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CHAPTER I
AT “MacGONIGAL’S”
“Hullo, Mac!”
“Hullo, Derry!”
“What’s got the boys today? Is there a round-up somewhere?”
“Looks that-a way,” said Mac, grabbing a soiled cloth with an air of decision, and giving the pine counter a vigorous rub. At best, he was a man of few words, and the few were generally to the point; yet his questioner did not seem to notice the noncommittal nature of the reply, and, after an amused glance at the industrious Mac, quitted the store as swiftly as he had entered it. But he flung an explanatory word over his shoulder:
“Guess I’ll see to that plug myself – he’s fallen lame.”
Then John Darien Power swung out again into the vivid sunshine of Colorado (“vivid” is the correct adjective for sunshine thereabouts in June about the hour of the siesta) and gently encouraged a dispirited mustang to hobble on three legs into the iron-roofed lean-to which served as a stable at “MacGonigal’s.” Meanwhile, the proprietor of the store gazed after Power’s retreating figure until neither man nor horse was visible. Even then, in an absent-minded way, he continued to survey as much of the dusty surface of the Silver State as was revealed through the rectangle of the doorway, a vista slightly diminished by the roof of a veranda. What he saw in the foreground was a whitish brown plain, apparently a desert, but in reality a plateau, or “park,” as the local name has it, a tableland usually carpeted not only with grama and buffalo grasses curing on the stem, but also with flowers in prodigal abundance and of bewildering varieties. True, in the picture framed by the open door neither grass-stems nor flowers were visible, unless to the imaginative eye. There was far too much coming and going of men and animals across the strip of common which served the purposes of a main street in Bison to permit the presence of active vegetation save during the miraculous fortnight after the spring rains, when, by local repute, green whiskers will grow on a bronze dog. Scattered about the immediate vicinity were the ramshackle houses of men employed in the neighboring gold and silver reduction works. The makeshift for a roadway which pierced this irregular settlement led straight to MacGonigal’s, and ended there. As every man, woman, and child in the place came to the store at some time of the day or night, and invariably applied Euclid’s definition of the nearest way between two given points, the flora of Colorado was quickly stamped out of recognition in that particular locality, except during the irrepressible period when, as already mentioned, the fierce rains of April pounded the sleeping earth and even bronze dogs into a frenzied activity. Further, during that year, now nearly quarter of a century old, there had been no rain in April or May, and precious little in March. As the ranchers put it, in the figurative language of their calling, “the hull blame state was burnt to a cinder.”
The middle distance was lost altogether; for the park sloped, after the manner of plateaus, to a deep valley through which trickled a railroad and the remains of a river. Some twenty miles away a belt of woodland showed where Denver was justifying its name by growing into a city, and forty miles beyond Denver rose the blue ring of the Rocky Mountains. These details, be it understood, are given with the meticulous accuracy insisted on by map-makers. In a country where, every year, the percentage of “perfectly clear” days rises well above the total of all other sorts of days, and where a popular and never-failing joke played on the newcomer is to persuade him into taking an afternoon stroll from Denver to Mount Evans, a ramble of over sixty miles as the crow flies, the mind refuses to be governed by theodolites and measuring rods. Indeed, the deceptive clarity of the air leads to exaggeration at the other end of the scale, because no true son or daughter of Colorado will walk a hundred yards if there is a horse or car available for the journey. Obviously, walking is a vain thing when the horizon and the next block look equidistant.
It may, however, be taken for granted that none of these considerations accounted for MacGonigal’s fixed stare at the sunlit expanse. In fact, it is probable that his bulging eyes took in no special feature of the landscape; for they held an introspective look, and he stopped polishing the counter as abruptly as he had begun that much-needed operation when Power entered the store. He indulged in soliloquy, too, as the habit is of some men in perplexity. Shifting the cigar he was smoking from the left corner of his wide mouth to the right one by a dexterous twisting of lips, with tongue and teeth assisting, he said aloud:
“Well, ef I ain’t dog-goned!”
So, whatever it was, the matter was serious. It was a convention at Bison that all conversation should be suspended among the frequenters of MacGonigal’s when the storekeeper remarked that he was dog-goned. Ears already alert were tuned at once to intensity. When Mac was dog-goned, events of vital importance to the community had either happened or were about to happen. Why, those words, uttered by him, common as they were in the mouths of others, had been known to stop One-thumb Jake from opening a jack-pot on a pat straight! Of course, the pot was opened all right after the social avanlanche heralded by the storekeeper’s epoch-making ejaculation had rolled past, or Jake’s remaining thumb might have been shot off during the subsequent row.
Apparently, MacGonigal was thinking hard, listening, too; for he seemed to be following Power’s movements, and nodded his head in recognition of the rattle of a chain as the horse was tied to a feeding trough, the clatter of a zinc bucket when Power drew water from a tank, and the stamping of hoofs while Power was persuading the lame mustang to let him bathe and bandage the injured tendons. Then the animal was given a drink – he would be fed later – and the ring of spurred boots on the sun-baked ground announced that Derry was returning to the store.
Power’s nickname, in a land where a man’s baptismal certificate is generally ignored, was easily accounted for by his second name, Darien, conferred by a proud mother in memory of a journey across the Isthmus when, as a girl, she was taken from New York to San Francisco by the oldtime sea route. The other day, when he stood for a minute or so in the foyer of the Savoy Hotel in London, waiting while his automobile was summoned from the courtyard, he seemed to have lost little of the erect, sinewy figure and lithe carriage which were his most striking physical characteristics twenty-five years ago; but the smooth, dark-brown hair had become gray, and was slightly frizzled about the temples, and the clean-cut oval of his face bore records of other tempests than those noted by the Weather Bureau. In walking, too, he moved with a decided limp. At fifty, John Darien Power looked the last man breathing whom a storekeeper in a disheveled mining village would hail as “Derry”; yet it may be safely assumed that his somewhat hard and care-lined lips would have softened into a pleasant smile had someone greeted him in the familiar Colorado way. And, when that happened, the friend of bygone years would be sure that no mistake had been made as to his identity; for, in those early days, Power always won approval when he smiled. His habitual expression was one of concentrated purpose, and his features were cast in a mold that suggested repose and strength. Indeed, their classic regularity of outline almost bespoke a harsh nature were it not for the lurking humor in his large brown eyes, which were shaded by lashes so long, and black, and curved that most women who met him envied him their possession. Children and dogs adopted him as a friend promptly and without reservation; but strangers of adult age were apt to regard him as a rather morose and aloof-mannered person, distinctly frigid and self-possessed, until some chance turn in the talk brought laughter to eyes and lips. Then a carefully veiled kindliness of heart seemed to bubble to the surface and irradiate his face. All the severity of firm mouth and determined chin disappeared as though by magic; and one understood the force of the simile used by a western schoolma’am, who contributed verse to the Rocky Mountain News, when she said that Derry’s smile reminded her of a sudden burst of sunshine which had converted into a sparkling mirror the somber gloom of a lake sunk in the depths of some secluded valley. Even in Colorado, people of the poetic temperament write in that strain.
Now, perhaps, you have some notion of the sort of young man it was who came back to the dog-goned MacGonigal on that June day in the half-forgotten ’80’s. Add to the foregoing description certain intimate labels – that he was a mining engineer, that he had been educated in the best schools of the Far West, that he was slender, and well knit, and slightly above the middle height, and that he moved with the gait of a horseman and an athlete – and the portrait is fairly complete.
The storekeeper was Power’s physical antithesis. He was short and fat, and never either walked or rode; but his North of Ireland ancestors had bequeathed him a shrewd brain and a Scottish slowness of speech that gave him time to review his thoughts before they were uttered. No sooner did he hear his visitor’s approaching footsteps than he began again to polish the pine boards which barricaded him from the small world of Bison.
Such misplaced industry won a smile from the younger man.
“Gee whizz, Mac, it makes me hot to see you work!” he cried. “Anyhow, if you’ve been whirling that duster ever since I blew in you must be tired, so you can quit now, and fix me a bimetallic.”
With a curious alacrity, the stout MacGonigal threw the duster aside, and reached for a bottle of whisky, an egg, a siphon of soda, and some powdered sugar. Colorado is full of local color, even to the naming of its drinks. In a bimetallic the whole egg is used, and variants of the concoction are a gold fizz and a silver fizz, wherein the yoke and the white figure respectively.
“Whar you been, Derry?” inquired the storekeeper, whose massive energy was now concentrated on the proper whisking of the egg.
“Haven’t you heard? Marten sent me to erect the pump on a placer mine he bought near Sacramento. It’s a mighty good proposition, too, and I’ve done pretty well to get through in four months.”
“Guess I was told about the mine; but I plumb forgot. Marten was here a bit sence, an’ he said nothin’.” Power laughed cheerfully. “He’ll be surprised to see me, and that’s a fact. He counted on the job using up the best part of the summer, right into the fall; but I made those Chicago mechanics open up the throttle, and here I am, having left everything in full swing.”
“Didn’t you write?”
“Yes, to Denver. I don’t mind telling you, Mac, that I would have been better pleased if the boss was there now. I came slick through, meaning to make Denver tomorrow. Where is he – at the mill?”
“He was thar this mornin’.”
Power was frankly puzzled by MacGonigal’s excess of reticence. He knew the man so well that he wondered what sinister revelation lay behind this twice-repeated refusal to give a direct reply to his questions. By this time the appetizing drink was ready, and he swallowed it with the gusto of one who had found the sun hot and the trail dusty, though he had ridden only three miles from the railroad station in the valley, where he was supplied with a lame horse by the blunder of a negro attendant at the hotel.
It was his way to solve a difficulty by taking the shortest possible cut; but, being quite in the dark as to the cause of his friend’s perceptible shirking of some unknown trouble, he decided to adopt what logicians term a process of exhaustion.
“All well at Dolores?” he asked, looking straight into the storekeeper’s prominent eyes.
“Bully!” came the unblinking answer.
Ah! The worry, whatsoever it might be, evidently did not concern John Darien Power in any overwhelming degree.
“Then what have you got on your chest, Mac?” he said, while voice and manner softened from an unmistakably stiffening.
MacGonigal seemed to regard this personal inquiry anent his well-being as affording a safe means of escape from a dilemma. “I’m scairt about you, Derry,” he said at once, and there was no doubting the sincerity of the words.
“About me?”
“Yep. Guess you’d better hike back to Sacramento.”
“But why?”
“Marten ’ud like it.”
“Man, I’ve written to tell him I was on the way to Denver!”
“Then git a move on, an’ go thar.”
Power smiled, though not with his wonted geniality, for he was minded to be sarcastic. “Sorry if I should offend the boss by turning up in Bison,” he drawled; “but if I can’t hold this job down I’ll monkey around till I find another. If you should happen to see Marten this afternoon, tell him I’m at the ranch, and will show up in Main Street tomorrow P.M.”
He was actually turning on his heel when MacGonigal cried:
“Say, Derry, air you heeled?”
Power swung round again, astonishment writ large on his face. “Why, no,” he said. “I’m not likely to be carrying a gold brick to Dolores. Who’s going to hold me up?”
“Bar jokin’, I wish you’d vamoose. Dang me, come back tomorrer, ef you must!”
There! MacGonigal had said it! In a land where swearing is a science this Scoto-Hibernico-American had earned an enviable repute for the mildness of his expletives, and his “dang me!” was as noteworthy in Bison as its European equivalent in the mouth of a British archbishop. Power was immensely surprised by his bulky friend’s emphatic earnestness, and cudgeled his brains to suggest a reasonable explanation. Suddenly it occurred to him a second time that Bison was singularly empty of inhabitants that day. MacGonigal’s query with regard to a weapon was also significant, and he remembered that when he left the district there was pending a grave dispute between ranchers and squatters as to the inclosing of certain grazing lands on the way to the East and its markets.
“Are the boys wire-cutting today?” he asked, in the accents of real concern; for any such expedition would probably bring about a struggle which might not end till one or both of the opposing parties ran short of ammunition.
“Nit,” growled the other. “Why argy? You jest take my say-so, Derry, an’ skate.”
“Is the boss mixed up in this?”
“Yep.”
“Well, he can take care of himself as well as anyone I know. So long, Mac. See you later.”
“Ah, come off, Derry. You’ve got to have it; but don’t say I didn’t try to help. The crowd are up at Dolores. Marten’s gittin’ married, an’ that’s all there is to it. Now I guess you’ll feel mad with me for not tellin’ you sooner.”
Power’s face blanched under its healthy tan of sun and air; but his voice was markedly clear and controlled when he spoke, which, however, he did not do until some seconds after MacGonigal had made what was, for him, quite an oration.
“Why should Marten go to Dolores to get married?” he said at last.
The storekeeper humped his heavy shoulders, and conjured the cigar across his mouth again. He did not flinch under the sudden fire which blazed in Power’s eyes; nevertheless, he remained silent.
“Mac,” went on the younger man, still uttering each word deliberately, “do you mean that Marten is marrying Nancy Willard?”
“Yep.”
“And you’ve kept me here all this time! God in Heaven, Man, find me a horse!”
“It’s too late, Derry. They was wed three hours sence.”
“Too late for what? Get me a horse!”
“There’s not a nag left in Bison. An’ it’ll do you no sort of good ter shoot Marten.”
“Mac, you’re no fool. He sent me to Sacramento to have me out of the way, and you’ve seen through it right along.”
“Maybe. But old man Willard was dead broke. This dry spell put him slick under the harrow. Nancy married Marten ter save her father.”
“That’s a lie! They made her believe it, perhaps; but Willard could have won through as others have done. That scheming devil Marten got me side-tracked on purpose. He planned it, just as David put Uriah in the forefront of the battle. But, by God, he’s not a king, any more than I’m a Hittite! Nancy Willard is not for him, nor ever will be. Give me – but I know you won’t, and it doesn’t matter, anyway, because I’d rather tear him with my hands.”
An overpowering sense of wrong and outrage had Power in its grip now, and his naturally sallow skin had assumed an ivory whiteness that was dreadful to see. So rigid was his self-control that he gave no other sign of the passion that was convulsing him. Turning toward the door, he thrust his right hand to the side of the leather belt he wore; but withdrew it instantly, for he was a law-abiding citizen, and had obeyed in letter and spirit the recently enacted ordinance against the carrying of weapons. He would have gone without another word had not MacGonigal slipped from behind the counter with the deft and catlike ease of movement which some corpulent folk of both sexes seem to possess. Running lightly and stealthily on his toes, he caught Power’s arm before the latter was clear of the veranda which shaded the front of the store.
“Whar ’r you goin’, Derry?” he asked, with a note of keen solicitude in his gruff voice that came oddly in a man accustomed to the social amenities of a mining camp.
“Leave me alone, Mac. I must be alone!” Then Power bent a flaming glance on him. “You’ve told me the truth?” he added in a hoarse whisper.
“Sure thing. You must ha passed the minister between here an’ the depot.”
“He had been there – to marry them?”
“Yep.”
“And everyone is up at the ranch, drinking the health of Marten and his bride?”
“Guess that’s so.”
Power tried to shake off the detaining hand. “It’s a pity that I should be an uninvited guest, but it can’t be helped,” he said savagely. “You see, I was carrying out the millionaire’s orders – earning him more millions – and I ought to have taken longer over the job. And, Nancy too! What lie did they tell her about me? I hadn’t asked her to be my wife, because it wouldn’t have been fair; yet – but she knew! She knew! Let me go, Mac!”
MacGonigal clutched him more tightly. “Ah, say, Derry,” he cried thickly, “hev’ you forgot you’ve left me yer mother’s address in San Francisco? In case of accidents, you said. Well, am I ter write an’ tell her you killed a man on his weddin’ day, and was hanged for it?”
“For the Lord’s sake, don’t hold me, Mac!”
The storekeeper, with a wisdom born of much experience, took his hand off Power’s arm at once, but contrived to edge forward until he was almost facing his distraught friend.
“Now, look-a here!” he said slowly. “This air a mighty bad business; but you cahn’t mend it, an’ ef you go cavortin’ round in a red-eyed temper you’ll sure make it wuss. You’ve lost the gal – never mind how – an’ gittin’ a strangle hold on Marten won’t bring her back. Yer mother’s a heap more to you ner that gal – now.”
One wonders what hidden treasury of insight into the deeps of human nature MacGonigal was drawing on by thus bringing before the mind’s eye of an unhappy son the mother he loved. But there was no gainsaying the soundness and efficiency of his judgment. Only half comprehending his friendly counselor’s purpose, Power quivered like a high-spirited horse under the prick of a spur. He put his hands to his face, as if the gesture would close out forever the horrific vision which the memory of that gray-haired woman in San Francisco was beginning to dispel. For the first time in his young life he had felt the lust of slaying, and the instinct of the jungle thrilled through every nerve, till his nails clenched and his teeth bit in a spasm of sheer delirium.
MacGonigal, despite his present load of flesh, must have passed through the fiery furnace himself in other days; for he recognized the varying phases of the obsession against which Power was fighting.
Hence, he knew when to remain silent, and, again, he knew when to exorcise the demon, once and for all, by the spoken word. It was so still there on that sun-scorched plateau that the mellow whistle of an engine came full-throated from the distant railroad. The lame horse, bothered by the tight bandage which Power had contrived out of a girth, pawed uneasily in his stall. From the reduction works, half a mile away, came the grinding clatter of a mill chewing ore in its steel jaws. These familiar sounds served only to emphasize the brooding solitude of the place. Some imp of mischief seemed to whisper that every man who could be spared from his work, and every woman and child able to walk, was away making merry at the wedding of Hugh Marten and Nancy Willard.
The storekeeper must have heard that malicious prompting, and he combated it most valiantly.
“Guess you’d better come inside, Derry,” he said, with quiet sympathy. “You’re feelin’ mighty bad, an’ I allow you hain’t touched a squar’ meal sence the Lord knows when.”
He said the right thing by intuition. The mere fantasy of the implied belief that a quantity of cold meat and pickles, washed down by a pint of Milwaukee lager, would serve as an emollient for raw emotion, restored Power to his right mind. He placed a hand on MacGonigal’s shoulder, and the brown eyes which met his friend’s no longer glowered with frenzy.
“I’m all right now,” he said, in a dull, even voice; for this youngster of twenty-five owned an extra share of that faculty of self-restraint which is the birthright of every man and woman born and bred on the back-bone of North America. “I took it pretty hard at first, Mac; but I’m not one to cry over spilt milk. You know that, eh? No, I can’t eat or drink yet awhile. I took a lunch below here at the depot. Tell me this, will you? They – they’ll be leaving by train?”
“Yep. Special saloon kyar on the four-ten east. I reckon you saw it on a sidin’, but never suspicioned why it was thar.”
“East? New York and Europe, I suppose?”
“Guess that’s about the line.”
“Then I’ll show up here about half-past four. Till then I’ll fool round by myself. Don’t worry, Mac. I mean that, and no more.”
He walked a few yards; but was arrested by a cry:
“Not that-a way, Derry! Any other old trail but that!”
Then Power laughed; but his laughter was the wail of a soul in pain, for he had gone in the direction of the Dolores ranch. He waved a hand, and the gesture was one of much grace and distinction, because Power insensibly carried himself as a born leader of men.
“Just quit worrying, I tell you,” he said calmly. “I understand. The boys will escort them to that millionaire saloon. They’ll be a lively crowd, of course; but they won’t see me, never fear.”
Then he strode off, his spurs jingling in rhythm with each long, athletic pace. He headed straight for a narrow cleft in the hill at the back of the store, a cleft locally known as the Gulch, and beyond it, on another plateau sloping to the southeast, lay the Willard homestead.
MacGonigal watched the tall figure until it vanished in the upward curving of the path. Then he rolled the cigar between his heavy lips again until it was securely lodged in the opposite corner of his mouth; but the maneuver was wasted, – the cigar was out, – and such a thing had not happened in twenty years! To mark an unprecedented incident, he threw away an unconsumed half.
“He’s crazy ter have a last peep at Nancy,” he communed. “An’ they’d have made a bully fine pair, too, ef it hadn’t been fer that skunk Marten. Poor Derry! Mighty good job I stopped home, or he’d ha gone plumb to hell.”
Of course, the storekeeper was talking to himself; so he may not have said it, really. But he thought it, and, theologically, that is as bad. Moreover, he might have electrified Bison by his language that night were he gifted with second sight; for he had seen the last of the proud, self-contained yet light-hearted and generous-souled cavalier whom he had known and liked as “Derry” Power. They were fated to meet again many times, under conditions as varying as was ever recorded in a romance of real life; but MacGonigal had to find a place in his heart for a new man, because “Derry” Power was dead – had died there in the open doorway of the store – and a stranger named John Darien Power reigned in his stead.