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"You said nothing when he came to the ranch, while we were at the mine."
"The man was pleasant company, and there was, it seemed to me, very little risk of a superior workman attracting Barbara's fancy."
Devine laughed. "I guess I was of no great account when you married me."
"Pshaw!" said Mrs. Devine. "Anyway, you hadn't plotted to steal a mine from the people I belonged to."
Devine's eyes twinkled. "It showed his grit, and 'most anything is considered square in a mining deal. Besides, there were the six thousand dollars Slocum took out of him."
"I am quite aware that such transactions are evidently not subject to the ordinary code, but, seriously, if you would be content with Harford Brooke as my brother-in-law, it is considerably more than I would be. We don't even know why he left the Old Country."
"Well," said Devine, drily, "I guess I have a notion. I've been finding out a good deal about him. But get on with your objections."
"Barbara has a good many dollars."
"So has Brooke. You needn't worry about that point."
Mrs. Devine's astonishment was very apparent. "Then whatever is he working at the mine for – and why didn't you tell me before?"
"I guess it's because that kind of thing pleases him, and, anyway, it's only since last mail came in I knew."
"You're quite sure, now?"
"I'll tell you what I heard. There was a man who bought up our stock in England when nobody else seemed to have any use for it. The directors wanted to know a little about him, and they found it was a trust account. He was taking up the stock for another man, who had been left quite a few dollars, and that man was called Harford Brooke. The executor, it seems, told somebody that the man he was buying for was here. Now, it's not likely there are two of them in this part of Canada."
The door, as it happened, was not closed, and Mrs. Devine was too intent to hear it swing open a little further. "The dollars," she said, "are by no means the most important consideration, but still – "
She stopped abruptly at a sound, and then turned round with a little gasp, for Barbara stood just inside the room. Then there was a disconcerting silence for a moment or two, until the girl glanced at Devine.
"Yes," she said, quietly. "I heard. When did Mr. Brooke buy that stock?"
Devine understood the question, and once more the twinkle crept into his eyes.
"Well," he said, "it was quite a while before they found the silver. I don't know what he did it for. Now, I guess I've been here longer than I meant to stay. You'll excuse me, Katty."
He seemed in haste to get away, and when the door closed behind him the two who were left looked at one another curiously. Mrs. Devine was evidently embarrassed.
"I suppose," she said, drily, "you don't know why Brooke bought those shares, either?"
"I think I do," said Barbara, with unusual quietness, though the color was very visible in her cheeks. "He had a reason – "
She stopped abruptly, and there was once more an awkward silence, until she made a little impulsive gesture.
"Oh!" she said, sharply now, "I feel horribly mean. He stayed there through the winter when they had scarcely anything to eat, and bought that stock when nobody else would have it or believed in the Dayspring. Then he risked his life to save the Canopus, and when he came down, worn out and ill, I had only hard words for him."
"Well," said Mrs. Devine, drily, "the sensation is probably good for you. You don't seem to remember that he also tried to jump the mine."
Barbara turned towards her with a little sparkle in her eyes. "Have you – never – done anything that was wrong?"
Mrs. Devine naturally saw the point of this, but while she considered her answer, Barbara, who had a good deal to think of, and scarcely felt equal to any further conversation just then, abruptly turned away. Glancing at her watch, she went straight to a room, from the window of which she could see the road to the depôt, for she knew the Atlantic express would shortly start, and she had not been told that Brooke was not coming back. Exactly what she meant to say to him she did not know, but she felt she could not let him go without, at least, a slight expression of her appreciation of what he had done. She knew that he would value it, and that it would go far to blot out the memory of past unkindness. He had certainly meant to jump the Canopus, and deceived her shamefully, which was far harder to forgive, for the realization of the fact that she had bestowed rather more than friendliness upon a man who was unworthy of it had its sting, but she scarcely remembered that now. He had, it appeared, since then, sacrificed his fortune and broken down his strength, and that, considering the purpose which she fancied had impelled him, went a long way to condone his offences.
He, however, did not appear on the road, as she had expected; and she grew a trifle anxious when the tolling of a bell came up from the depôt by the wharf as the big locomotive backed the long cars in. It was also significant that she did not notice that the room, which had no stove in it, was very cold. Then looking down she saw men with valises pass across an opening between the roofs and express wagons lurching along the uneven road. The train would start very soon, and there was at least one admission she must make, but the minutes were slipping by and still Brooke did not come. The man, it almost appeared, was content to go away without seeing her, though she felt compelled to admit that in view of what had passed at their last meeting this was not altogether astonishing. Still, the fact that he could do so hurt her, and she waited in a state of painful tension. A very few minutes would suffice for him to climb the hill, and even if there was no opportunity for an explanation, which now appeared very probable, a smile or even a glance might go a long way to set matters right.
The few minutes, however, slipped by as the rest had done, until at last the locomotive bell slowly clanged again, and the hoot of a whistle came up the hillside and was flung back by the pines. Then a puff of white smoke rolled up from the wharf, and Barbara turned away from the window with the crimson in her face as the cars swept through an opening between the clustering roofs. The train had gone, and the man would not know how far she had relented towards him. She could settle to nothing during the rest of the evening, and scarcely slept that night, though she naturally did not mention the fact when she and Mrs. Devine met at breakfast next morning. Instead, she took out a letter she had received a week earlier.
"It's from Hetty Hume, and the English mail goes out to-day," she said. "She suggests that I should come over and spend a few months with her. I really think we did what we could for her when she was here with the Major."
Mrs. Devine took the letter. "I fancy she wants you to go," she said. "She mentions that she has asked you several times already."
Barbara appeared reflective. "So she has," she said. "In fact, I think I'll go. The change will do me good."
"Well," said Mrs. Devine, "I suppose you can afford it, but if you indulge in many changes of that kind you're not going to have very much of a dowry."
"Do you think I need one?"
Mrs. Devine laughed as she glanced at her, but her face grew thoughtful again. "Perhaps in your case it wouldn't be necessary, and though it is a very long way, I fancy that you might do worse than go to England and stay there while Hetty is willing to keep you."
A little flush crept into Barbara's cheek, but she said quietly, "I think I'll start on Saturday."
She did so, and it came about one night while the big train she travelled by swept across the rolling levels of the Assiniboian prairie that Brooke sat in his shanty at the Dayspring with Jimmy, who had just come down from the range, standing in front of him. The freighter had still now and then a difficulty in bringing them provisions in, and whenever Jimmy found the persistent plying of drill and hammer pall upon him he would go out and look out for a deer, though it was not always that he came back with one. On this occasion he brought a somewhat alarming tale instead.
"A big snow-slide must have come along since I was up on that slope before, and gouged out quite a cañon for itself," he said. "Anyway, if it wasn't a snow-slide it was a cloudburst or a waterspout. They happen around when folks don't want them now and then."
"Come to the point," said Brooke. "I'm sufficiently acquainted with the meteorological perversities of the country."
"Slinging names at them isn't much use. I've tried it, and any one raised here could give you points at the thing. Now before I came to Quatomac I was staying up at the Tillicum ranch, and I'd just taken a new twelve-dollar pair of gum-boots off one night when there was a waterspout up the valley that washed me and Jardine out of the house. We sailed along until we struck a convenient pine, and sat in it most of the night while the flood went down. Then I hadn't any gum-boots, and Jardine couldn't find his house."
"I believe you told me you went down the river on a door on the last occasion," Brooke said, wearily. "Still, it doesn't greatly matter. What has all this to do with the hollow the snow-slide made in the range?"
"Well," said Jimmy, "I guess you know the way the big rock outcrop runs across the foot of the valley. Now, before the snow-slide or the waterspout came along the melting snow went down into the next hollow, and the one where the outcrop is got just enough to keep the outlet of the creek that comes through it open."
"I do. Will it be an hour or more before you make it clear how that concerns anybody?"
"No, sir. I'm getting right there. The snow's melting tolerably fast, and the drainage from the big peak isn't going the way it used to now. The foot of the valley's quite a nice-sized lake, and the stream has washed most of the broke-up pines the snow brought down into the outlet gully. I guess you have seen a bad lumber jam?"
Brooke had, and he started as he recognized the significance of what was happening, for once a drifting log strikes fast in a narrow passage the stream is very apt to pile up and wedge fast those that come behind into a tolerably efficient substitute for a dam, while when log still follows log the result is usually an inextricable confusion of interlocked timber.
"When the jam up broke we'd have the water and the wreckage down on the mine," he said.
"All there is of it," said Jimmy. "It would cost quite a pile of dollars to dry the workings out."
Brooke strode to the door and flung it open, but there was black darkness outside and a persistent patter of thick warm rain. Then he swung round with an objurgation and Jimmy grinned.
"I guess it's no use. You couldn't see a pine ten foot off, and there isn't a man in the country who would go down that gully with a lantern in his hand," he said. "Go off to sleep. You'll see quite as much as you want to, anyway, to-morrow."
Brooke stood still and listened a moment or two while the hoarse roar of a river which he knew was swirling in fierce flood among the boulders far down in the hollow came up in deep reverberations across the pines. It was a significant hint of what was likely to happen when the pent-up water poured down upon the mine. Still, there was nothing he could do in that thick darkness.
"Sleep!" he said. "When almost every dollar I have – and a good deal more than that – is sunk in the mine."
"Well," said Jimmy, reflectively, "in your place, if I could make sure of the dollars, I'd take my chances on the rest. Now and then I'm quite thankful I haven't any. It saves a mighty lot of worry."
He swung out of the shanty, and Brooke, who flung himself down on his couch of spruce twigs, endeavored to sleep, though he had no great expectation of succeeding. As it happened, he lay tossing or holding himself still by an effort the long night through, for he had set his whole mind on the prosperity of the Dayspring. A good deal of his small fortune was also sunk in it, though that was not of the greatest moment to him. He had a vague hope that when the mine was, through his efforts, pouring out high-grade ore, he might reinstate himself in Barbara's estimation. In that case, at least, she might believe in his contrition, for he felt that where protests were evidently useless deeds might avail. Then the dollars in question would be valuable to him.
It was two hours before the dawn, and still apparently raining hard, when he rose and lighted the stove. He felt a trifle dizzy and very shivery as he did it, but the frugal breakfast put a little warmth into him, and he went out into the thick haze of falling water and up the hillside, walking somewhat wearily and with considerably more effort than he had found it necessary to make a few months ago.
XXIX.
A FINAL EFFORT
A dim, grey light was creeping through the rain when Brooke stopped on a ridge of hillside that broke off from the parent range above the mine. The pines were slowly growing into shape, though as yet they showed as mere spires of blackness in the sliding haze, and there was a faint glimmer in the hollow beneath him, while the sound of running water drowned the splashing of the rain. The snow upon the lower slopes had mostly melted now, though that on the great hill shoulders would swell the frothing rivers for months to come, and, sinking ankle-deep in quaggy mould, he went down through the dripping undergrowth until he stopped again on the verge of what had become in the last few days a muddy lake.
The wreckage of the higher forests was strewn upon it, but Brooke noticed that it drifted steadily in one direction, and floundering along the water's edge, he reached a narrow gully, which had served as outlet for the stream through the ridge that hemmed in the valley. The passage was, however, now choked by a mass of groaning timber, which was apparently growing every hour, and it already seemed scarcely possible to cut through that pile of wreckage by any means at his command. Once the pent-up water, which seemed rising rapidly, burst the jam, it would come down in an overwhelming torrent upon the mine, and he sat down on a fallen redwood to consider how the difficulty could be grappled with.
He, however, found it no easy matter to keep his mind upon the question at all. His head was aching, he felt unpleasantly limp, as well as wet and cold, and the distressful stiffness of his back suggested that he had by no means recovered from the effects of his fall. The long months of strenuous physical toil, the scanty, and, when the freighter could not get in, often wholly insufficient food, and exposure to bitter frost and snow, had left their mark on him, while now, worn out in mind and body as he was, he realized that a last grim effort was demanded from him. How it was to be made he did not know, and he was sitting still, shivering, with the rain running from him, when Jimmy and another man from the mine appeared. It was almost light now, and the miner glanced at the gathering water with evident concern.
"I guess something has got to be done," he said.
Brooke lifted himself shakily to his feet, and blinked in a curious, heavy fashion at the man.
"It has, and if you'll bring the boys up we'll make a start," he said. "Now I don't know that we could cut that jam, and if we did it would only turn the lake loose on the mine. What I purpose is to break a new cut through the rise where it's thinnest, and run enough water off to ease the pressure. Then we might, if it appeared advisable, get at the jam. In the meanwhile every man I can spare from here will start in cutting out a ten-foot trench at the mine. That would take away a good deal of any water that did come down."
"I've been at this kind of work 'most all my life, and that's 'bout how I would fix it," said the other man.
"Well," said Brooke, "there's just another point. Once you get started, you'll go right on, and there'll be very little sleep for any one until it's done, but we'll credit you with half extra on every hour's time in the pay-bill."
The man laughed and waved his hand. "You needn't worry 'bout that. I guess the boys will see you through," he said.
He disappeared into the rain, and the struggle commenced when he came back with the men. There were but a handful of them in all, and their task appeared almost beyond accomplishment, even to those born in a country where man and Nature unsubdued come to the closest grapple, and human daring and endurance must make head against the tremendous forces that unloose the rivers and slowly grind the ranges down. It is a continuous struggle, primitive and elemental, in which brute strength and the animal courage that plies axe and drill with worn-out muscle and bleeding hands plays at least an equal part with ingenuity, for man has arrayed against him sun and frost, roaring water, crushing ice, and sliding snow; and those who fall in it lie thick by towering trestle bridge and along each railroad track. Worn out, aching in every limb, and with heavy eyes, Brooke braced himself to bear his part in it.
For three days they toiled with pick and shovel and clinking drill, and the roar of the blasting charges shook the wet hillside, but while the trenches deepened slowly the water rose. By night the big fires snapped and sputtered, and the feeble lanterns blinked through the rain, while wild figures, stained with mire and dripping water, moved amidst the smoke, and those who dragged themselves out of the workings lay down on the wet ground for a brief hour's sleep. Brooke, however, so far as he could afterwards remember, did not close his eyes at all, and where his dripping figure appeared the shovels swung more rapidly, and the ringing of the drills grew a trifle louder. The pace was, however, too fierce to last, and, though even the men who work for another toil strenuously in that land, it was evident to him that while their task was less than half-done, they could not sustain it long.
Baffled in one direction, he had also changed his plans, for the ridge was singularly hard to cut through, even with giant powder, and he had withdrawn most of the men from it and sent them to the trench, which would, he hoped, afford a passage to, at least, part of the water that must eventually come down upon the mine. It was late on the third night when it became evident that this would very shortly happen, and he sat, wet through and very weary, in his tent on the hillside, when Jimmy and another man came in.
"Water's riz another foot since sundown, and I guess there's lakes of it ready to come down yonder," said the miner, who stretched out a wet hand, and pointed towards the dripping canvas above him, though Brooke surmised that he intended to indicate the range. "So far as I could make out, there's quite a forest of smashed-up logs sailing along to pile up in the jam."
Brooke lifted a wet, grey face, and blinked at him with half-closed eyes.
"Then I'm afraid there are only two courses open to us," he said. "We can wait until the jam breaks up, when there'll be water enough to fill the Dayspring up and wash the plant above ground right down into the cañon, or we must try to cut it now."
"And turn the lake loose on us with the trench 'bout half big enough to take it away?" said Jimmy.
"Yes," said Brooke, grimly. "You have a six-foot dam thrown up. I'm not sure it will stand, but it's a good deal less likely to do it when the lake is twice as big."
Jimmy looked at the other man, who nodded. "The boss is right," he said. "You can't stop to look for the nicest way out when you're in a blame tight place. No, sir, you've got to take the quickest one. When do you figure on starting on the jam, Mr. Brooke?"
"Now."
The man appeared astonished, and shook his head. "It can't be done in the dark," he said. "I guess nobody could find the king log that's keying up the jam, and though the boys aren't nervous, I'm not sure you'd get one of them to crawl down that gulley and over the live logs until it's light. They couldn't see to do anything with the axe anyway."
Brooke smiled drily. "Since they will not be asked to do it, that does not count. I purposed trying giant-powder, and going myself; that is, unless Jimmy feels anxious to come along with me."
"I don't," said Jimmy, with decision in his tone. "If it was anybody else, watching him would be quite good enough for me. Still, as it isn't, I guess I'll have to see you through."
"Thanks!" said Brooke. "You can let them know what to expect at the mine, Cropper. I'll want you to put the detonators on the fuses with me, Jimmy."
The other man went out, and the two who were left proceeded to nip down the fulminating caps on the strips of snaky fuse, after which they carefully embedded them in sundry plastic rolls, which looked very like big candles made of yellow wax. These they packed in an iron case, and then, carrying an axe and a big auger, went out of the tent. The rest of the men left at the ridge were waiting them, for every one understood the perilous nature of the attempt, though, as two men were sufficient for the work, there was nothing that they could do, and they proceeded in a body through the dripping undergrowth towards the gully. Here a big fire of resinous wood was lighted, and when at last the smoky glare flickered upon the wet rocks in the hollow, Brooke, who stripped to shirt and trousers, flung himself over the edge.
He dropped upon a little ledge, and made another yard or two down a cranny, then a bold leap landed him on a second ledge, and the groaning trunks were close beneath him when he dropped again. The glare of the fire scarcely reached him now, and Jimmy, who alighted close by him, looked up longingly at the flickering light above.
"It wasn't easy getting down, and I'd feel better if I knew just how we were going back," he said. "I guess it's not quite wise either to bang that can about on the rocks."
This was incontrovertible, for while giant powder, which is dynamite, is, with due precaution, comparatively safe to handle, and cannot be exploded without a detonator, so those who make it claim, it is still addicted to going off with disastrous results on very small provocation. Brooke, who had the case containing it slung round his back, was, however, looking down on the logs that stirred and heaved beneath him with the water spouting up through the interstices between. He could see them when the fire grew brighter.
"The king should not be far away, from the look of the jam," he said. "If we can't cut it, we may jar it loose. Giant powder strikes down. Let me have the axe."
Jimmy glanced at him, and shook his head, for Brooke's face showed drawn and grey in the flickering light.
"I'll do any chopping that's wanted, and be glad when I get you out of this," he said.
He dropped upon the timber, and the gap he splashed into closed up suddenly as he whipped out his leg. Then, with Brooke behind him, he crawled over the grinding logs, and by and by drove the point of the auger into one that seemed to run downwards through the midst of them. It was a good many feet in girth, and Brooke gasped heavily when he also laid hold of the auger crutch. The hole they made was charged with one of the yellow rolls, and, moving to a second log, they bored another, while the mass shook and trembled under them, and twice a great spout of water fell splashing upon them. The logs were apparently endued with vitality, for they moved under and over their fellows, and ground upon them with the pulsations of the stream that brought down fresh accessions and found a fresh channel that promptly closed again. The jam might resist the pressure for another week, or break up at any moment, and whirl down the gully in chaotic ruin. Still, with the rain beating down upon them, the pair toiled on until several sticks of explosive had been embedded, when Brooke rose very stiffly and straightened himself as he took a little case out of his pocket.
"I don't know that we've got the king, but the general shake-up ought to loosen it," he said. "Light your fuse, Jimmy, and then get up. I'll come in a moment or two, when I'm ready."
Jimmy looked up, and saw a cluster of dark figures outlined against the glow of the fire, for the men had crowded to the edge of the gully.
"Stand by to give us a lift up, boys," he said.