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For a moment this alarm shuddered through her body. Then she steadied herself. Her mind suddenly became very clear and decided. She suddenly saw her course clear before her, and her voice broke the tense silence round the crackling fire. She read the message for the fourth time. Read it aloud slowly.
As she proceeded the impassive face of the Indian remained unchanged. He was listening – listening acutely, but so still, so indifferent was his attitude that the chafing Tug scarcely realized his presence.
Audie's voice ceased, and for a moment no one spoke. Thin with a muttered imprecation Tug held out his hand.
"Give me the – paper," he cried roughly.
Audie did not appear to hear him.
"Pass it over!" he demanded, still more roughly.
The woman looked up at him. Then she held the paper out, as though to pass it across to his outstretched hand. The next moment it dropped from her fingers and fluttered into the heart of the fire.
With a wild ejaculation Tug sprang to rescue it, but even as he rose to his feet he stood transfixed. The muzzle of a revolver was covering him, and behind the muzzle was the copper-hued visage of the forgotten Si-wash.
"Let 'em burn," he said, in his low guttural tones. "Him writing heap bad med'cine."
The paper curled up and burst into flame. Tug, furious but helpless, watched the hungry flames devour it. Then, as it crumbled away into the red heart of the fire, Si-wash returned to his seat. But his revolver remained upon his knee, and his thin, tenacious fingers gripped the butt of it firmly.
"Si-wash is right," said Audie coldly. She had not risen from her seat. "Leo was foolish to write that. Still, I am glad – now – that he did. It has told me what to do. You see, he said nothing when he went from here, and I thought I should never see him again. Now I know that I shall. Now I know that he is well and safe – yes, safe, since that paper is destroyed. Well" – she looked her visitor squarely in the eyes – "what are you going to do? You are welcome to avail yourself of our transport, as Leo suggests – under conditions."
Tug's fury held him silent. His busy brain was searching for a means to escape from the dictation of this woman, for a means by which to assume domination of the position for himself. As yet he could see none.
So Audie went on with the tacit approval of her faithful comrade.
"You can travel with us, but you will carry no firearms. You see, I don't anticipate that your feelings are particularly kindly toward us. Anyway we'll take no chances. You can go home to your camp now. To-morrow morning, if the weather holds, you can join us. We'll meet you in the open, somewhere near your camp. Mind, in the open, and you'll come to us with your hands up. We shall then search you for weapons. After that, if things are satisfactory, we'll take your outfit on our sled, and you can travel with us. Remember, Leo's welfare is my one care. Well?"
Tug rose. In a moment the Indian's gun was covering him.
"Look 'im over for gun – now," Si-wash said, addressing Audie in his brief guttural fashion.
Audie nodded.
"You'd best put up your hands, Tug," she said, with a smile, as she rose from her seat. "Si-wash is a dead shot."
Tug obeyed. His hands went slowly up, and Audie passed round the fire, and undid his fur coat. As she did so her eyes sparkled.
"You've got them both on," she said, unstrapping the ammunition belt supporting two revolvers about his waist, "That'll simplify matters. You see, I know them. One is Charlie's, and the other yours. They are the only guns you possess. Good. Now you best go."
But the compelling gun of the Indian could no longer keep Tug silent, and his pent anger broke out in harsh abuse.
"You – !" he shouted. "You think I can't get back on you, but I can. I will. I'll get your man, Leo, if I wait years. I'll break him – I'll break the life out of him. I'll – "
"Maybe." There was a hard glitter in Audie's eyes as she interrupted him. "One thing, you've got no evidence against him. Charlie is dead, and – that paper is burnt. It is your word against his. When you meet it will be man to man, and I don't guess there's a doubt who's the best man. You best go home now."
Tug made no attempt to obey. He was about to speak again – to hurl some filthy epithet at the woman, who had outwitted him for her love's sake, but the Indian gave him no chance. In a second the threatening gun was raised again.
"Go 'm quick! Dam quick!" Si-wash cried savagely.
Tug's eyes caught the threatening ring of metal. For a moment he hesitated. Then he turned and strode off.
The steady eyes of the Indian watched him until the woods had swallowed him up. Then he turned, and followed silently in his wake, while Audie remained to dream fresh and more pleasant dreams before the fire.
Half an hour later she looked up as her comrade and champion returned.
"Gone?" she asked, with upraised brows.
"Sho'! Him go." Si-wash crouched down over the fire and spread his hands out to the warmth. Presently he looked up with eyes twinkling with subtle amusement.
"Him big feller, Leo. Good. Him much gold – now. So. Tug him no good. When him find Leo, Leo kill him. Leo big feller."
As he finished speaking a curious sound came from somewhere deep in his throat. And though his impassive face remained unmoved, though not a ghost of a smile was apparent, Audie knew that the man was chuckling with suppressed glee. She, too, felt like laughing, and it was the first time she had so felt since the hideous nightmare of the storm, and its accompanying disaster.
CHAPTER IX
IN SAN SABATANO
San Sabatano was not a big city, but it was a very busy one. At least its citizens thought so, and their four-sheeted two-cent local news-sheet fostered their belief. No doubt a New Yorker would have spoken of San Sabatano as a "Rube" town, an expression which implied extreme provincialism in the smallest possible way. It also implied that its citizens had never turned their eyes upon those things which lay beyond the town-limits, within which they had been "raised." In short, that they knew nothing of the life of the great world about them, except what their paper told them in one single column. Naturally enough one column of the worlds news against twenty or more columns of local interest gave readers a false perspective, especially when every citizen of any local standing usually found a paragraph devoted to his own social or municipal doings.
But then the editor was a shrewd journalist of very wide experience. No, he had not been "raised" in San Sabatano. He had served his apprenticeship on the live journals of the East. He understood men, and the times in which he lived. More than all, he understood making money, and the factor which his women readers were in that process. So the world's news was packed into obscure corners, and San Sabatano was the hub around which his imagination revolved.
So it came about that this individual had for months darkly hinted that the San Sabatano Daily Citizen had something up its editorial sleeve with which it intended to stagger humanity, and startle its readers into a belief that an echo of the San Francisco earthquake, or something of that nature, had reached them. He told them that the mighty combination of brain that controlled the Daily Citizen and guided San Sabatano public opinion had given birth to an epoch-making thought; a thought which, before long, when the rest of a sluggish world read of it, would lift San Sabatano as a center of enterprise, of learning, of culture, to the highest pinnacle of fame known to the world.
San Sabatano stood agog with breathless expectancy for weeks.
Then came the humanity staggerer.
It occupied a whole page of the Daily Citizen. The type was enormous, and had been borrowed for the occasion. Fortunately it came in a slack time. The citizens of San Sabatano had been so long held agog that nothing much else had been doing to afford the editor local copy. Therefore the epoch-making brain wave had full scope, and the use of a prodigal supply of black and red ink.
It was a competition. Yes, a mere competition.
That was the first disappointing thought of everybody. It almost seemed as if the staggering business had fizzled.
Then digestion set in, and hope dawned. Yes, it was not so bad. By Jove! As a competition it was rather good. Good? why, it was splendid! It was magnificent! Wonderful! What was this? A competition for women clerks. Speed and accuracy in stenography and typing. Twelve prizes of equal value. Five hundred dollars each, or a month's trip to Europe, including Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Rome, London. And the final plum of all. The winning twelve to compete among themselves for a special prize in addition. A clerkship in the office of the Daily Citizen at two hundred dollars a month, an office to herself, and a year's contract!
Yes, if he hadn't staggered humanity, the editor had certainly set excitement blazing in hundreds of young feminine hearts, and upset the even tenor of as many homes.
For weeks, pending the trial of skill, that astute individual nursed his scheme and trebled his circulation. Nor was it to be wondered at that many times during the preliminary stages of organization, as he watched the increasing daily returns of his precious paper, he sat back in his creaking office chair and blessed the day he married the wife, whose sister had just won a similar competition somewhere at the other side of the continent.
At the closing of the entries it was found there were just two thousand competitors. Success for the scheme was assured, and quarts of ink told the gaping multitude that this was so.
Then came the day of the competition. It was to be held in the Town Hall. So well was the interest and excitement worked up that, all unpremeditated, half the smaller business houses were closed for the day; a fact duly commented upon in the later issues of the paper.
The competition lasted all day, and it was late at night when the last weary, palpitating competitors finally reached homes, which were still in a state of anxious turmoil.
There was no news of the winners that night. There was none the next morning. Nor the next. The editor knew his business and talked columns in his own praise, and in praise of the manner in which the women of San Sabatano had responded to his invitation.
A week passed, and then a special edition brought the long-awaited announcement which dashed the hopes of one thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight bursting feminine hearts. It was a simple sheet, with a simple heading. No splashes of colored ink. It gave the list of the twelve winners of the competition in dignified type, and invited them to meet at the editor's office at noon next day, to compete for the coveted special prize.
Among the names of the winners was that of Monica Hanson.
The following day Monica attended the final competition. She did her utmost, spurred on by the driving necessity which had just been thrust upon her brave young shoulders. Now she was sitting in the San Sabatano Horticultural Gardens waiting for the evening issue of the paper which was to tell her, in cold, hard type, the news which was either to crush her eager young soul in despair, or uplift her to realms of ecstatic hope and delight.
Oh, the teeming thought of those straining moments. It flew through her brain with lightning-like velocity, spasmodic, broken. One moment she had visions of pleasures hitherto denied her in a solitary career, eked out on a wholly inadequate pittance doled out to her monthly by her dead mother's solicitors in far-off New York. At another she was obsessed by the haunting conviction that such good fortune was impossible. Yet she felt she had done well in the examination, and, anyway, she would certainly take that five hundred dollars she had already won in preference to the European tour. It would mean so much to her, especially now – now that this fresh call on her resources had been made.
After long disquieting moments she finally sprang up from her seat. Her nerves were getting the better of her. She thought she heard the raucous call of the newsboy. She listened; her pretty brows drawn together in plaintive doubt. Yes, no – her heart was thumping under the white lawn shirtwaist she was wearing, in spite of the fact that it was still winter. But winter in San Sabatano was as pleasant as many another town's summer. In all the history of that beautiful southern Californian town the thermometer had never been known to register freezing point.
She made a pretty picture standing there amid a setting of fantastic tropical vegetation. The cacti, great and small, with their wonder-hued blooms and strange vegetation, were a fitting background to the girl's golden beauty. She was quite southern in her coloring, that wonderful tone of rich gold underlying a fair almost transparent skin. Her waving, fair hair shone with a rich, ruddy burnish, crowning a face of perfect oval, lit with eyes of the deepest blue, which shone with pronounced intelligence and strength.
No, her nerves had not played tricks with her. It was the newsboy. She could see him now, just beyond the park gates. He was selling his papers all too fast. So, with tumultuous feeling's, and a heart hammering violently against her young bosom, she darted off to catch him.
She reached the gates and slackened her pace to a decorous walk. The boy had just handed an elderly man his paper, and was searching for the odd cents of change waited for. Having paid his customer off he looked admiringly up into Monica's pale face.
His shrewd eyes grinned impishly, and he winked abundantly, so that the whole of one side of his face became painfully distorted.
"Say, ain't you Miss Hanson, Miss?" he inquired, with the effrontery of his kind.
Monica's heart beat harder. But she replied with an icy calmness.
"Yes. That's my name. But – "
The boy's eyes sparkled.
"Then I guess the paper is sho' worth 'two bits' to you," he cried, thrusting the folded sheet at her. Then his feelings and covetousness getting the better of him, he added, "Gee, five hundred dollars, an' two hundred a month! Say, how do it feel gettin' all that piled suddenly on to yer, Miss?"
In a flash Monica's dignity had vanished.
"What – what do you mean?" she cried, almost hysterically. "I – " Her fingers trembled so violently that she tore the paper nearly to ribbons struggling to open it in the breeze.
The boy grinned.
"Gar'n. You ain't smart any. Guess you best hand me that 'quarter' an' I'll show you wher' to look."
He was as good as his word, and handed her another paper folded at the right spot, nor, to his credit, did he wait for the money in advance.
"You won it sho'," he said, and waited while in a daze Monica read the wonderful news —
"'We have much pleasure in announcing that the winner of our Special Prize of a position on our staff at $200 per month is Miss Monica Hanson, whose wonderful speed, etc., etc.'"
Monica waited for no more. Snatching at her satchel she opened it and drew out a single one-dollar bill, and pushed it into the willing hand of the expectant boy.
"Keep the change," he heard her say, as she almost flew down the sidewalk of the tree-shaded main street.
The boy looked after her. Then he looked at his dollar bill.
"Wal, guess she ain't got all the luck goin'," he murmured philosophically, as he pocketed the well-worn note.
Monica hurried on at a pace, though nearly a run, far too slow to suit her mood. Never, never in her life had she felt as she felt now. Never, never. It almost seemed as if the whole world were before her with loving, outstretched arms and smiling face, waiting to yield her all that her young heart most desired. In a vision every face that passed her by in her rush home seemed to be wearing a happy smile. Even the trees overhead rustled whispered messages of delight and hope to her in the evening breeze. This was certainly the one moment of moments in her brief seventeen years of life.
She had hoped, she had dared to hope; but never in her wildest thoughts had she really expected to win this wonderful good fortune. Two hundred dollars a month for a year! Five hundred dollars capital to work upon! And all this added to the pittance which thus far she had lived on while she studied stenography. It was too, too wonderful.
She thought of all she could do with it; and at once there grew on her joyous horizon the first threatening cloud. There was her sister, the dearly loved, erring, actress sister who had come back to her out of those terrible wilds in the far north of Canada.
Thank God this good fortune had come in time to help her. Poor, poor Elsie, or Audrey, as she called herself on the stage. What terrible troubles had been hers. Deserted by the man she loved, left alone with an Indian, and another unfortunate white man, to make her way back to civilization. The thought of her sister's sufferings smote her tender young heart even in the midst of her own rejoicings. She had always disliked and feared Indians hitherto, but now, since she had listened to her sister's pitiful story of her husband's leaving her, and of the wonderful loyalty and generosity of the Indian, Si – what was his name? Ah, yes, Si-wash – somehow she warmed towards them. It seemed wonderful to think of an Indian having such generosity as to give poor Elsie the money to get to San Sabatano from Juneau out of the payment he had received in advance from the journey from Sixty-mile Creek. Why, it must have taken nearly all he had.
Monica in her impulsive way felt that she would like to repay him, to shake hands with him, and thank him. But her sister had told her that he had gone back into the northern wilderness, which nothing could ever induce him to leave for long.
It was a strange life and they were strange people. Even her sister had acquired something of the reticence and somberness of the world she had left behind her. Poor Elsie. She seemed to have made such a mess of her life. She had been doing so well, too, in New York. Why had she thrown it all up to marry this man, Leo, and wander off to the Yukon? What a funny name, Leo. It seemed to be his surname, too. Leo; it was all right for a first name, but – Elsie had insisted that it was his name, and the one she liked to call him by.
And now, here she was fretting her poor heart out for him. Oh, it was a shame. Men were perfect brutes. And to leave her under such conditions, and at such a time. She blushed as she thought what she would feel if her husband had left her when she was going to have her first baby. The thought left her anxious. But even her anxiety for her sister was lessened by the knowledge of her own good fortune. She remembered the nurse, who was even now up in the small apartments she occupied, and the doctor she had engaged. A week ago she had trembled at the thought of how she was to pay these people, and provide her sister with even the bare necessities of a confinement. Now, now it was different, and a fresh wave of thankfulness for her good fortune flooded her simple heart.
Yes, her sister should have every care. Everything she could do to make her happy and comfortable should be done. And then, when the baby came, wouldn't it be delightful? She would be its fairy god-mother. She hoped he would be a boy. Fancy Elsie with a son. Wasn't it wonderful? And she – she would give him every moment of her spare time from the office. Ah, that wonderful thought – the office.
So her thoughts ran on, keeping pace with her feet. The wonders of the new world opening out before her eyes were inexhaustible, and long before she was aware of the distance she had covered she found herself at the door of the cheap little apartment house where she lived on the top floor.
There was no elevator, and she ran at the stairs, taking them two at a time. Her good news would not wait. She must tell her poor sister. She was dying to pour all the happy story into her ears, and watch the wistful smile grow upon Elsie's troubled, handsome face.
On the sixth landing she stood breathlessly fumbling in her satchel for her key, when the door opened and the nurse appeared holding up a warning finger.
"Come quietly," she whispered. "The doctor is with her now. It came on quite suddenly. I hope things will be all right, but – she's in a bad way."
In a moment all the joy and hope died out of Monica's tender heart. All the castles, all her dreams, fell into a tumbled ruin. Her sister, her beautiful, brave sister was in danger. She knew it. She knew that the nurse's words covered far more than they expressed. Oh, it was cruel, cruel.
CHAPTER X
A PROMISE
Three hopeless days since the coming of that brief moment of overwhelming joy. The reaction had been all too terribly sudden for a young girl on the threshold of life. Monica sat at her dying sister's bedside crushed under a great grief.
Those terrible three days. The demands made upon her by the reporters of the Daily Citizen. The interviews she had had to endure with the editor. The letters she received. Some from strangers; some from acquaintances. Letters of congratulation; letters full of burning spite from some of the unsuccessful competitors; vampire letters demanding sympathy and practical help, pouring out stories of misery, sorrow and suffering. All these, in her simplicity, she felt it her duty to answer; and she must answer them with smiling words of hope and comfort. She must at all times keep a smiling face.
To the reporter she had to talk and laugh while her heart was breaking. To the editor she must offer her most engaging smile that his personal goodwill be assured at the outset of her career. Nor, for one moment, did she permit a sign of the aching heart underneath it all.
At the end of those three days she was an older woman by far than twice her seventeen years. She was learning from the book of life in a manner that left her almost despairing. How much she learned. That smiling world she had gazed upon as she ran home with her wonderful news was no longer smiling, its face had resumed its wonted expression which was careworn, lined with suffering, and sorrow, and regret; and was terribly, terribly old. She had learned something of what her success meant. She knew now that her success meant failure to hundreds of others. She knew that so it must always be. The successful path must be lined with a tangle of weeds of suffering and hope abandoned. For every success there must be, not one but hundreds of failures; for such was the law of Life.
Thus she was robbed of her joy and thrown back upon the grief which lay across her own threshold.
The verdict had been given that morning by the doctor; and corroboration of it was in the steady eyes of the nurse. Her sister, her well-loved, admired elder sister was dying. She was dying not as the happy mother of a beautiful son, but as the deserted wife left to starve for all her husband cared. She was dying a broken-hearted creature whose wonderful, generous nature had been made the plaything of a cold, unscrupulous villain. All this Monica told herself over and over again as she sat beside the silent, uncomplaining woman during those long hours of waiting for the end.
Her beautiful eyes were red with weeping, her pale cheeks looked so wan with the long hours of silent watching. The nurse was still there to do her work, but most of her work was now the care of the little life in the bed that had been put up at the other side of the room, rather than with the woman who had given up her life that her love might yield her absent man this one last pledge.
Poor little Monica was alone, utterly alone with her grief. There were no warm words of kindly comfort to soften her troubles. There was no loving mother's gentle hand to soothe her aching head. The world was there before her, hard, unsympathetic. She must face it alone, face it with what courage she might, doing the best she knew amid a grief which seemed everywhere about her.
An infantile cry from the other bed startled her. She rose and passed across the room. The child seemed to be asleep, for its breathing was regular, and the cry was not repeated. She gazed down upon its tiny, crumpled face, and her young heart melted with a curious yearning and love for the little life that was robbing her of a sister. It was so small. It was so tender – and – and it had cost so much. She longed to take it in her arms and press it to her girlish bosom. She loved it. Loved it because it was her sister's and soon would be all she had in the world to remind her of the generous heart from which life was so swiftly ebbing.
"Monica!"
The girl started and looked round. The dying woman's eyes were wide open.
