A battling eon had passed before Smith, battered, beaten, and half-strangled, succeeded in landing the unconscious thirst-quencher on a shelving bank three hundred yards below the stopped automobile. After that there was another eon in which he completely forgot his own bruisings while he worked desperately over the drowned man, raising and lowering the limp arms while he strove to recall more of the resuscitative directions given in the Lawrenceville Athletic Club's first-aid drills.
In good time, after an interval so long that it seemed endless to the despairing first-aider, the breath came back into the reluctant lungs. Jibbey coughed, choked, gasped, and sat up. His teeth were chattering, and he was chilled to the bone by the sudden plunge into the cold snow water, but he was unmistakably alive.
"What – what happened to me, Monty?" he shuddered. "Did I lose my grip and tumble in?"
"You did, for a fact."
"And you went in after me?"
"Of course."
"No, by Gad! It wasn't 'of course' – not by a long shot! All you had to do was to let me go, and the score – your score – would have been wiped out for good and all. Why didn't you do it?"
"Because I should have lost my bet."
"Your bet?"
"Well, yes. It wasn't exactly a bet; but I promised somebody that I would bring you back to Brewster to-night, alive and well, and able to send a telegram. And if I had let you drown yourself, I should have lost out."
"You promised somebody? – not Verda?"
"No; somebody else."
Jibbey tried to get upon his feet, couldn't quite compass it, and sat down again.
"I don't believe a word of it," he mumbled, loose-lipped. "You did it because you're not so danged tough and hard-hearted as you thought you were." And then: "Give me a lift, Monty, and get me to the auto. I guess – I'm about – all in."
Smith half led, half carried his charge up to the road and then left him to go and back the car over the three hundred-odd yards of the interspace. A final heave lifted Jibbey into his place, and it is safe to say that Colonel Dexter Baldwin's roadster never made better time than it did on the race which finally brought the glow of the Brewster town lights reddening against the eastern sky.
At the hotel Smith helped his dripping passenger out of the car, made a quick rush with him to an elevator, and so up to his own rooms on the fourth floor.
"Strip!" he commanded; "get out of those wet rags and tumble into the bath. Make it as hot as you can stand it. I'll go down and register you and have your trunk sent up from the station. You have a trunk, haven't you?"
Jibbey fished a soaked card baggage-check out of his pocket and passed it over.
"You're as bad off as I am, Monty," he protested. "Wait and get some dry things on before you go."
"I'll be up again before you're out of the tub. I suppose you'd like to put yourself outside of a big drink of whiskey, just about now, but that's one thing I won't buy for you. How would a pot of hot coffee from the café strike you?"
"You could make it Mellin's Food and I'd drink it if you said so," chattered the drowned one from the inside of the wet undershirt he was trying to pull off over his head.
Smith did his various errands quickly. When he reached the fourth-floor suite again, Jibbey was out of the bath; was sitting on the edge of the bed wrapped in blankets, with the steaming pot of coffee sent up on Smith's hurry order beside him on a tray.
"It's your turn at the tub," he bubbled cheerfully. "I didn't have any glad rags to put on, so I swiped some of your bedclothes. Go to it, old man, before you catch cold."
Smith was already pointing for the bath. "Your trunk will be up in a few minutes, and I've told them to send it here," he said. "When you want to quit me, you'll find your rooms five doors to the right in this same corridor: suite number four-sixteen."
It was a long half-hour before Smith emerged from his bath-room once more clothed and in his right mind. In the interval the reclaimed trunk had been sent up, and Jibbey was also clothed. He had found one of Smith's pipes and some tobacco and was smoking with the luxurious enjoyment of one who had suffered the pangs imposed by two days of total abstinence.
"Just hangin' around to say good night," he began, when Smith showed himself in the sitting-room. Then he returned the borrowed pipe to its place on the mantel and said his small say to the definite end. "After all that's happened to us two to-night, Monty, I hope you're going to forget my crazy yappings and not lose any sleep about that Lawrenceville business. I'm seventeen different kinds of a rotten failure; there's no manner of doubt about that; and once in a while – just once in a while – I've got sense enough to know it. You saved my life when it would have been all to the good for you to let me go. I guess the world wouldn't have been much of a loser if I had gone, and you knew that, too. Will you – er – would you shake hands with me, Monty?"
Smith did it, and lo! a miracle was wrought: in the nervous grasp of the joined hands a quickening thrill passed from man to man;, a thrill humanizing, redemptory, heart-mellowing. And, oddly enough, one would say, it was the weaker man who gave and the stronger who received.
XXV
The Pace-Setter
Smith made an early breakfast on the morning following the auto drive to the abandoned mine, hoping thereby to avoid meeting both Miss Richlander and Jibbey. The Hophra café was practically empty when he went in and took his accustomed place at one of the alcove tables, but he had barely given his order when Starbuck appeared and came to join him.
"You're looking a whole heap better this morning, John," said the mine owner quizzically, as he held up a finger for the waiter. "How's the grouch?"
Smith's answering grin had something of its former good nature in it. "To-day's the day, Billy," he said. "To-morrow at midnight we must have the water running in the ditches or lose our franchise. It's chasing around in the back part of my mind that Stanton will make his grand-stand play to-day. I'm not harboring any grouches on the edge of the battle. They are a handicap, anyway, and always."
"That's good medicine talk," said the older man, eying him keenly. And then: "You had us all guessing, yesterday and the day before, John. You sure was acting as if you'd gone plumb locoed."
"I was locoed," was the quiet admission.
"What cured you?"
"It's too long a story to tell over the breakfast-table. What do you hear from Williams?"
"All quiet during the night; but the weather reports are scaring him up a good bit this morning."
"Storms on the range?"
"Yes. The river gained four feet last night, and there is flood water and drift coming down to beat the band. Just the same, Bartley says he is going to make good."
Smith nodded. "Bartley is all right; the right man in the right place. Have you seen the colonel since he left the offices last evening?"
"Yes. I drove him and Corona out to the ranch in my new car. He said he'd lost his roadster; somebody had sneaked in and borrowed it."
"I suppose he told you about the latest move – our move – in the stock-selling game?"
"No, he didn't; but Stillings did. You played it pretty fine, John; only I hope to gracious we won't have to redeem those options. It would bu'st our little inside crowd wide open to have to buy in all that stock at par."
Smith laughed. "'Sufficient unto the day,' Billy. It was the only way to block Stanton. It's neck or nothing with him now, and he has only one more string that he can pull."
"The railroad right-of-way deal?"
"Yes; he has been holding that in reserve – that, and one other thing."
"What was the other thing?"
"Me," said Smith, cheerfully disregardful of his English. "You haven't forgotten his instructions to the man Lanterby, that night out at the road-house on the Topaz pike? – the talk that you overheard?"
"No; I haven't forgotten."
"His idea, then, was to have me killed off in a scrap of some sort – as a last resort, of course; but later on he found a safer expedient, and he has been trying his level best to work it ever since."
Starbuck was absently fishing for a second cube of sugar in the sugar-bowl. "Has it got anything to do with the bunch of news that you won't tell us – about yourself, John?"
"It has. Two days ago, Stanton had his finger fairly on the trigger, but a friend of mine stepped in and snapped the safety-catch. Last night, again, he stood to win out; to have the pry-hold he has been searching for handed to him on a silver platter, so to speak. But a man fell into the river, and Stanton lost out once more."
Starbuck glanced up soberly. "You're talking in riddles now, John. I don't sabe."
"It isn't necessary for you to sabe. Results are what count. Barring accidents, you Timanyoni High Line people can reasonably count on having me with you for the next few critical days; and, I may add, you never needed me more pointedly."
Starbuck's smile was face-wide.
"I hope I don't feel sorry," he remarked. "Some day, when you can take an hour or so off, I'm going to get you to show me around in your little mu-zeeum of self-conceit, John. Maybe I can learn how to gather me up one."
Smith matched the mine owner's good-natured smile. For some unexplainable reason the world, his particular world, seemed to have lost its malignance. He could even think of Stanton without bitterness; and the weapon which had been weighting his hip pocket for the past few days had been carefully buried in the bottom of the lower dressing-case drawer before he came down to breakfast.
"You may laugh, Billy, but you'll have to admit that I've been outfiguring the whole bunch of you, right from the start," he retorted brazenly. "It's my scheme, and I'm going to put it through with a whoop. You'll see – before to-morrow night."
"I reckon, when you do put it through, you can ask your own fee," said Starbuck quietly.
"I'm going to; and the size of it will astonish you, Billy. I shall turn over the little block of stock you folks have been good enough to let me carry, give you and the colonel and the board of directors a small dinner in the club-room up-stairs and – vanish. But let's get down to business. This is practically Stanton's last day of grace. If he can't get some legal hold upon us before midnight to-morrow night, or work some scheme to make us lose our franchise, his job is gone."
"Show me," said the mine owner succinctly.
"It's easy. With the dam completed and the water running in the ditches, we become at once a going concern, with assets a long way in advance of our liabilities. The day after to-morrow – if we pull through – you won't be able to buy a single share of Timanyoni High Line at any figure. As a natural consequence, public sentiment, which, we may say, is at present a little doubtful, will come over to our side in a land-slide, and Stanton's outfit, if it wants to continue the fight, will have to fight the entire Timanyoni, with the city of Brewster thrown in for good measure. Am I making it plain?"
"Right you are, so far. Go on."
"On the other hand, if Stanton can block us before to-morrow night; hang us up in some way and make us lose our rights under the charter; we're gone – snuffed out like a candle. Listen, Billy, and I'll tell you something that I haven't dared to tell anybody, not even Colonel Baldwin. I've been spending the company's money like water to keep in touch. The minute we fail, and long before we could hope to reorganize a second time and apply for a new charter, Stanton's company will be in the field, with its charter already granted. From that to taking possession of our dam, either by means of an enabling act of the Legislature, or by purchase from the paper railroad, will be only a step. And we couldn't do a thing! We'd have no legal rights, and no money to fight with!"
Starbuck pushed his chair away from the table and drew a long breath.
"Good Lord!" he sighed; "I wish to goodness it was day after to-morrow! Can you carry it any further, John?"
"Yes; a step or two. For a week Stanton has been busy on the paper-railroad claim, and that is what made me buy a few cases of Winchesters and send them out to Williams: I was afraid Stanton might try force. He won't do that if he can help it; he'll go in with some legal show, if possible, because our force at the dam far outnumbers any gang he could hire, and he knows we are armed."
"He can't work the legal game," said Starbuck definitively. "I've known Judge Warner ever since I was knee-high to a hop-toad, and a squarer man doesn't breathe."
"That is all right, but you're forgetting something. The paper railroad is – or was once – an interstate corporation, and so may ask for relief from the federal courts, thus going over Judge Warner's head. I'm not saying anything against Lorching, the federal judge at Red Butte. I've met him, and he is a good jurist and presumably an honest man. But he is well along in years, and has an exaggerated notion of his own importance. Stanton, or rather his figurehead railroad people, have asked him to intervene, and he has taken the case under advisement. That is where we stand this morning."
Starbuck was nodding slowly. "I see what you mean, now," he said. "If Lorching jumps the wrong way for us, you're looking to see a United States marshal walk up to Bartley Williams some time to-day and tell him to quit. That would put the final kibosh on us, wouldn't it?"
Smith was rising in his place.
"I'm not dead yet, Billy," he rejoined cheerfully. "I haven't let it get this far without hammering out a few expedients for our side. If I can manage to stay in the fight to-day and to-morrow – "
A little new underclerk had come in from the hotel office and was trying to give Starbuck a note in a square envelope, and Starbuck was saying: "No; that's Mr. Smith, over there."
Smith took the note and opened it, and he scarcely heard the clerk's explanation that it had been put in his box the evening before, and that the day clerk had been afraid he would get away without finding it. It was from Verda Richlander, and it had neither superscription nor signature. This is what Smith read:
"My little ruse has failed miserably. Mr. K's. messenger found my father in spite of it, and he – the messenger – returned this evening: I know, because he brought a note from father to me. Come to me as early to-morrow morning as you can, and we'll plan what can be done."
Smith crushed the note in his hand and thrust it into his pocket. Starbuck was making a cigarette, and was studiously refraining from breaking in. But Smith did not keep him waiting.
"That was my knock-out, Billy," he said with a quietness that was almost overdone. "My time has suddenly been shortened to hours – perhaps to minutes. Get a car as quickly as you can and go to Judge Warner's house. I have an appointment with him at nine o'clock. Tell him I'll keep it, if I can, but that he needn't wait for me if I am not there on the minute."
XXVI
The Colonel's "Defi"
Though it was only eight o'clock, Smith sent his card to Miss Richlander's rooms at once and then had himself lifted to the mezzanine floor to wait for her. She came in a few minutes, a strikingly beautiful figure of a woman in the freshness of her morning gown, red-lipped, bright-eyed, and serenely conscious of her own resplendent gifts of face and figure. Smith went quickly to meet her and drew her aside into the music parlor. Already the need for caution was beginning to make itself felt.
"I have come," he said briefly.
"You got my note?" she asked.
"A few minutes ago – just as I was leaving the breakfast-table."
"You will leave Brewster at once – while the way is still open?"
He shook his head, "I can't do that; in common justice to the men who have trusted me, and who are now needing me more than ever, I must stay through this one day, and possibly another."
"Mr. Kinzie will not be likely to lose any time," she prefigured thoughtfully. "He has probably telegraphed to Lawrenceville before this." Then, with a glance over her shoulder to make sure that there were no eavesdroppers: "Of course, you know that Mr. Stanton is at the bottom of all this prying and spying?"
"It is Stanton's business to put me out of the game, if he can. I've told you enough of the situation here so that you can understand why it is necessary for him to efface me. His time has grown very short now."
Again the statuesque beauty glanced over her shoulder.
"Lawrenceville is a long way off, and Sheriff Macauley is enough of a politician – in an election year – to want to be reasonably certain before he incurs the expense of sending a deputy all the way out here, don't you think?" she inquired.
"Certainty? There isn't the slightest element of uncertainty in it. There are hundreds of people in Brewster who can identify me."
"But not one of these Brewsterites can identify you as John Montague Smith, of Lawrenceville – the man who is wanted by Sheriff Macauley," she put in quickly. Then she added: "My father foresaw that difficulty. As I told you in my note, he sent me a letter by Mr. Kinzie's messenger. After telling me that he will be detained in the mountains several days longer, he refers to Mr. Kinzie's request and suggests – "
The fugitive was smiling grimly. "He suggests that you might help Mr. Kinzie out by telling him whether or not he has got hold of the right John Smith?"
"Not quite that," she rejoined. "He merely suggests that I may be asked to identify you; in which case I am to be prudent, and – to quote him exactly – 'not get mixed up in the affair in any way so that it would make talk.'"
"I see," said Smith. And then: "You have a disagreeable duty ahead of you, and I'd relieve you of the necessity by running away, if I could. But that is impossible, as I have explained."
She was silent for a moment; then she said: "When I told you a few days ago that you were going to need my help, Montague, I didn't foresee anything like this. Have you any means of finding out whether or not Mr. Kinzie has sent his wire to Lawrenceville?"
"Yes, I think I can do that much."
"Suppose you do it and then let me know. I shall breakfast with the Stantons in a few minutes; and after nine o'clock … if you could contrive to keep out of the way until I can get word to you; just so they won't be able to bring us face to face with each other – "
Smith saw what she meant; saw, also, whereunto his wretched fate was dragging him. It was the newest of all the reincarnations, the one which had begun with Jibbey's silent hand-clasp the night before, which prompted him to say:
"If they should ask you about me, you must tell them the truth, Verda."
Her smile was mildly scornful.
"Is that what the plain-faced little ranch person would do?" she asked.
"I don't know; yes, I guess it is."
"Doesn't she care any more for you than that?"
Smith did not reply. He was standing where he could watch the comings and goings of the elevators. Time was precious and he was chafing at the delay, but Miss Richlander was not yet ready to let him go.
"Tell me honestly, Montague," she said; "is it anything more than a case of propinquity with this Baldwin girl? – on your part, I mean."
"It isn't anything," he returned soberly. "Corona Baldwin will never marry any man who has so much to explain as I have."
"You didn't know this was her home, when you came out here?"
"No."
"But you had met her somewhere, before you came?"
"Once; yes. It was in Guthrieville, over a year ago. I had driven over to call on some people that I knew, and I met her there at a house where she was visiting."
"Does she remember that she had met you?"
"No, not yet." He was certain enough of this to answer without reservations.
"But you remembered her?"
"Not at first."
"I see," she nodded, and then, without warning: "What was the matter with you last night – about dinner-time?"
"Why should you think there was anything the matter with me?"
"I was out driving with the Stantons. When I came back to the hotel I found Colonel Baldwin and another man – a lawyer, I think he was – waiting for me. They said you were needing a friend who could go and talk to you and – 'calm you down,' was the phrase the lawyer used. I was good-natured enough to go with them, but when we reached your offices you had gone, and the ranch girl was there alone, waiting for her father."
"That was nonsense!" he commented; "their going after you as if I were a maniac or a drunken man, I mean."
This time Miss Richlander's smile was distinctly resentful. "I suppose the colonel's daughter answered the purpose better," she said. "There was an awkward little contretemps, and Miss Baldwin refused, rather rudely, I thought, to tell her father where you had gone."
Smith broke away from the unwelcome subject abruptly, saying: "There is something else you ought to know. Jibbey is here, at last."
"Here in the hotel?"
"Yes."
"Does he know you are here?"
"He does."
"Why didn't you tell me before? That will complicate things dreadfully. Tucker will talk and tell all he knows; he can't help it."
"This is one time when he will not talk. Perhaps he will tell you why when you see him."
Miss Richlander glanced at the face of the small watch pinned on her shoulder.
"You must not stay here any longer," she protested. "The Stantons may come down any minute, now, and they mustn't find us together. I am still forgiving enough to want to help you, but you must do your part and let me know what is going on."
Smith promised and took his dismissal with a mingled sense of relief and fresh embarrassment. In the new development which was threatening to drag him back once more into the primitive savageries, he would have been entirely willing to eliminate Verda Richlander as a factor, helpful or otherwise. But there was good reason to fear that she might refuse to be eliminated.
William Starbuck's new car was standing in front of Judge Warner's house in the southern suburb when Smith descended from the closed cab which he had taken at the Hophra House side entrance. The clock in the court-house tower was striking the quarter of nine. The elevated mesa upon which the suburb was built commanded a broad view of the town and the outlying ranch lands, and in the distance beyond the river the Hillcrest cottonwoods outlined themselves against a background of miniature buttes.
Smith's gaze took in the wide, sunlit prospect. He had paid and dismissed his cabman, and the thought came to him that in a few hours the wooded buttes, the bare plains, the mighty mountains, and the pictured city spreading map-like at his feet would probably exist for him only as a memory. While he halted on the terrace, Starbuck came out of the house.
"The judge is at breakfast," the mine owner announced. "You're to go in and wait. What do you want me to do next?"
Smith glanced down regretfully at the shining varnish and resplendent metal of the new automobile. "If your car wasn't so new," he began; but Starbuck cut him off.
"Call the car a thousand years old and go on."
"All right. When I get through with the judge I shall want to go out to the dam. Will you wait and take me?"
"Surest thing on earth," – with prompt acquiescence. And then: "Is it as bad as you thought it was going to be, John?"
"It's about as bad as it can be," was the sober reply, and with that Smith went in to wait for his interview with the Timanyoni's best-beloved jurist.
As we have seen, this was at nine o'clock, or a few minutes before the hour, and as Starbuck descended the stone steps to take his seat in the car, David Kinzie, at his desk in the Brewster City National, was asking the telephone "central" to give him the Timanyoni High Line offices. Martin, the bookkeeper, answered, and he took a message from the bank president that presently brought Colonel Dexter Baldwin to the private room in the bank known to nervous debtors as "the sweat-box".
"Sit down, Dexter," said the banker shortly; "sit down a minute while I look at my mail."
It was one of David Kinzie's small subtleties to make a man sit idly thus, on one pretext or another; it rarely failed to put the incomer at a disadvantage, and on the present occasion it worked like a charm. Baldwin had let his cigar go out and had chewed the end of it into a pulp before Kinzie swung around in his chair and launched out abruptly.
