A Damaged Reputation

Brooke laughed. "It's scarcely likely we will go quite as far as that, though I certainly remember two men in the Quatomac Valley who flung everything in the range at each other periodically. One was inordinately fond of green stuff, and his partner usually started the circus by telling him to take his clothes off, and go out like Nebuchadnezzar. They refitted with wood-pulp ware when the proceedings became expensive."

Just then there was a knock upon the door, which swung open, and a cluster of shadowy figures, with their breath floating like steam about them, appeared outside it. One of them flung a deerhide bag into the room.

"We figured we needn't trail quite so much grub along, and I guess you'll want it," a voice said. "Neither of you changed your minds 'bout lighting out of this?"

"I don't like to take it from you, boys," said Brooke, who recognized the rough kindliness which had prompted the men to strip themselves of the greater portion of their provisions. "You can't have more than enough for one day's march left."

"I guess a man never hits the trail so hard as when he knows he has to," somebody said. "It will keep us on the rustle till we fetch Truscott's. Well, you're not coming?"

For just a moment Brooke felt his resolution wavering, and, under different circumstances, he might have taken Allonby by force, and gone with them, but by a somewhat involved train of reasoning he felt that it was incumbent upon him to stay on at the mine because Barbara Heathcote had once trusted him. It had been tolerably evident from her attitude when he had last seen her, that she had very little confidence in him now, but that did not seem to affect the question, and most men are a trifle illogical at times.

"No," he said, with somewhat forced indifference. "Still, I don't mind admitting that I wish we were."

The man laughed. "Then I guess we'll pull out. We'll think of you two now and then when we're lying round beside the stove in Vancouver."

Brooke said nothing further. There was a tramp of feet, and the shadowy figures melted into the dimness beneath the pines. Then the last footfall died away, and the silence of the mountains suddenly seemed to grow overwhelming. Brooke turned to Allonby, who smiled.

"You will," he said, "feel it considerably worse before the next three months are over, and probably be willing to admit that there is some excuse for my shortcomings in one direction. I have, I may mention, put in a good many winters here."

Brooke swung round abruptly. "I'm going to work in the mine. It's fortunate that one man can just manage that new boring machine."

He left Allonby in the shanty, and toiled throughout that day, and several dreary weeks, during most of which the pines roared beneath the icy gales and blinding snow swirled down the valley. What he did was of very slight effect, but it kept him from thinking, which, he felt, was a necessity, and he only desisted at length from physical incapacity for further labor. The snow, it was evident, had choked the passes, so that no laden beast could make the hazardous journey over them, for the anxiously-expected freighter did not arrive, and there was an increasing scarcity of provisions as the days dragged by; while Brooke discovered that a handful of mouldy floor and a few inches of rancid pork daily is not sufficient to keep a man's full strength in him. Then, when an Arctic frost followed the snow, Allonby fell sick, and one bitter evening, when an icy wind came wailing down the valley, it dawned upon his comrade that his condition was becoming precarious. Saying nothing, he busied himself about the stove, and smiled reassuringly when Allonby turned to him.

"Are we to hold a festival to-night, since you seem to be cooking what should keep us for a week?" said the latter.

"I almost fancy it would keep one of us for several days, which, since you do not seem especially capable of getting anything ready for yourself, is what it is intended to do," said Brooke. "I shall probably be that time in making the settlement and getting back again."

"What are you going there for?"

"To bring out the doctor."

Allonby raised his head and looked at him curiously. "Are you sure that, with six or eight feet of snow on the divide, you could ever get there?"

"Well," said Brooke, cheerfully, "I believe I could, and, if I don't, you will be very little worse off than you were before. You see, the provisions will not last two of us more than a few days longer, and you can take it that I will do all I can to get through the snow. Since you are not the only man who is anxious to find the silver, your health is a matter of importance to everybody just now."

Allonby smiled curiously. "We will consider that the reason, and it is a tolerably good one, or I would not let you go. Still, I fancy you have another, and it is appreciated. There is, however, something more to be said. You will find my working plans in the case yonder should anything unexpected happen before you come back. Life, you know, is always a trifle uncertain."

"That," said Brooke, decisively, "is morbid nonsense. You will be down the mine again in a week after the doctor comes."

"Well," said Allonby, with a curious quietness, "I should, at least, very much like to find the silver."

Brooke changed the subject somewhat abruptly, and it was an hour later when he shook hands with his comrade and went out into the bitter night with two blankets strapped upon his shoulders. Their parting was not demonstrative, though they realized that the grim spectre with the scythe would stalk close behind each of them until they met again, and Brooke, turning on the threshold, saw Allonby following him with comprehending eyes. Then he suddenly pulled the door to, shutting out the lamplight and the alluring red glow of the stove, and swung forward, knee-deep in dusty snow, into the gloom of the pines. The silence of the great white land was overwhelming, and the frost struck through him.

It was late on the third night when he floundered into a little sleeping settlement, and leaned gasping against the door of the doctor's house before he endeavored to rouse its occupant. The latter stared at him almost aghast when he opened it, lamp in hand, and Brooke reeled, grey in the face with weariness and sheeted white with frozen snow, into the light.

"Steady!" he said, slipping his arm through Brooke's. "Come in here. Now, keep back from the stove. I'll get you something that will fix you up in a minute. You came in from the Dayspring – over the divide? I heard the freighter telling the boys it couldn't be done."

Brooke laughed harshly. "Well," he said, "you see me here, and, if that's not sufficient, you're going to prove the range can be crossed yourself to-morrow."

The doctor was new to that country, and he was very young, or he would, in all probability, not been there at all, but when he heard Brooke's story he nodded tranquilly. "I'm afraid I haven't done any mountaineering, but I had the long-distance snowshoe craze rather bad back in Montreal," he said. "You're not going to give me very much of a lead over the passes, anyway, unless you sleep the next twelve hours."

Brooke, as it happened, slept for six and then set out with the young doctor in blinding snow. He had forty to fifty pounds upon his back now, and once they left the sheltering timber it cost them four strenuous hours to make a thousand feet. Part of that night they lay awake, shivering in the pungent fir smoke in a hollow of the rocks, and started again, aching in every limb, long before the lingering dawn, while the next day passed like a very unpleasant dream with the young doctor. The snow had ceased, and lay without cohesion, dusty and dry as flour, waist-deep where the bitter winds had whirled it in wreaths, while the glare of the white peaks became intolerable under the cloudless sun.

For hours they crawled through juniper scrub or stunted wisps of pines, where the trunks the winds had reaped lay piled upon each other in tangled confusion, with the sifting snow blown in to conceal the pitfalls between. By afternoon the doctor was flagging visibly, and white peaks and climbing timber reeled formlessly before his dazzled eyes as he struggled onward the rest of that day. Then, when the pitiless blue above them grew deeper in tint until the stars shone in depths of indigo, and the ranges fading from silver put on dim shades of blueness that enhanced their spotless purity, they stopped again, and made shift to boil the battered kettle in a gully, down which there moaned a little breeze that seared every patch of unprotected skin. The doctor collapsed behind a boulder, and lay there limply while Brooke fed the fire.

"I'm 'most afraid you'll have to fix supper yourself to-night," he said. "Just now I don't quite know how I'm going to start to-morrow, though it will naturally have to be done."

Brooke glanced round at the grim ramparts of ice and snow that cut sharp against the indigo. Night as it was, there was no softness in that scheme of color lighted by the frosty scintillations of the stars, and a shiver ran through his stiffened limbs.

"Yes," he said. "Nobody not hardened to it could expect to stand more than another day in the open up here."

He got the meal ready, but very little was said during it, and for a few hours afterwards the doctor lay coughing in the smoke of the fire, while his gum-boots softened and grew hard again as he drew his feet, which pained him intolerably between whiles, a trifle further from the crackling brands. He staggered when at last Brooke, finding that shaking was unavailing, dragged him upright.

"Breakfast's almost ready, and we have got to make the mine by to-night," he said.

The doctor could never remember how they accomplished it, but his lips were split and crusted with coagulated blood, while there seemed to be no heat left in him, when Brooke stopped on a ridge of the hillside as dusk was closing in.

"The mine is close below us. In fact, we should have seen it from where we are," he said.

Worn out as he was, the doctor noticed the grimness of his tone. "The nearer the better," he said. "I don't quite know how I got here, but you scarcely seem at ease."

"I was wondering why Allonby, who does not like the dark, has not lighted up yet," Brooke said, drily. "We will probably find out in a few more minutes."

Then he went reeling down the descending trail, and did not stop again until he stood amidst the piles of débris and pine stumps, with the shanty looming dimly in front of him across the little clearing. It seemed very dark and still, and the doctor, who came up gasping, stopped abruptly when his comrade's shout died away. The silence that closed in again seemed curiously eerie.

"He must have heard you at that distance," he said.

"Yes," said Brooke, a trifle hoarsely. "If he didn't, there's only one thing that could have accounted for it."

Then they went on again slowly, until Brooke flung the door of the shanty open. There was no fire in the stove, and the place was very cold, while the darkness seemed oppressive.

"Strike a match – as soon as you can get it done," said the doctor.

Brooke broke several as he tore them off the block with half-frozen fingers, for the Canadian sulphur matches are not usually put up in boxes, and then a pale blue luminescence crept across the room when he held one aloft. It sputtered out, leaving a pungent odor, and thick darkness closed in again; but for a moment Brooke felt a curious relief.

"He's not here," he said.

The doctor understood the satisfaction in his voice, for his eyes had also turned straight towards the rough wooden bunk, and he had not expected to find it empty.

"The man must have been fit to walk. Where has he gone?" he said.

Brooke fancied he knew, and, groping round the room, found and lighted a lantern. Its radiance showed that his face was grim again.

"If you can manage to drag yourself as far as the mine, I think it would be advisable," he said. "It seems to me significant that the stove is quite cold. One would fancy there had been no fire in it for several hours now."

The doctor went with him, and somehow contrived to descend the shaft. Brooke leaned out from the ladder, swinging his lantern when they neared the bottom, and his shout rang hollowly among the rocks. There was no answer, and even the doctor, who had never seen Allonby, felt the silence that followed it.

"If the man was as ill as you fancied how could he have got down?" he said.

"I don't know," said Brooke. "Still, I think we shall come upon him not very far away."

They went down a little further into the darkness, and then the prediction was warranted, for Brooke swung off his hat, and the doctor dropped on one knee when Allonby's white face appeared in the moving light. He lay very still, with one arm under him, and, when a few seconds had slipped by, the doctor looked up and, meeting Brooke's eyes, nodded.

"Yes," he said. "It must have happened at least twelve hours ago. How, I can't tell exactly. Cardiac affection, I fancy. Anyway, not a fall. There is something in his hand, and a bundle of papers beside him."

Brooke glanced away from the dead man, and noticed the stain of giant powder on the rock, and shattered fragments that had not been where they lay when he had last descended. Then he turned again, and took the piece of stone the doctor had, with some difficulty, dislodged from the cold fingers.

"It's heavy," said the latter.

"Yes," said Brooke, quietly. "A considerable percentage of it is either lead or silver. You are no doubt right in your diagnosis; so far as it goes, I'm inclined to fancy I know what brought on the cardiac affection."

The doctor, who said nothing, handed him the papers, and Brooke, who opened them vacantly, started a little when he saw the jagged line, which, in drawings of the kind, usually indicates a break, was now traced across the ore vein in the plan. There was also a scrap of paper, with his name scrawled across it, and he read, "When you have got your dollars back four or five times over, sell out your stock."

He scarcely realized its significance just then, and, moving the lantern a little, looked down on Allonby's face again. It was very white and quiet, and the signs of indulgence had faded from it, while Brooke was sensible of a curious thrill of compassion.

"I wonder if the thing we long for most invariably comes when it is no use to us?" he said. "Well, we will go back to the shanty."

There was nothing more that any man could do for Allonby until the morrow, and the darkness once more closed in on him, while the flickering light grew fainter up the shaft.

XXV.

BARBARA IS MERCILESS

It was about eight o'clock in the evening when Brooke stopped a moment as he entered the verandah of Devine's house, which stood girt about by sombre pines on a low rise divided by a waste of blackened stumps and branches from the outskirts of Vancouver city. Beneath him rose the clustering roofs and big electric lights, and a little lower still a broad track of silver radiance, athwart which a great ship rode with every spar silhouetted black as ebony, streaked the inlet. Though the frost was arctic in the ranges he had left a few days ago, it was almost warm down there, and he felt that he would have preferred to linger on the verandah, or even go back to his hotel, for the front of the wooden house was brilliantly lighted, and he could hear the chords of a piano.

It was evident that Mrs. Devine was entertaining, and standing there, draped from neck to ankles in an old fur coat, he felt that he with his frost-nipped face and hard, scarred hands would be distinctly out of place amidst an assembly of prosperous citizens, while he was by no means certain how Mrs. Devine or Barbara would receive him. Often as he had thought of the latter, since he made his confession, he felt scarcely equal to meeting her just then. Still, it was necessary that he should see Devine, who was away at the neighboring city of New Westminster, when Brooke called at his office soon after the Pacific express arrived that afternoon, but had left word that he would be at home in the evening and would expect him; and flinging his cigar away he moved towards the door.

A Chinese house boy took his coat from him in the hall, and as he stood under the big lamp it happened that Barbara came out of an adjacent door with two companions. Brooke felt his heart throb, though he did not move, and the girl, who turned her head a moment in his direction, crossed the hall, and vanished through another door. Then he smiled very grimly, for, though she made no sign of being aware of his presence, he felt that she had seen him. This was no more than he had expected, but it hurt nevertheless. In the meanwhile the house boy had also vanished, and it was a minute or two later when Mrs. Devine appeared, but Brooke could not then or afterwards decide whether she had heard the truth concerning him, for, though this seemed very probable, he knew that Barbara could be reticent, and surmised that Devine did not tell his wife everything. In any case, she did not shake hands with him.

"My husband, who has just come home, is waiting for you in his smoking-room," she said. "It is the second door down the corridor."

Brooke fancied that she could have been a trifle more cordial, but the fact that she sent nobody to show him the way, at least, was readily accounted for in a country where servants of any kind are remarkably scarce. It also happened that while he proceeded along the corridor one of Barbara's companions turned to her.

"Did you see the man in the hall as we passed through?" she said. "I didn't seem to recognize him."

Barbara was not aware that her face hardened a trifle, but her companion noticed that it did. She had certainly seen the man, and had felt his eyes upon her, while it also occurred to her that he looked worn and haggard, and she had almost been stirred to compassion. He had made no claim to recognition, but his face had not been quite expressionless, and she had seen the wistfulness in it. There was, in fact, a certain forlornness about his attitude which had its effect on her, and it was, perhaps, because of this she had suddenly hardened herself against him.

"He is a Mr. Brooke – from the mine," she said.

"Brooke!" said her companion. "The man from the Dayspring? I should like to talk to him."

Barbara made a little gesture, the meaning of which was not especially plain. She had read the sensational account of the journey Brooke and the doctor had made through the ranges, which had by some means been supplied the press. It made it plain to her that the man was doing and enduring a good deal, and she was not disposed to be unduly severe upon a repentant offender, even though she fancied that nothing he could do would ever reinstate him in the place he once held in her estimation. The difficulty, however, was that she could not be sure he was contrite at all, or had not sent that story to the press himself with a purpose, though she realized that the last course was a trifle unlikely in his case.

"Since Grant Devine will probably bring him in you may get your wish," she said, indifferently.

Devine in the meanwhile was gravely turning over several pieces of broken rock which Brooke had handed him.

"Yes," he said, "that's most certainly galena, and carrying good metal by the weight of it. How much of it's lead and how much silver I naturally don't know yet, but, anyway, it ought to leave a good margin on the smelting. You haven't proved the vein?"

"No," said Brooke, "I fancy we are only on the edge of it, but it would have cost me two or three weeks' work to break out enough of rock to form any very clear opinion alone, and I was scarcely up to it. It occurred to me that I had better come down and get the necessary men, though I'm not sure we can contrive to feed them or induce them to come."

Devine nodded. "You must have had the toughest kind of time!" he said. "Well, we'll bid double wages, and you can offer that freight contractor his own figure to bring provisions in."

He stopped abruptly with a glance at Brooke's haggard face. "I guess you can hold out another month or two."

"Of course," said Brooke, quietly.

"It's worth while. Allonby was quite dead when you got back to him?"

"Yes, I and the doctor buried him. We used giant powder."

Devine laid down his cigar. "It was a little rough on Allonby, for it was his notion that the ore was there, and now, when it seems we've struck it, it's not going to be any use to him. I guess that man put a good deal more than dollars into the mine."

Brooke, who had lived with Allonby, knew that this was true, but Devine made a little abrupt gesture which seemed to imply that after all that aspect of the question did not greatly concern them.

"I'll send you every man we can raise," he said. "I've got quite a big credit through from London, and we can cut expenses by letting up a little on the Canopus."

"But you expected a good deal from that mine."

"No," said Devine, drily, "I can't say I did. It's quite a while since we got a good clean up out of it."

Brooke sat silent, apparently regarding his cigar, for a moment or two. "Are you sure it's wise to tell me so much?" he said. "There are men in this city who would make good use of any information I might furnish them with."

Devine smiled in a curious fashion. "Well," he said, reflectively, "I guess it is. You've had about enough of playing Saxton's game, and, though I don't know that everybody would do it, I'm going to trust you."

"Thank you," said Brooke, quietly.

Devine, who took up his cigar again, made a little movement with his hand. "We'll let that slide. Now when I got the specimen and your note which the doctor sent on I figured I'd increase my holding, and cabled a buying order to London, but I had to pay more for the stock than I expected. It appears that a man, called Cruttenden, had been quietly taking any that was put on the market up."

Brooke knew that his trustee had, as directed, been buying the Dayspring shares, but he desired to ascertain how far Devine's confidence in him went.

"That didn't suggest anything to you?" he said.

"No," said Devine, drily, "it didn't – and I've answered your question once. Besides, the man who snapped up every thing that was offered hadn't waited until you struck the ore. Still, I'd very much like to know what he was buying that stock for."

Brooke did not tell him. Indeed, he was not exactly sure what had induced him to cable Cruttenden to buy. He had acted on impulse with Barbara's scornful words ringing in his ears, and a vague feeling that to share the risks of the man he had plotted against would be some small solace to him, for he had not at the time the slightest notion that the hasty act of self-imposed penance was to prove remarkably profitable.

"I scarcely think it is worth while worrying over that point," he said. "There are folks in our country with more money than sense, or a good many foreign mines would never be floated, and it is just as likely that the man did not exactly know why he was doing it himself."

Devine laughed. "Well," he said, "we'll go along now and see what the rest are doing."

Brooke would considerably sooner have gone back to his hotel, but Devine persisted, and he was one who usually carried out his purpose. Brooke was accordingly presented to a good many people whom he had never seen before, and did not find remarkably entertaining, though he fancied that most of them appeared a trifle interested when they heard his name. The reason for this did not, however, become apparent until he stopped close by a girl who looked up at him. She was young, but evidently by no means diffident.

"You are Brooke of the Dayspring, are you not?" she said, making room for him beside her.

"I certainly come from that mine," said Brooke, and the girl turned to one of her companions.

"You wouldn't believe he was the man," she said.

Brooke was not altogether unaccustomed to the directness of the West, but he felt a trifle embarrassed when two pairs of eyes were fixed upon him in what seemed to be an appreciative scrutiny.

"One would almost fancy that you had heard of me," he said.

The girl laughed. "Well," she said, "most of the folks in this province who read newspapers have. There was a column about you and your sick partner and the doctor. You carried him across the range when he was too played out to walk, didn't you?"