some kind friend had been bringing you kindlings and firewood for your
early breakfast. But that didn't satisfy me, so I knelt down as he had
knelt, and then I saw--well, Mr. Demorest, I reckon I saw JUST WHAT YOU
HAVE SEEN! But even then I wasn't quite satisfied, for that man had been
grubbing round as if searching for something. So I searched too--and I
found IT. I've got it here. I'm going to give it to you, for it may some
day come in handy, and you won't find anything like it among the folks
where you're going. It's something unique, as those fine-art-collecting
sharps in 'Frisco say--something quite matchless, unless you try to
match it one day yourself! Don't open the paper until I run on and say
'So long' to your partners. Good-by."

He grasped Demorest's hand and then dropped the little packet into his
palm, and ambled away towards Stacy and Barker. Holding the packet in
his hand with an amused yet puzzled smile, Demorest watched the gambler
give Stacy's hand a hearty farewell shake and a supplementary slap on
the back to the delighted Barker, and then vanish in a flash of red
sash and silver buttons. At which Demorest, walking slowly towards his
partners, opened the packet, and stood suddenly still. It contained the
dried and bloodless second finger of a human hand cut off at the first
joint!

For an instant he held it at arm's length, as if about to cast it away.
Then he grimly replaced it in the paper, put it carefully in his pocket,
and silently walked after his companions.




CHAPTER I


A strong southwester was beating against the windows and doors of
Stacy's Bank in San Francisco, and spreading a film of rain between the
regular splendors of its mahogany counters and sprucely dressed clerks
and the usual passing pedestrian. For Stacy's new banking-house had
long since received the epithet of "palatial" from an enthusiastic
local press fresh from the "opening" luncheon in its richly decorated
directors' rooms, and it was said that once a homely would-be depositor
from One Horse Gulch was so cowed by its magnificence that his heart
failed him at the last moment, and mumbling an apology to the elegant
receiving teller, fled with his greasy chamois pouch of gold-dust to
deposit his treasure in the dingy Mint around the corner. Perhaps there
was something of this feeling, mingled with a certain simple-minded
fascination, in the hesitation of a stranger of a higher class who
entered the bank that rainy morning and finally tendered his card to the
important negro messenger.

The card preceded him through noiselessly swinging doors and across
heavily carpeted passages until it reached the inner core of Mr. James
Stacy's private offices, and was respectfully laid before him. He was
not alone. At his side, in an attitude of polite and studied expectancy,
stood a correct-looking young man, for whom Mr. Stacy was evidently
writing a memorandum. The stranger glanced furtively at the card with a
curiosity hardly in keeping with his suggested good breeding; but Stacy
did not look at it until he had finished his memorandum.

"There," he said, with business decision, "you can tell your people that
if we carry their new debentures over our limit we will expect a larger
margin. Ditches are not what they were three years ago when miners were
willing to waste their money over your rates. They don't gamble THAT WAY
any more, and your company ought to know it, and not gamble themselves
over that prospect." He handed the paper to the stranger, who bowed over
it with studied politeness, and backed towards the door. Stacy took up
the waiting card, read it, said to the messenger, "Show him in," and
in the same breath turned to his guest: "I say, Van Loo, it's George
Barker! You know him."

"Yes," said Van Loo, with a polite hesitation as he halted at the door.
"He was--I think--er--in your employ at Heavy Tree Hill."

"Nonsense! He was my partner. And you must have known him since at
Boomville. Come! He got forty shares of Ditch stock--through you--at
110, which were worth about 80! SOMEBODY must have made money enough by
it to remember him."

"I was only speaking of him socially," said Van Loo, with a deprecating
smile. "You know he married a young woman--the hotel-keeper's daughter,
who used to wait at the table--and after my mother and sister came out
to keep house for me at Boomville it was quite impossible for me to see
much of him, for he seldom went out without his wife, you know."

"Yes," said Stacy dryly, "I think you didn't like his marriage. But I'm
glad your disinclination to see him isn't on account of that deal in
stocks."

"Oh no," said Van Loo. "Good-by."

But, unfortunately, in the next passage he came upon Barker, who with a
cry of unfeigned pleasure, none the less sincere that he was feeling a
little alien in these impressive surroundings, recognized him. Nothing
could exceed Van Loo's protest of delight at the meeting; nothing
his equal desolation at the fact that he was hastening to another
engagement. "But your old partner," he added, with a smile, "is waiting
for you; he has just received your card, and I should be only keeping
you from him. So glad to see you; you're looking so well. Good-by!
Good-by!"

Reassured, Barker no longer hesitated, but dashed with his old
impetuousness into his former partner's room. Stacy, already deeply
absorbed in other business, was sitting with his back towards him, and
Barker's arms were actually encircling his neck before the astonished
and half-angry man looked up. But when his eyes met the laughing gray
ones of Barker above him he gently disengaged himself with a quick
return of the caress, rose, shut the door of an inner office, and
returning pushed Barker into an armchair in quite the old suppressive
fashion of former days. Yes; it was the same Stacy that Barker looked
at, albeit his brown beard was now closely cropped around his determined
mouth and jaw in a kind of grave decorum, and his energetic limbs
already attuned to the rigor of clothes of fashionable cut and still
more rigorous sombreness of color.

"Barker boy," he began, with the familiar twinkle in his keen eyes which
the younger partner remembered, "I don't encourage stag dancing among my
young men during bank hours, and you'll please to remember that we are
not on Heavy Tree Hill"--

"Where," broke in Barker enthusiastically, "we were only overlooked by
the Black Spur Range and the Sierran snow-line; where the nearest voice
that came to you was quarter of a mile away as the crow flies and nearly
a mile by the trail."

"And was generally an oath!" said Stacy. "But you're in San Francisco
NOW. Where are you stopping?" He took up a pencil and held it over a
memorandum pad awaitingly.

"At the Brook House. It's"--

"Hold on! 'Brook House,'" Stacy repeated as he jotted it down. "And for
how long?"

"Oh, a day or two. You see, Kitty"--

Stacy checked him with a movement of his pencil in the air, and then
wrote down, "'Day or two.' Wife with you?"

"Yes; and oh, Stacy, our boy! Ah!" he went on, with a laugh, knocking
aside the remonstrating pencil, "you must listen! He's just the
sweetest, knowingest little chap living. Do you know what we're going to
christen him? Well, he'll be Stacy Demorest Barker. Good names, aren't
they? And then it perpetuates the dear old friendship."

Stacy picked up the pencil again, wrote "Wife and child S. D. B.," and
leaned back in his chair. "Now, Barker," he said briefly, "I'm coming
to dine with you tonight at 7.30 sharp. THEN we'll talk Heavy Tree Hill,
wife, baby, and S. D. B. But here I'm all for business. Have you any
with me?"

Barker, who was easily amused, had extracted a certain entertainment out
of Stacy's memorandum, but he straightened himself with a look of eager
confidence and said, "Certainly; that's just what it is--business. Lord!
Stacy, I'm ALL business now. I'm in everything. And I bank with you,
though perhaps you don't know it; it's in your Branch at Marysville. I
didn't want to say anything about it to you before. But Lord! you
don't suppose that I'd bank anywhere else while you are in the
business--checks, dividends, and all that; but in this matter I felt you
knew, old chap. I didn't want to talk to a banker nor to a bank, but to
Jim Stacy, my old partner."

"Barker," said Stacy curtly, "how much money are you short of?"

At this direct question Barker's always quick color rose, but, with an
equally quick smile, he said, "I don't know yet that I'm short at all."

"But I do!"

"Look here, Jim: why, I'm just overloaded with shares and stocks," said
Barker, smiling.

"Not one of which you could realize on without sacrifice. Barker, three
years ago you had three hundred thousand dollars put to your account at
San Francisco."

"Yes," said Barker, with a quiet reminiscent laugh. "I remember I wanted
to draw it out in one check to see how it would look."

"And you've drawn out all in three years, and it looks d----d bad."

"How did you know it?" asked Barker, his face beaming only with
admiration of his companion's omniscience.

"How did I know it?" retorted Stacy. "I know YOU, and I know the kind of
people who have unloaded to you."

"Come, Stacy," said Barker, "I've only invested in shares and stocks
like everybody else, and then only on the best advice I could get:
like Van Loo's, for instance,--that man who was here just now, the
new manager of the Empire Ditch Company; and Carter's, my own Kitty's
father. And when I was offered fifty thousand Wide West Extensions,
and was hesitating over it, he told me YOU were in it too--and that was
enough for me to buy it."

"Yes, but we didn't go into it at his figures."

"No," said Barker, with an eager smile, "but you SOLD at his figures,
for I knew that when I found that YOU, my old partner, was in it; don't
you see, I preferred to buy it through your bank, and did at 110. Of
course, you wouldn't have sold it at that figure if it wasn't worth it
then, and neither I nor you are to blame if it dropped the next week to
60, don't you see?"

Stacy's eyes hardened for a moment as he looked keenly into his former
partner's bright gray ones, but there was no trace of irony in Barker's.
On the contrary, a slight shade of sadness came over them. "No," he said
reflectively, "I don't think I've ever been foolish or followed out my
OWN ideas, except once, and that was extravagant, I admit. That was
my idea of building a kind of refuge, you know, on the site of our old
cabin, where poor miners and played-out prospectors waiting for a strike
could stay without paying anything. Well, I sunk twenty thousand
dollars in that, and might have lost more, only Carter--Kitty's
father--persuaded me--he's an awful clever old fellow--into turning it
into a kind of branch hotel of Boomville, while using it as a hotel to
take poor chaps who couldn't pay, at half prices, or quarter prices,
PRIVATELY, don't you see, so as to spare their pride,--awfully pretty,
wasn't it?--and make the hotel profit by it."

"Well?" said Stacy as Barker paused.

"They didn't come," said Barker.

"But," he added eagerly, "it shows that things were better than I had
imagined. Only the others did not come, either."

"And you lost your twenty thousand dollars," said Stacy curtly.

"FIFTY thousand," said Barker, "for of course it had to be a larger
hotel than the other. And I think that Carter wouldn't have gone into it
except to save me from losing money."

"And yet made you lose fifty thousand instead of twenty. For I don't
suppose HE advanced anything."

"He gave his time and experience," said Barker simply.

"I don't think it worth thirty thousand dollars," said Stacy dryly. "But
all this doesn't tell me what your business is with me to-day."

"No," said Barker, brightening up, "but it is business, you know.
Something in the old style--as between partner and partner--and that's
why I came to YOU, and not to the 'banker.' And it all comes out of
something that Demorest once told us; so you see it's all us three
again! Well, you know, of course, that the Excelsior Ditch Company have
abandoned the Bar and Heavy Tree Hill. It didn't pay."

"Yes; nor does the company pay any dividends now. You ought to know,
with fifty thousand of their stock on your hands."

Barker laughed. "But listen. I found that I could buy up their whole
plant and all the ditching along the Black Spur Range for ten thousand
dollars."

"And Great Scott! you don't think of taking up their business?" said
Stacy, aghast.

Barker laughed more heartily. "No. Not their business. But I remember
that once Demorest told us, in the dear old days, that it cost nearly
as much to make a water ditch as a railroad, in the way of surveying and
engineering and levels, you know. And here's the plant for a railroad.
Don't you see?"

"But a railroad from Black Spur to Heavy Tree Hill--what's the good of
that?"

"Why, Black Spur will be in the line of the new Divide Railroad they're
trying to get a bill for in the legislature."

"An infamous piece of wildcat jobbing that will never pass," said Stacy
decisively.

"They said BECAUSE it was that, it would pass," said Barker simply.
"They say that Watson's Bank is in it, and is bound to get it through.
And as that is a rival bank of yours, don't you see, I thought that if
WE could get something real good or valuable out of it,--something that
would do the Black Spur good,--it would be all right."

"And was your business to consult me about it?" said Stacy bluntly.

"No," said Barker, "it's too late to consult you now, though I wish I
had. I've given my word to take it, and I can't back out. But I haven't
the ten thousand dollars, and I came to you."

Stacy slowly settled himself back in his chair, and put both hands in
his pockets. "Not a cent, Barker, not a cent."

"I'm not asking it of the BANK," said Barker, with a smile, "for I could
have gone to the bank for it. But as this was something between us, I am
asking you, Stacy, as my old partner."

"And I am answering you, Barker, as your old partner, but also as the
partner of a hundred other men, who have even a greater right to ask me.
And my answer is, not a cent!"

Barker looked at him with a pale, astonished face and slightly parted
lips. Stacy rose, thrust his hands deeper in his pockets, and standing
before him went on:--

"Now look here! It's time you should understand me and yourself. Three
years ago, when our partnership was dissolved by accident, or mutual
consent, we will say, we started afresh, each on our own hook. Through
foolishness and bad advice you have in those three years hopelessly
involved yourself as you never would have done had we been partners, and
yet in your difficulty you ask me and my new partners to help you out of
a difficulty in which they have no concern."

"Your NEW partners?" stammered Barker.

"Yes, my new partners; for every man who has a share, or a deposit, or
an interest, or a dollar in this bank is my PARTNER--even you, with your
securities at the Branch, are one; and you may say that in THIS I am
protecting you against yourself."

"But you have money--you have private means."

"None to speculate with as you wish me to--on account of my position;
none to give away foolishly as you expect me to--on account of precedent
and example. I am a soulless machine taking care of capital intrusted to
me and my brains, but decidedly NOT to my heart nor my sentiment. So my
answer is, not a cent!"

Barker's face had changed; his color had come back, but with an older
expression. Presently, however, his beaming smile returned, with the
additional suggestion of an affectionate toleration which puzzled Stacy.

"I believe you're right, old chap," he said, extending his hand to the
banker, "and I wish I had talked to you before. But it's too late now,
and I've given my word."

"Your WORD!" said Stacy. "Have you no written agreement?"

"No. My word was accepted." He blushed slightly as if conscious of a
great weakness.

"But that isn't legal nor business. And you couldn't even hold the Ditch
Company to it if THEY chose to back out."

"But I don't think they will," said Barker simply. "And you see my word
wasn't given entirely to THEM. I bought the thing through my wife's
cousin, Henry Spring, a broker, and he makes something by it, from the
company, on commission. And I can't go back on HIM. What did you say?"

Stacy had only groaned through his set teeth. "Nothing," he said
briefly, "except that I'm coming, as I said before, to dine with you
to-night; but no more BUSINESS. I've enough of that with others, and
there are some waiting for me in the outer office now."

Barker rose at once, but with the same affectionate smile and tender
gravity of countenance, and laid his hand caressingly on Stacy's
shoulder. "It's like you to give up so much of your time to me and my
foolishness and be so frank with me. And I know it's mighty rough on
you to have to be a mere machine instead of Jim Stacy. Don't you bother
about me. I'll sell some of my Wide West Extension and pull the thing
through myself. It's all right, but I'm sorry for you, old chap." He
glanced around the room at the walls and rich paneling, and added, "I
suppose that's what you have to pay for all this sort of thing?"

Before Stacy could reply, a waiting visitor was announced for the second
time, and Barker, with another hand-shake and a reassuring smile to his
old partner, passed into the hall, as if the onus of any infelicity in
the interview was upon himself alone. But Stacy did not seem to be in a
particularly accessible mood to the new caller, who in his turn appeared
to be slightly irritated by having been kept waiting over some irksome
business. "You don't seem to follow me," he said to Stacy after reciting
his business perplexity. "Can't you suggest something?"

"Well, why don't you get hold of one of your board of directors?"
said Stacy abstractedly. "There's Captain Drummond; you and he are old
friends. You were comrades in the Mexican War, weren't you?"

"That be d----d!" said his visitor bitterly. "All his interests are
the other way, and in a trade of this kind, you know, Stacy, that a man
would sacrifice his own brother. Do you suppose that he'd let up on a
sure thing that he's got just because he and I fought side by side at
Cerro Gordo? Come! what are you giving us? You're the last man I ever
expected to hear that kind of flapdoodle from. If it's because your bank
has got some other interest and you can't advise me, why don't you say
so?" Nevertheless, in spite of Stacy's abrupt disclaimer, he left a few
minutes later, half convinced that Stacy's lukewarmness was due to some
adverse influence. Other callers were almost as quickly disposed of, and
at the end of an hour Stacy found himself again alone.

But not apparently in a very satisfied mood. After a few moments of
purely mechanical memoranda-making, he rose abruptly and opened a small
drawer in a cabinet, from which he took a letter still in its envelope.
It bore a foreign postmark. Glancing over it hastily, his eyes at
last became fixed on a concluding paragraph. "I hope," wrote his
correspondent, "that even in the rush of your big business you will
sometimes look after Barker. Not that I think the dear old chap will
ever go wrong--indeed, I often wish I was as certain of myself as of
him and his insight; but I am afraid we were more inclined to be merely
amused and tolerant of his wonderful trust and simplicity than to really
understand it for his own good and ours. I know you did not like his
marriage, and were inclined to believe he was the victim of a rather
unscrupulous father and a foolish, unequal girl; but are you satisfied
that he would have been the happier without it, or lived his perfect
life under other and what you may think wiser conditions? If he WROTE
the poetry that he LIVES everybody would think him wonderful; for being
what he is we never give him sufficient credit." Stacy smiled grimly,
and penciled on his memorandum, "He wants it to the amount of ten
thousand dollars." "Anyhow," continued the writer, "look after him, Jim,
for his sake, your sake, and the sake of--PHIL DEMOREST."

Stacy put the letter back in its envelope, and tossing it grimly aside
went on with his calculations. Presently he stopped, restored the letter
to his cabinet, and rang a bell on his table. "Send Mr. North here,"
he said to the negro messenger. In a few moments his chief book-keeper
appeared in the doorway.

"Turn to the Branch ledger and bring me a statement of Mr. George
Barker's account."

"He was here a moment ago," said North, essaying a confidential look
towards his chief.

"I know it," said Stacy coolly, without looking up.

"He's been running a good deal on wildcat lately," suggested North.

"I asked for his account, and not your opinion of it," said Stacy
shortly.

The subordinate withdrew somewhat abashed but still curious, and
returned presently with a ledger which he laid before his chief. Stacy
ran his eyes over the list of Barker's securities; it seemed to him that
all the wildest schemes of the past year stared him in the face. His
finger, however, stopped on the Wide West Extension. "Mr. Barker will be
wanting to sell some of this stock. What is it quoted at now?"

"Sixty."

"But I would prefer that Mr. Barker should not offer in the open market
at present. Give him seventy for it--private sale; that will be ten
thousand dollars paid to his credit. Advise the Branch of this at once,
and to keep the transaction quiet."

"Yes, sir," responded the clerk as he moved towards the door. But he
hesitated, and with another essay at confidence said insinuatingly, "I
always thought, sir, that Wide West would recover."

Stacy, perhaps not displeased to find what had evidently passed in his
subordinate's mind, looked at him and said dryly, "Then I would advise
you also to keep that opinion to yourself." But, clever as he was, he
had not anticipated the result. Mr. North, though a trusted employee,
was human. On arriving in the outer office he beckoned to one of the
lounging brokers, and in a low voice said, "I'll take two shares of Wide
West, if you can get it cheap."

The broker's face became alert and eager. "Yes, but I say, is anything
up?"

"I'm not here to give the business of the bank away," retorted North
severely; "take the order or leave it."

The man hurried away. Having thus vindicated his humanity by also
passing the snub he had received from Stacy to an inferior, he turned
away to carry out his master's instructions, yet secure in the belief
that he had profited by his superior discernment of the real reason
of that master's singular conduct. But when he returned to the private
room, in hopes of further revelations, Mr. Stacy was closeted with
another financial magnate, and had apparently divested his mind of the
whole affair.




CHAPTER II.


When George Barker returned to the outer ward of the financial
stronghold he had penetrated, with its curving sweep of counters, brass
railings, and wirework screens defended by the spruce clerks behind
them, he was again impressed with the position of the man he had just
quitted, and for a moment hesitated, with an inclination to go back.
It was with no idea of making a further appeal to his old comrade,
but--what would have been odd in any other nature but his--he was
affected by a sense that HE might have been unfair and selfish in his
manner to the man panoplied by these defenses, and who was in a measure
forced to be a part of them. He would like to have returned and condoled
with him. The clerks, who were heartlessly familiar with the anxious
bearing of the men who sought interviews with their chief, both before
and after, smiled with the whispered conviction that the fresh and
ingenuous young stranger had been "chucked" like others until they
met his kindly, tolerant, and even superior eyes, and were puzzled.
Meanwhile Barker, who had that sublime, natural quality of abstraction
over small impertinences which is more exasperating than studied
indifference, after his brief hesitation passed out unconcernedly
through the swinging mahogany doors into the blowy street. Here the wind
and rain revived him; the bank and its curt refusal were forgotten; he
walked onward with only a smiling memory of his partner as in the old
days. He remembered how Stacy had burned down their old cabin rather
than have it fall into sordid or unworthy hands--this Stacy who was now
condemned to sink his impulses and become a mere machine. He had never
known Stacy's real motive for that act,--both Demorest and Stacy
had kept their knowledge of the attempted robbery from their younger
partner,--it always seemed to him to be a precious revelation of Stacy's
inner nature. Facing the wind and rain, he recalled how Stacy, though
never so enthusiastic about his marriage as Demorest, had taken up Van
Loo sharply for some foolish sneer about his own youthfulness. He was
affectionately tolerant of even Stacy's dislike to his wife's relations,
for Stacy did not know them as he did. Indeed, Barker, whose own father
and mother had died in his infancy, had accepted his wife's relations
with a loving trust and confidence that was supreme, from the fact that
he had never known any other.

At last he reached his hotel. It was a new one, the latest creation of a
feverish progress in hotel-building which had covered five years and as
many squares with large showy erections, utterly beyond the needs of the
community, yet each superior in size and adornment to its predecessor.
It struck him as being the one evidence of an abiding faith in the
future of the metropolis that he had seen in nothing else. As he entered
its frescoed hall that afternoon he was suddenly reminded, by its
challenging opulency, of the bank he had just quitted, without knowing
that the bank had really furnished its capital and its original design.
The gilded bar-rooms, flashing with mirrors and cut glass; the saloons,
with their desert expanse of Turkey carpet and oasis of clustered divans
and gilded tables; the great dining-room, with porphyry columns, and
walls and ceilings shining with allegory--all these things which had
attracted his youthful wonder without distracting his correct simplicity
of taste he now began to comprehend. It was the bank's money "at work."
In the clatter of dishes in the dining-room he even seemed to hear again
the chinking of coin.

It was a short cut to his apartments to pass through a smaller public
sitting-room popularly known as "Flirtation Camp," where eight or ten
couples generally found refuge on chairs and settees by the windows,
half concealed by heavy curtains. But the occupants were by no means
youthful spinsters or bachelors; they were generally married women,
guests of the hotel, receiving other people's husbands whose wives were
"in the States," or responsible middle-aged leaders of the town. In
the elaborate toilettes of the women, as compared with the less formal
business suits of the men, there was an odd mingling of the social
attitude with perhaps more mysterious confidences. The idle gossip about
them had never affected Barker; rather he had that innate respect for
the secrets of others which is as inseparable from simplicity as it is
from high breeding, and he scarcely glanced at the different couples in
his progress through the room. He did not even notice a rather striking
and handsome woman, who, surrounded by two or three admirers, yet looked
up at Barker as he passed with self-conscious lids as if seeking a
return of her glance. But he moved on abstractedly, and only stopped
when he suddenly saw the familiar skirt of his wife at a further window,
and halted before it.

"Oh, it's YOU," said Mrs. Barker, with a half-nervous, half-impatient
laugh. "Why, I thought you'd certainly stay half the afternoon with your
old partner, considering that you haven't met for three years."

There was no doubt she HAD thought so; there was equally no doubt that
the conversation she was carrying on with her companion--a good-looking,
portly business man--was effectually interrupted. But Barker did not
notice it. "Captain Heath, my husband," she went on, carelessly rising
and smoothing her skirts. The captain, who had risen too, bowed vaguely
at the introduction, but Barker extended his hand frankly. "I found
Stacy busy," he said in answer to his wife, "but he is coming to dine
with us to-night."

"If you mean Jim Stacy, the banker," said Captain Heath, brightening
into greater ease, "he's the busiest man in California. I've seen
men standing in a queue outside his door as in the old days at the
post-office. And he only gives you five minutes and no extension. So
you and he were partners once?" he said, looking curiously at the still
youthful Barker.

But it was Mrs. Barker who answered, "Oh yes! and always such good
friends. I was awfully jealous of him." Nevertheless, she did not
respond to the affectionate protest in Barker's eyes nor to the laugh of
Captain Heath, but glanced indifferently around the room as if to
leave further conversation to the two men. It was possible that she was
beginning to feel that Captain Heath was as de trop now as her husband
had been a moment before. Standing there, however, between them both,
idly tracing a pattern on the carpet with the toe of her slipper, she
looked prettier than she had ever looked as Kitty Carter. Her slight
figure was more fully developed. That artificial severity covering
a natural virgin coyness with which she used to wait at table in her
father's hotel at Boomville had gone, and was replaced by a satisfied
consciousness of her power to please. Her glance was freer, but not
as frank as in those days. Her dress was undoubtedly richer and more
stylish; yet Barker's loyal heart often reverted fondly to the chintz
gown, coquettishly frilled apron, and spotless cuffs and collar in which
she had handed him his coffee with a faint color that left his own face
crimson.

Captain Heath's tact being equal to her indifference, he had excused
himself, although he was becoming interested in this youthful husband.
But Mrs. Barker, after having asserted her husband's distinction as
the equal friend of the millionaire, was by no means willing that the
captain should be further interested in Barker for himself alone, and
did not urge him to stay. As he departed she turned to her husband, and,
indicating the group he had passed the moment before, said:--

"That horrid woman has been staring at us all the time. I don't see what
you see in her to admire."

Poor Barker's admiration had been limited to a few words of civility in
the enforced contact of that huge caravansary and in his quiet, youthful
recognition of her striking personality. But he was just then too
preoccupied with his interview with Stacy to reply, and perhaps he did
not quite understand his wife. It was odd how many things he did not
quite understand now about Kitty, but that he knew must be HIS fault.
But Mrs. Barker apparently did not require, after the fashion of her
sex, a reply. For the next moment, as they moved towards their rooms,
she said impatiently, "Well, you don't tell what Stacy said. Did you get
the money?"

I grieve to say that this soul of truth and frankness lied--only to his
wife. Perhaps he considered it only lying to HIMSELF, a thing of which
he was at times miserably conscious. "It wasn't necessary, dear," he
said; "he advised me to sell my securities in the bank; and if you only
knew how dreadfully busy he is."

Mrs. Barker curled her pretty lip. "It doesn't take very long to lend
ten thousand dollars!" she said. "But that's what I always tell you.
You have about made me sick by singing the praises of those wonderful
partners of yours, and here you ask a favor of one of them and he tells
you to sell your securities! And you know, and he knows, they're worth
next to nothing."

"You don't understand, dear"--began Barker.

"I understand that you've given your word to poor Harry," said
Mrs. Barker in pretty indignation, "who's responsible for the Ditch
purchase."

"And I shall keep it. I always do," said Barker very quietly, but with
that same singular expression of face that had puzzled Stacy. But
Mrs. Barker, who, perhaps, knew her husband better, said in an altered
voice:--

"But HOW can you, dear?"

"If I'm short a thousand or two I'll ask your father."

Mrs. Barker was silent. "Father's so very much harried now, George. Why
don't you simply throw the whole thing up?"

"But I've given my word to your cousin Henry."

"Yes, but only your WORD. There was no written agreement. And you
couldn't even hold him to it."

Barker opened his frank eyes in astonishment. Her own cousin, too! And
they were Stacy's very words!

"Besides," added Mrs. Barker audaciously, "he could get rid of it
elsewhere. He had another offer, but he thought yours the best. So don't
be silly."

By this time they had reached their rooms. Barker, apparently dismissing
the subject from his mind with characteristic buoyancy, turned into the
bedroom and walked smilingly towards a small crib which stood in the
corner. "Why, he's gone!" he said in some dismay.

"Well," said Mrs. Barker a little impatiently, "you didn't expect me to
take him into the public parlor, where I was seeing visitors, did you?
I sent him out with the nurse into the lower hall to play with the other
children."

A shade momentarily passed over Barker's face. He always looked forward
to meeting the child when he came back. He had a belief, based on no
grounds whatever, that the little creature understood him. And he had a
father's doubt of the wholesomeness of other people's children who
were born into the world indiscriminately and not under the exceptional
conditions of his own. "I'll go and fetch him," he said.

"You haven't told me anything about your interview; what you did and
what your good friend Stacy said," said Mrs. Barker, dropping languidly
into a chair. "And really if you are simply running away again after
that child, I might just as well have asked Captain Heath to stay
longer."

"Oh, as to Stacy," said Barker, dropping beside her and taking her hand;
"well, dear, he was awfully busy, you know, and shut up in the innermost
office like the agate in one of the Japanese nests of boxes. But," he
continued, brightening up, "just the same dear old Jim Stacy of Heavy
Tree Hill, when I first knew you. Lord! dear, how it all came back to
me! That day I proposed to you in the belief that I was unexpectedly
rich and even bought a claim for the boys on the strength of it, and how
I came back to them to find that they had made a big strike on the very
claim. Lord! I remember how I was so afraid to tell them about you--and
how they guessed it--that dear old Stacy one of the first."

"Yes," said Mrs. Barker, "and I hope your friend Stacy remembered that
but for ME, when you found out that you were not rich, you'd have given
up the claim, but that I really deceived my own father to make you keep
it. I've often worried over that, George," she said pensively, turning
a diamond bracelet around her pretty wrist, "although I never said
anything about it."

"But, Kitty darling," said Barker, grasping his wife's hand, "I gave my
note for it; you know you said that was bargain enough, and I had better
wait until the note was due, and until I found I couldn't pay, before I
gave up the claim. It was very clever of you, and the boys all said so,
too. But you never deceived your father, dear," he said, looking at her
gravely, "for I should have told him everything."

"Of course, if you look at it in that way," said his wife languidly,
"it's nothing; only I think it ought to be remembered when people go
about saying papa ruined you with his hotel schemes."

"Who dares say that?" said Barker indignantly.

"Well, if they don't SAY it they look it," said Mrs. Barker, with a
toss of her pretty head, "and I believe that's at the bottom of Stacy's
refusal."

"But he never said a word, Kitty," said Barker, flushing.

"There, don't excite yourself, George," said Mrs. Barker resignedly,
"but go for the baby. I know you're dying to go, and I suppose it's time
Norah brought it upstairs."

At any other time Barker would have lingered with explanations, but just
then a deeper sense than usual of some misunderstanding made him anxious
to shorten this domestic colloquy. He rose, pressed his wife's hand, and
went out. But yet he was not entirely satisfied with himself for leaving
her. "I suppose it isn't right my going off as soon as I come in," he
murmured reproachfully to himself, "but I think she wants the baby back
as much as I; only, womanlike, she didn't care to let me know it."

He reached the lower hall, which he knew was a favorite promenade for
the nurses who were gathered at the farther end, where a large window
looked upon Montgomery Street. But Norah, the Irish nurse, was not among
them; he passed through several corridors in his search, but in vain.
At last, worried and a little anxious, he turned to regain his rooms
through the long saloon where he had found his wife previously. It
was deserted now; the last caller had left--even frivolity had its
prescribed limits. He was consequently startled by a gentle murmur
from one of the heavily curtained window recesses. It was a woman's
voice--low, sweet, caressing, and filled with an almost pathetic
tenderness. And it was followed by a distinct gurgling satisfied crow.

Barker turned instantly in that direction. A step brought him to the
curtain, where a singular spectacle presented itself.

Seated on a lounge, completely absorbed and possessed by her treasure,
was the "horrid woman" whom his wife had indicated only a little while
ago, holding a baby--Kitty's sacred baby--in her wanton lap! The child
was feebly grasping the end of the slender jeweled necklace which the
woman held temptingly dangling from a thin white jeweled finger above
it. But its eyes were beaming with an intense delight, as if trying to
respond to the deep, concentrated love in the handsome face that was
bent above it.

At the sudden intrusion of Barker she looked up. There was a faint rise
in her color, but no loss of sell-possession.

"Please don't scold the nurse," she said, "nor say anything to Mrs.
Barker. It is all my fault. I thought that both the nurse and child
looked dreadfully bored with each other, and I borrowed the little
fellow for a while to try and amuse him. At least I haven't made
him cry, have I, dear?" The last epithet, it is needless to say,
was addressed to the little creature in her lap, but in its tender
modulation it touched the father's quick sympathies as if he had shared
it with the child. "You see," she said softly, disengaging the baby
fingers from her necklace, "that OUR sex is not the only one tempted by
jewelry and glitter."

Barker hesitated; the Madonna-like devotion of a moment ago was gone;
it was only the woman of the world who laughingly looked up at him.
Nevertheless he was touched. "Have you--ever--had a child, Mrs.
Horncastle?" he asked gently and hesitatingly. He had a vague
recollection that she passed for a widow, and in his simple eyes all
women were virgins or married saints.

"No," she said abruptly. Then she added with a laugh, "Or perhaps
I should not admire them so much. I suppose it's the same feeling
bachelors have for other people's wives. But I know you're dying to
take that boy from me. Take him, then, and don't be ashamed to carry him
yourself just because I'm here; you know you would delight to do it if I
weren't."

Barker bent over the silken lap in which the child was comfortably
nestling, and in that attitude had a faint consciousness that Mrs.
Horncastle was mischievously breathing into his curls a silent laugh.
Barker lifted his firstborn with proud skillfulness, but that sagacious
infant evidently knew when he was comfortable, and in a paroxysm of
objection caught his father's curls with one fist, while with the other
he grasped Mrs. Horncastle's brown braids and brought their heads into
contact. Upon which humorous situation Norah, the nurse, entered.

"It's all right, Norah," said Mrs. Horncastle, laughing, as she
disengaged herself from the linking child. "Mr. Barker has claimed
the baby, and has agreed to forgive you and me and say nothing to Mrs.
Barker." Norah, with the inscrutable criticism of her sex on her sex,
thought it extremely probable, and halted with exasperating discretion.
"There," continued Mrs. Horncastle, playfully evading the child's
further advances, "go with papa, that's a dear. Mr. Barker prefers to
carry him back, Norah."

"But," said the ingenuous and persistent Barker, still lingering
in hopes of recalling the woman's previous expression, "you DO love
children, and you think him a bright little chap for his age?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Horncastle, putting back her loosened braid, "so round
and fat and soft. And such a discriminating eye for jewelry. Really you
ought to get a necklace like mine for Mrs. Barker--it would please both,
you know." She moved slowly away, the united efforts of Norah and Barker
scarcely sufficing to restrain the struggling child from leaping after
her as she turned at the door and blew him a kiss.

When Barker regained his room he found that Mrs. Barker had dismissed
Stacy from her mind except so far as to invoke Norah's aid in laying
out her smartest gown for dinner. "But why take all this trouble, dear?"
said her simple-minded husband; "we are going to dine in a private room
so that we can talk over old times all by ourselves, and any dress would
suit him. And, Lord, dear!" he added, with a quick brightening at the
fancy, "if you could only just rig yourself up in that pretty lilac gown
you used to wear at Boomville--it would be too killing, and just like
old times. I put it away myself in one of our trunks--I couldn't bear
to leave it behind; I know just where it is. I'll"--But Mrs. Barker's
restraining scorn withheld him.

"George Barker, if you think I am going to let you throw away and
utterly WASTE Mr. Stacy on us, alone, in a private room with closed
doors--and I dare say you'd like to sit in your dressing-gown and
slippers--you are entirely mistaken. I know what is due, not to your old
partner, but to the great Mr. Stacy, the financier, and I know what is
due FROM HIM TO US! No! We dine in the great dining-room, publicly, and,
if possible, at the very next table to those stuck-up Peterburys and
their Eastern friends, including that horrid woman, which, I'm sure,
ought to satisfy you. Then you can talk as much as you like, and as
loud as you like, about old times,--and the louder and the more the
better,--but I don't think HE'LL like it."

"But the baby!" expostulated Barker. "Stacy's just wild to see him--and
we can't bring him down to the table--though we MIGHT," he added,
momentarily brightening.

"After dinner," said Mrs. Barker severely, "we will walk through the big
drawing-rooms, and THEN Mr. Stacy may come upstairs and see him in his
crib; but not before. And now, George, I do wish that to-night, FOR
ONCE, you would not wear a turn-down collar, and that you would go to
the barber's and have him cut your hair and smooth out the curls. And,
for Heaven's sake! let him put some wax or gum or SOMETHING on your
mustache and twist it up on your cheek like Captain Heath's, for it
positively droops over your mouth like a girl's ringlet. It's quite
enough for me to hear people talk of your inexperience, but really I
don't want you to look as if I had run away with a pretty schoolboy.
And, considering the size of that child, it's positively disgraceful.
And, one thing more, George. When I'm talking to anybody, please don't
sit opposite to me, beaming with delight, and your mouth open. And don't
roar if by chance I say something funny. And--whatever you do--don't
make eyes at me in company whenever I happen to allude to you, as I did
before Captain Heath. It is positively too ridiculous."

Nothing could exceed the laughing good humor with which her husband
received these cautions, nor the evident sincerity with which he
promised amendment. Equally sincere was he, though a little more
thoughtful, in his severe self-examination of his deficiencies, when,
later, he seated himself at the window with one hand softly encompassing
his child's chubby fist in the crib beside him, and, in the instinctive
fashion of all loneliness, looked out of the window. The southern
trades were whipping the waves of the distant bay and harbor into yeasty
crests. Sheets of rain swept the sidewalks with the regularity of a
fusillade, against which a few pedestrians struggled with flapping
waterproofs and slanting umbrellas. He could look along the deserted
length of Montgomery Street to the heights of Telegraph Hill and its
long-disused semaphore. It seemed lonelier to him than the mile-long
sweep of Heavy Tree Hill, writhing against the mountain wind and
its aeolian song. He had never felt so lonely THERE. In his rigid
self-examination he thought Kitty right in protesting against the
effect of his youthfulness and optimism. Yet he was also right in being
himself. There is an egoism in the highest simplicity; and Barker, while
willing to believe in others' methods, never abandoned his own aims.
He was right in loving Kitty as he did; he knew that she was better and
more lovable than she could believe herself to be; but he was willing to
believe it pained and discomposed her if he showed it before company.
He would not have her change even this peculiarity--it was part of
herself--no more than he would have changed himself. And behind what he
had conceived was her clear, practical common sense, all this time had
been her belief that she had deceived her father! Poor dear, dear Kitty!
And she had suffered because stupid people had conceived that her father
had led him away in selfish speculations. As if he--Barker--would
not have first discovered it, and as if anybody--even dear Kitty
herself--was responsible for HIS convictions and actions but himself.
Nevertheless, this gentle egotist was unusually serious, and when the
child awoke at last, and with a fretful start and vacant eyes pushed his
caressing hand away, he felt lonelier than before. It was with a slight
sense of humiliation, too, that he saw it stretch its hands to the mere
hireling, Norah, who had never given it the love that he had seen even
in the frivolous Mrs. Horncastle's eyes. Later, when his wife came in,
looking very pretty in her elaborate dinner toilette, he had the same
conflicting emotions. He knew that they had already passed that phase
of their married life when she no longer dressed to please him, and
that the dictates of fashion or the rivalry of another woman she held
superior to his tastes; yet he did not blame her. But he was a little
surprised to see that her dress was copied from one of Mrs. Horncastle's
most striking ones, and that it did not suit her. That which adorned
the maturer woman did not agree with the demure and slightly austere
prettiness of the young wife.

But Barker forgot all this when Stacy--reserved and somewhat
severe-looking in evening dress--arrived with business punctuality. He
fancied that his old partner received the announcement that they would
dine in the public room with something of surprise, and he saw him
glance keenly at Kitty in her fine array, as if he had suspected it was
her choice, and understood her motives. Indeed, the young husband had
found himself somewhat nervous in regard to Stacy's estimate of Kitty;
he was conscious that she was not looking and acting like the old Kitty
that Stacy had known; it did not enter his honest heart that Stacy had,
perhaps, not appreciated her then, and that her present quality might
accord more with his worldly tastes and experience. It was, therefore,
with a kind of timid delight that he saw Stacy apparently enter into her
mood, and with a still more timorous amusement to notice that he
seemed to sympathize not only with her, but with her half-rallying,
half-serious attitude towards his (Barker's) inexperience and
simplicity. He was glad that she had made a friend of Stacy, even in
this way. Stacy would understand, as he did, her pretty willfulness at
last; she would understand what a true friend Stacy was to him. It was
with unfeigned satisfaction that he followed them in to dinner as she
leaned upon his guest's arm, chatting confidentially. He was only uneasy
because her manner had a slight ostentation.

The entrance of the little party produced a quick sensation throughout
the dining-room. Whispers passed from table to table; all heads were
turned towards the great financier as towards a magnet; a few guests
even shamelessly faced round in their chairs as he passed. Mrs. Barker
was pink, pretty, and voluble with excitement; Stacy had a slight mask
of reserve; Barker was the only one natural and unconscious.

As the dinner progressed Barker found that there was little chance for
him to invoke his old partner's memories of the past. He found, however,
that Stacy had received a letter from Demorest, and that he was coming
home from Europe. His letters were still sad; they both agreed upon
that. And then for the first time that day Stacy looked intently at
Barker with the look that he had often worn on Heavy Tree Hill.

"Then you think it is the same old trouble that worries him?" said
Barker in an awed and sympathetic voice.

"I believe it is," said Stacy, with an equal feeling. Mrs. Barker
pricked up her pretty ears; her husband's ready sympathy was familiar
enough; but that this cold, practical Stacy should be moved at anything
piqued her curiosity.

"And you believe that he has never got over it?" continued Barker.

"He had one chance, but he threw it away," said Stacy energetically.
"If, instead of going off to Europe by himself to brood over it, he had
joined me in business, he'd have been another man."

"But not Demorest," said Barker quickly.

"What dreadful secret is this about Demorest?" said Mrs. Barker
petulantly. "Is he ill?"

Both men were silent by their old common instinct. But it was Stacy
who said "No" in a way that put any further questioning at an end, and
Barker was grateful and for the moment disloyal to his Kitty.

It was with delight that Mrs. Barker had seen that the attention of
the next table was directed to them, and that even Mrs. Horncastle had
glanced from time to time at Stacy. But she was not prepared for the
evident equal effect that Mrs. Horncastle had created upon Stacy. His
cold face warmed, his critical eye softened; he asked her name. Mrs.
Barker was voluble, prejudiced, and, it seemed, misinformed.

"I know it all," said Stacy, with didactic emphasis. "Her husband was as
bad as they make them. When her life had become intolerable WITH HIM, he
tried to make it shameful WITHOUT HIM by abandoning her. She could get a
divorce a dozen times over, but she won't."

"I suppose that's what makes her so very attractive to gentlemen," said
Mrs. Barker ironically.

"I have never seen her before," continued Stacy, with business
precision, "although I and two other men are guardians of her property,
and have saved it from the clutches of her husband. They told me she was
handsome--and so she is."

Pleased with the sudden human weakness of Stacy, Barker glanced at his
wife for sympathy. But she was looking studiously another way, and the
young husband's eyes, still full of his gratification, fell upon
Mrs. Horncastle's. She looked away with a bright color. Whereupon
the sanguine Barker--perfectly convinced that she returned Stacy's
admiration--was seized with one of his old boyish dreams of the future,
and saw Stacy happily united to her, and was only recalled to the dinner
before him by its end. Then Stacy duly promenaded the great saloon with
Mrs. Barker on his arm, visited the baby in her apartments, and took an
easy leave. But he grasped Barker's hand before parting in quite his old
fashion, and said, "Come to lunch with me at the bank any day, and we'll
talk of Phil Demorest," and left Barker as happy as if the appointment
were to confer the favor he had that morning refused. But Mrs. Barker,
who had overheard, was more dubious.

"You don't suppose he asks you to talk with you about Demorest and his
stupid secret, do you?" she said scornfully.

"Perhaps not only about that," said Barker, glad that she had not
demanded the secret.

"Well," returned Mrs. Barker as she turned away, "he might just as well
lunch here and talk about HER--and see her, too."

Meantime Stacy had dropped into his club, only a few squares distant.
His appearance created the same interest that it had produced at the
hotel, but with less reserve among his fellow members.

"Have you heard the news?" said a dozen voices. Stacy had not; he had
been dining out.

"That infernal swindle of a Divide Railroad has passed the legislature."

Stacy instantly remembered Barker's absurd belief in it and his reasons.
He smiled and said carelessly, "Are you quite sure it's a swindle?"

There was a dead silence at the coolness of the man who had been most
outspoken against it.

"But," said a voice hesitatingly, "you know it goes nowhere and to no
purpose."

"But that does not prevent it, now that it's a fact, from going anywhere
and to some purpose," said Stacy, turning away. He passed into the
reading-room quietly, but in an instant turned and quickly descended
by another staircase into the hall, hurriedly put on his overcoat, and
slipping out was a moment later re-entering the hotel. Here he hastily
summoned Barker, who came down, flushed and excited. Laying his hand on
Barker's arm in his old dominant way, he said:--

"Don't delay a single hour, but get a written agreement for that Ditch
property."

Barker smiled. "But I have. Got it this afternoon."

"Then you know?" ejaculated Stacy in surprise.

"I only know," said Barker, coloring, "that you said I could back out of
it if it wasn't signed, and that's what Kitty said, too. And I thought
it looked awfully mean for me to hold a man to that kind of a bargain.
And so--you won't be mad, old fellow, will you?--I thought I'd put
it beyond any question of my own good faith by having it in black
and white." He stopped, laughing and blushing, but still earnest and
sincere. "You don't think me a fool, do you?" he said pathetically.

Stacy smiled grimly. "I think, Barker boy, that if you go to the Branch
you'll have no difficulty in paying for the Ditch property. Good-night."

In a few moments he was back at the club again before any one knew he
had even left the building. As he again re-entered the smoking-room he
found the members still in eager discussion about the new railroad. One
was saying, "If they could get an extension, and carry the road through
Heavy Tree Hill to Boomville they'd be all right."

"I quite agree with you," said Stacy.




CHAPTER III.


The swaying, creaking, Boomville coach had at last reached the level
ridge, and sank forward upon its springs with a sigh of relief and the
slow precipitation of the red dust which had hung in clouds around
it. The whole coach, inside and out, was covered with this impalpable
powder; it had poured into the windows that gaped widely in the
insufferable heat; it lay thick upon the novel read by the passenger who
had for the third or fourth time during the ascent made a gutter of
the half-opened book and blown the dust away in a single puff, like the
smoke from a pistol. It lay in folds and creases over the yellow silk
duster of the handsome woman on the back seat, and when she endeavored
to shake it off enveloped her in a reddish nimbus. It grimed the
handkerchiefs of others, and left sanguinary streaks on their mopped
foreheads. But as the coach had slowly climbed the summit the sun
was also sinking behind the Black Spur Range, and with its ultimate
disappearance a delicious coolness spread itself like a wave across the
ridge. The passengers drew a long breath, the reader closed his book,
the lady lifted the edge of her veil and delicately wiped her
forehead, over which a few damp tendrils of hair were clinging. Even a
distinguished-looking man who had sat as impenetrable and remote as a
statue in one of the front seats moved and turned his abstracted face to
the window. His deeply tanned cheek and clearly cut features harmonized
with the red dust that lay in the curves of his brown linen dust-cloak,
and completed his resemblance to a bronze figure. Yet it was Demorest,
changed only in coloring. Now, as five years ago, his abstraction had a
certain quality which the most familiar stranger shrank from disturbing.
But in the general relaxation of relief the novel-reader addressed him.

"Well, we ain't far from Boomville now, and it's all down-grade the rest
of the way. I reckon you'll be as glad to get a 'wash up' and a 'shake'
as the rest of us."

"I am afraid I won't have so early an opportunity," said Demorest, with
a faint, grave smile, "for I get off at the cross-road to Heavy Tree
Hill."

"Heavy Tree Hill!" repeated the other in surprise. "You ain't goin' to
Heavy Tree Hill? Why, you might have gone there direct by railroad,
and have been there four hours ago. You know there's a branch from the
Divide Railroad goes there straight to the hotel at Hymettus."

"Where?" said Demorest, with a puzzled smile.

"Hymettus. That's the fancy name they've given to the watering-place on
the slope. But I reckon you're a stranger here?"

"For five years," said Demorest. "I fancy I've heard of the railroad,
although I prefer to go to Heavy Tree this way. But I never heard of a
watering-place there before."

"Why, it's the biggest boom of the year. Folks that are tired of the
fogs of 'Frisco and the heat of Sacramento all go there. It's four
thousand feet up, with a hotel like Saratoga, dancing, and a band plays
every night. And it all sprang out of the Divide Railroad and a crank
named George Barker, who bought up some old Ditch property and ran a
branch line along its levels, and made a junction with the Divide. You
can come all the way from 'Frisco or Sacramento by rail. It's a mighty
big thing!"

"Yet," said Demorest, with some animation, "you call the man who
originated this success a crank. I should say he was a genius."

The other passenger shook his head. "All sheer nigger luck. He bought
the Ditch plant afore there was a ghost of a chance for the Divide
Railroad, just out o' pure d----d foolishness. He expected so little
from it that he hadn't even got the agreement done in writin', and
hadn't paid for it, when the Div