The Helpers

"Go and ask the clerk the name of the man who was shot, will you?"

The information came in two words, and the querist gathered up his papers and sent the boy for his room key. At the stairhead he met the surgeon and stopped him to ask about the wounded man.

"How are you, Doctor? What is the verdict? Is there a fighting chance for him?"

"Oh, yes; much more than that. It isn't as bad as it might have been; the skull isn't fractured. But it was enough to knock him out under the circumstances. He had skipped two or three meals, he tells me, and was under a pretty tense strain of excitement."

"Then he is conscious?"

The physician laughed. "Very much so. He is sitting up to take my prescription, – which was a square meal. Whatever the strain was, it isn't off yet. He insists that he must mount and ride this afternoon if he has to be lashed in the saddle; has already ordered a horse, in fact. He is plucky."

"Then he is able to talk business, I suppose."

"Able, yes; but if you can get anything out of him, you'll do better than I could. He won't talk, – won't even tell what the row was about."

"Won't he?" The man of affairs crossed the corridor and tapped on the door of Number Nineteen. There was no response, and he turned the knob and entered. The shades were drawn and there was a cleanly odor of aseptics in the air of the darkened room. The wounded man was propped among pillows on the bed, with a well-furnished tea-tray on his knees. He gave prompt evidence of his ability to talk.

"Back again, are you? I told you I had nothing to say for publication, and I meant it." This wrathfully; then he discovered his mistake, but the tone of the careless apology was scarcely more conciliatory. "Oh – excuse me. I thought it was the reporter."

Bartrow's correspondent found a chair and introduced himself with charitable directness. "My name is Denby. I am here because Mr. Richard Bartrow wires me to look you up."

Jeffard delayed the knife and fork play long enough to say: "Denby? – oh, yes; I remember. Thank you," and there the interview bade fair to die of inanition. Jeffard went on with his dinner as one who eats to live; and Denby tilted his chair gently and studied his man as well as he might in the twilight of the drawn shades. After a time, he said: —

"Bartrow bespeaks my help for you. He says your affair may need expediting: does it?"

Jeffard's rejoinder was almost antagonistic. "How much do you know of the affair?"

"What the whole town knows by this time – added to what little Bartrow tells me in his wire. You or your partner have stumbled upon an abandoned claim which promises to be a bonanza. One of you – public rumor is a little uncertain as to which one – tried to euchre the other; and it seems that you have won in the race to the Recorder's office, and have come out of it alive. Is that the summary?"

He called it public rumor, but it was rather a shrewd guess. Jeffard did not hasten to confirm it. On the contrary, his reply was evasive.

"You may call it an hypothesis – a working hypothesis, if you choose. What then?"

The promoter was not of those who swerve from conclusions. "It follows that you are a stout fighter, and a man to be helped, or a very great rascal," he said coolly.

Again the knife and fork paused, and the wounded man's gaze was at least as steady as that of his conditional accuser. "It may simplify matters, Mr. Denby, if I say that I expect nothing from public rumor."

The mine-owner shrugged his shoulders as an unwilling arbiter who would fain wash his hands of the ethical entanglement if he could.

"It's your own affair, of course, – the public opinion part of it. But it may prove to be worth your while not to ignore the suffrages of those who make and unmake reputations."

"Why?"

"Because you will need capital, – honest capital, – and" —

He left the sentence in the air, and Jeffard brought it down with a cynical stonecast.

"And, under the circumstances, an honest capitalist might hesitate, you would say. Possibly; but capital, as I know it, is not so discriminating when the legal requirements are satisfied. There will be no question of ownership involved in the development of the 'Midas.'"

"Legal ownership, you mean?"

"Legal or otherwise. When the time for investment comes, I shall be abundantly able to assure the capitalist."

"To guarantee the investment: doubtless. But capital is not always as unscrupulous as you seem to think."

"No?" – the tilt of the negative was almost aggressive. "There are borrowers and borrowers, Mr. Denby. It's the man without collateral who is constrained to make a confidant of his banker."

The blue-gray eyes of the master of men looked their levelest, and the clean-shaven face was shrewdly inscrutable. "Pardon me, Mr. Jeffard, but there are men who couldn't borrow with the Orizaba behind them."

Jeffard parried the eye-thrust, and brushed the generalities aside in a sentence.

"All of which is beside the mark, and I have neither the strength nor the inclination to flail it out with you. As you say, I shall need capital – yours or another's. State the case – yours, or mine, – in so many words, if you please."

"Briefly, then: the equity in this affair lies between you and the man who tried to kill you. I mean by this that the bonanza is either yours or his. If it were a partnership discovery there would have been no chance for one of you to overreach the other. You'll hardly deny that there was a sharp fight for possession: you both advertised that fact pretty liberally."

Jeffard was listening with indifference, real or feigned, and he neither denied nor affirmed. "Go on."

"From the point of view of an unprejudiced observer the evidence is against your partner. He comes here drunk and abusive, in company with two men whose faces would condemn them anywhere, and squanders his lead in the race in a supplementary carouse. And a little later, when he finds that you have outclassed him, he shoots you down like a dog in a fit of drunken fury. To an impartial onlooker the inference is fairly obvious."

"And that is?" —

"That your partner is the scoundrel; that the discovery is yours, and that he and his accomplices were trying to rob you. I don't mind saying that this is my own inference, but I shall be glad to have it confirmed."

Jeffard looked up quickly. "Then Bartrow hasn't told you" —

"Bartrow's message was merely introductory; two pages of eulogy, in fact, as any friendly office of Dick's is bound to be. He doesn't go into details."

Jeffard put the tea-tray aside and with it the air of abstraction, and in a better light his interlocutor would not have failed to remark the swift change from dubiety to assurance.

"Will you bear with me, Mr. Denby, if I say that your methods are a little indirect? You say that the evidence is against James Garvin, and yet you give me to understand that it will be well if I can clear myself."

"Exactly; a word of assurance is sometimes worth many deductions."

"But if, for reasons of my own, I refuse to say the word?"

The promoter's shrug was barely perceptible. "I don't see why you should refuse."

Jeffard went silent at that, lying back with closed eyes and no more than a twitching of the lips to show that he was not asleep. After what seemed an interminable interval to the mine-owner, he said: —

"I do refuse, for the present. A few days later, when I have done what I have to do, there will be time enough to discuss ways and means – and ethics, if you still feel inclined that way. May I trouble you to run that window-shade up?" He was sitting on the edge of the bed and groping beneath it for his shoes.

The promoter admitted the light and ventured a question.

"What are you going to do?"

"Get on the ground with the least possible delay."

The shoes were found, but when the wounded one bent to lace them the room spun around and he would have fallen if Denby had not caught him.

"You're not fit," said the master of men, not unsympathetically. "You couldn't sit a horse if your life depended upon it."

"I must; therefore I can and will," Jeffard asserted, with fine determination. "Be good enough to ask the bell-boy to come in and lace my shoes."

The man with a mission to compel other men smiled. His fetish was indomitable resolution, for himself first, and afterward for those who deserved; and here was a man who, whatever his lacks and havings in the ethical field, was at least courageous. Having admitted so much, the promoter went down on one knee to lace the courageous one's shoes, dissuading him, meanwhile.

"You can't go to-day; the wound-fever will come on presently, and you'll be a sick man. Let it rest a while. Having put himself on the criminal side of the fence by trying to kill you, your partner will hardly dare to jump the claim in person; he will have to find a proxy, and that will ask for time, – more time than the sheriff-dodging will permit."

"His proxies are here, and they will act without instructions from him," said Jeffard, with his hands to his head and his teeth set to keep the words from shaping themselves into a groan.

"You mean the two who were with him?"

"Yes. So far as the present fight is concerned, the three are one; and two of them are still free to act."

"So? – that's different." Denby finished tying the second shoe and rose to begin measuring a sentinel's beat between the window and the door, pacing evenly with his brows knitted and his hands clasped behind him. "You know what to expect, then?"

"I know that I have been twice shot at within the past two hours, and that the moments are golden."

"But you are in no condition to go in and hold it alone! You'll have to meet force with force. You ought to have at least three or four good men with you."

"What I have to do presupposes a clear field," said Jeffard guardedly. "If it should come to blows, the discussion of – of ethics will be indefinitely postponed, I'm afraid."

"Humph! I suppose your reasons are as strong as your obstinacy. How far is it to your claim?"

"I don't know the exact distance; about twenty miles, I believe. But there is a mountain range intervening."

"You can't ride it in your present condition; it's a sheer physical impossibility."

"I shall ride it."

"What is the use of being an ass?" demanded the master of men, losing patience for once in a way. "Don't you see you can't stand alone?"

Jeffard struggled to his feet and wavered across the room to a chair. Denby laughed, – a quiet little chuckle of appreciation.

"I didn't mean literally; I meant in the business affair. You'll have to have help from the start. That means that you will have to trust some one. From what you say it is evident that there will be an immediate attempt made to jump the claim; an attempt which will be afoot and on the ground long before you can get there. Let us be reasonable and take hold of the live facts. I have a man here who is both capable and trustworthy. Let me send him in with a sufficient force to stand off the jumpers until you are able to hold your own."

Jeffard shook his head. "I can't do it, unreasonable as it may seem. I must go first and alone. That is another mystery, you will say, but I can't help it. If I win through it alive I shall be here again in a day or two, ready to talk business. More than that I can't say now."

Denby's thin lips came together in a straight line, with a click of the white teeth behind them. "As you please. I am not going about to prove to you that you would lose nothing by trusting me from the start. Can I do anything toward helping you off?"

"Yes; you can give me your shoulder down the stair and a lift into the saddle."

The little journey to the ground floor was made in silence. When they were passing the desk the clerk said: "Your horse is at the door, Mr. Jeffard. I was just about to send up word. Are you feeling better?"

"I am all right." He leaned heavily on the counter and paid his bill. "Did the liveryman leave any message?"

"No, only to say that he has stocked the saddle-bags as you directed."

The personally conducted journey went on to the sidewalk, and Denby heaved the wounded one into the saddle, steadying him therein till the vertigo loosed its hold.

"Anything else you can delegate?"

"No, thank you; nothing that I think of."

"You are still determined to go?"

"Quite determined."

"Well, you are a stubborn madman, and I rather like you for it; that's all I have to say. Good luck to you."

Jeffard gathered the reins and sat reflective what time the broncho sniffed the cool breeze pouring down from the higher slopes of the western range. When the horse would have set out, Jeffard restrained him yet another moment.

"You intimated a few minutes ago that I was afraid to trust you, Mr. Denby," he said, picking and choosing among the words as one who has a difficult course to steer. "I do trust you as far as I can trust any one at the present crisis, and I'll prove it." He drew a crumpled bit of paper from his pocket, and smoothed it upon the pommel of the saddle. "Here is a rough map of the claim and the trails by which it may be reached. If I'm not back in Aspen in three days, fit out your expedition and go in prepared to take and hold the property. The men you will find in possession will be robbers, – and murderers, – and you may have to fight for it; but that won't matter. In the right-hand tunnel wall, a few feet from the entrance, you will see a crevice where the dynamite was kept. In the bottom of that crevice you'll find my last will and testament, and I'm going to believe that you will carry out its provisions to the letter."

The promoter's smile was of grimness, with quarterings of approval.

"Which is to say that you'll be safely dead and buried. Barring your idiotic stubbornness, you are a man after my own heart, Mr. Jeffard, and I'll willingly be your executor. Are you armed?"

"No; I told you it would depend upon speed. I have no weapons."

"What! And you are going on a forlorn hope with an even chance of having to fight for your life? Wait a minute."

He ran back into the hotel, coming out again presently with a repeating rifle and a well-filled cartridge belt. "There is such a thing as cold nerve carried to the vanishing point in foolhardiness, Mr. Jeffard," he said. "Put this belt on while I sling the rifle under the saddle-flap. Can you shoot straight?"

"It is extremely doubtful. A little target practice as a boy" —

"Target practice! – and you may have to stand off a gang of desperadoes who can clip coins at a hundred yards! You'd better reconsider and give me time to organize a posse."

"No; thank you – for that and everything else. Good-by."

Denby stood on the curb and watched his man ride slowly up the street and take the turn toward the southern mountains. After which he went back to his place at the public writing-table in the lobby, picking up the hotel stenographer on the way. For a preoccupied half-hour he dictated steadily, and when the last letter was answered got up to pace out the transcribing interval. In the midst of it he drifted out to the sidewalk and stood staring absently up the street, as, an hour earlier, he had gazed after the lessening figure of the obstinate one. But this time there were two horsemen in the field of vision wending their way leisurely to the street-end. Denby, thinking pointedly of other things, saw them and saw them not; but when they, too, took the turn to the southward, he came alive to the probabilities in the heart of an instant.

"By all that's good! – they're after him, as sure as fate!" he muttered; and a little later he was quizzing the proprietor of a livery stable around the corner.

"Do you know those two fellows who have just left, Thompson?"

"You bet I don't; and I made 'em put up the collateral for the whole outfit before they got away."

"Where did you say they were going?"

"Didn't say, did I? But somewheres up Jackfoot Gulch was what they told me."

"H'm; that is east. And just now they are riding in another direction. You sold them the horses, you say?"

The man grinned. "Temp'rarily. I'll take 'em back at the same price, less the tariff, if I ever see 'em again. I ain't takin' no chances on stray strangers with any such lookin'-glass-bustin' faces as they've got. Not much, Mary Ann."

"It is well to be careful. Have you seen my man Donald since dinner?"

"Yes; he was here just now and said he'd be back again. Want him?"

Denby looked at his watch. "Yes. If he doesn't come back within five minutes, send some of the boys out to hunt him up. Tell him to outfit for himself and me for two days, and to be at the hotel at three, sharp. Give him the best horses you can lay your hands on."

"Always yours to command, Mr. Denby. Anything else?"

"That's all."

The promoter left the stable and walked quickly to the hotel. At the entrance he met an acquaintance and stopped to pass the time of day.

"How are you, Roberts? – By the way, you are just the man I wanted to see; saves me a trip to the Court House. Did a fellow named Jeffard, J-e-f-f-a-r-d, file a notice and affidavit on a claim called the 'Midas' just after dinner?"

"No. He came over to ask me if there was any way in which he could secure himself. It seems that he neglected to post a notice on the claim before coming out with his samples, – why, he didn't explain."

Denby nodded and went on, talking to himself. "So! – that's his little mystery, is it? The 'Midas' isn't located yet, and until he gets that notice posted and recorded, it's anybody's bonanza. I hope Donald can pick up the trail and follow it. If he can't, there'll be one plucky fellow less in the world, and two more thugs to be hanged, later on."