It was at the Bijou that he had lost the better part of the winnings rescued by the miner's bit of charitable by-play; and it was there, also, that he had thrown away the major portion of a second gift from Lansdale. For two nights in succession the lack of money had kept him away.
He took out Connie's offering and stared at it with lack-lustre eyes. With heedful manipulation here was the fuel to feed the fire of his besetting passion for some hours. Having permitted her to give and himself to take it, why should he quibble at the manner of its spending? When he saw that hesitancy implied another attempt to turn back at the eleventh hour, he felt that this was no longer possible. Try as he might, the shame of this last infamous thing would reach out and drag him back into the mire.
The alternative disposed of, the matter simplified itself. He had only to determine whether he should end it all before or after he had flung away this bit of yellow metal. The decision was so nicely balanced that he let it turn upon the flipping of the coin – heads for a sudden plunge into the pond, tails for a final bout with chance and the plunge afterward.
He spun the gold piece, and went down on his hands and knees to read the oracle in the fading light. It was the misshapen eagle that stared back at him from the face of the coin, and he took his reprieve sullenly, calling his evil genius a usurer.
He got upon his feet stiffly and turned his face toward the city. Then it occurred to him that it would be well to make his preparations while he could see. There was a house building on the little knoll above the pond; a brick and the binding-string from a bundle of lath would serve; and when he had secured them he sounded the pond around the edges with a stick. It was too shallow; but from a plank thrown across to the head of the drainage flume it proved deep enough, and here he left the brick and the bit of tarred twine.
Half an hour later he entered the Bijou. On the threshold he met the proprietor; and when he would have passed with a nod, Grim barred the way.
"Been layin' for you," announced the man of vice, sententiously. "Come into the box-office."
Jeffard obeyed mechanically. He was in the semi-stupor which anticipates the delirium of the gaming fever, and the man's voice sounded afar off. Grim led the way behind the bar to a windowless den furnished with a roll-top desk and two chairs. Closing the door, he waved Jeffard to a seat.
"Been sort o' sizin' you up lately, and I put it up that you're out o' luck. Does that call the turn?"
"I don't know how that concerns you," said Jeffard, with a sudden access of dull resentment.
"No more do I; but that's neither here nor yonder. You're down on your luck, ain't you?"
Jeffard nodded. "Call it that, if you like."
"Thought so. Broke most of the time, I reckon?"
"Yes; most of the time."
"Jes' so. Well, I'm goin' to put you on to a soft snap. I know all about you – who you are, where you come from, and all the rest. You've been playin' to lose right along, and now I'm goin' to give you a tip so you can play to win ever' time. See?"
Jeffard came out of his abstraction sufficiently to wonder what the man was driving at. "Make it short," he rejoined curtly.
Grim leaned back in his pivot-chair, and his hard face wrinkled under an evil smile.
"Don't be in a rush. Game runs all night, and you'll have plenty of time to go and blow in whatever you've got after I get through with you. Or, if you can't wait, go and blow it first, and we'll talk business afterwards."
"No," Jeffard objected sullenly. "If you have anything to say to me, say it now."
"Business before pleasure, eh? All right; here's the lay-out. I'm goin' to stake you with a suit o' good clothes, pay your board at the Albany or the Brown, whichever you like, and give you a roll to flash up that'll make you feel flush ever' time you look at it. Then" —
Jeffard's gesture was of impatience.
"Never mind about the details. What is the price of all this?"
"Mighty nigh nothin' at all. You had plenty o' friends a while back, and you'll have 'em again, as soon as you're flush. And when any of 'em feel like proddin' the tagger, why – you know where he's kep'; that's all."
While one might draw a breath there was murder in Jeffard's heart; in his weakness a rage that was childish in its vehemence took possession of him, and he covered his face with his hands to crush back the hot tears of impotence which sprang up and blinded him. Grim looked on unpityingly, waiting for what he conceived to be the inevitable. When Jeffard struggled to his feet, his face was white and he had to steady himself by the back of the chair.
"I thought I'd got to the bottom when I came here to-night," he began unsteadily, "but you've shown me my mistake. Thank God, I can yet say No to you, low as I am. Let me get out of here."
Knowing the strength of the gambler's chain, as well as the length thereof, Grim held his peace; and Jeffard pushed past the bar-tender and went out through the small door at the end of the bar. On the sidewalk a crowd beset the theatre entrance, and out of the midst of it came two men, striking and clutching at each other as they fought their way into the clear. Within arm's-length of Jeffard they separated. He saw the sheen of the electric light on a weapon, and darted between them in time to spoil the aim of the man who drew first. There was a flash and a report, a rush on the part of the crowd, and Jeffard found himself dodging and doubling swiftly through dark alleys and crooked covered ways, following the lead of the man whose life he had saved. After a time they came out in a silent street where there was light.
"Didn't know me, did you, pardner?" quoth the fugitive, relaxing his grasp on Jeffard's wrist. "Like as not you wouldn't 'a' done it if you had, but that don't saw no wood with me. That greaser had the drop on me, sure's yer born."
Whereupon Jeffard looked again, and recognizing his friendly enemy of the winning night, was glad, inasmuch as he had been able to cancel an obligation. None the less, his reply was ungracious enough.
"Oh, it's you, is it? Well, we're quits now. Good-night."
He turned and walked away, but at the corner the man overtook him. "Not that-a-way," he forbade, pointing up the street. "Somebody in the crowd'll be sure to know you, and you'll walk slap back into trouble after I done drug you out. The p'lice are there by this time, an' they don't care who, so they get a man 'r two to lock up."
Jeffard nodded, and made a circuit of the dangerous locality with his head up and the light of a steadfast purpose in his eyes. Whatever of vacillation there was in him an hour earlier had been thoroughly flailed out in the brief interview with Peter Grim. He knew now what he had to do, and the precise manner of its doing.
Keeping to the quieter streets, he came out in front of the St. James; and dodging the crowded lobby, made his way to the writing-room. Since he dare not go to the clerk for stationery, he was compelled to wait until some one left what he required. The chance befell presently, but when he came to write his note to Constance Elliott the thing was harder to do than he had prefigured it. What he finally wrote, after he had spoiled two of the three sheets of paper left by his predecessor in the chair at the writing-table, was this: —
"After what happened this afternoon, you will not think worse of me if I ask you to let me try to explain what must seem to you too despicable to be remembered. I can't hope to make you understand without being frank, and when, at some future time, you may learn the circumstances under which this is written, I shall hope for forgiveness.
"You may remember that I said I couldn't tell you the truth, because it concerns a woman. When I add that the woman is yourself, you will understand. I love you; I think I have been loving you ever since that evening which you said we were to forget – the evening at the theatre. Strangely enough, my love for you isn't strong in the strength which saves. I went from you that night when you had bidden me God-speed at Mrs. Calmaine's, and within the hour I was once more a penniless vagabond.
"When you were trying to help me this afternoon, I was trying to keep from saying that which I could never have a right to say. You pressed me very hard in your sweet innocence and loving sympathy, – you see, I am quite frank, – and when you finally gave me a chance to make the impossible thing that I longed to say still more impossible, I took it in sheer desperation. Nay, more; I purposed in my heart to so desecrate your gift as to make the thought of my love for you an unhallowed memory.
"That is all, I think, save, when it came to the brink, I found that there was still a deeper depth which was yet unplumbed, and which I trust I shall have the courage to leave unexplored."
When it was finished he wrapped the gold piece in a bit of paper, and, putting it in the envelope with the note, set out to find the house in Colfax Avenue. Having seen it but once, and that in daylight, it was not singular that it eluded him in the night; but it was surely the very irony of chance which led him to slip the envelope under the front door of a house two squares beyond that occupied by the Elliotts, and which kept him from noticing the placard "For Rent" nailed upon the very door under which he thrust his message to Constance.
This single preliminary set in order, he faced once more toward the Highlands, lagging a little from sheer weariness as he went, but finding comfort in the thought that there would be infinite surcease from hunger and exhaustion at the end of this last pilgrimage.
There was time for reflection on the way, and he marvelled that his thoughts dwelt so persistently upon the trivial details of the thing he was about to do. He was a practiced swimmer; would the weight of a single brick be sufficient to overcome the instinct of self-preservation which might assert itself at the last moment? Probably, since he was weak from fasting, and would be encumbered with his clothing. Then another suggestion came to torment him: If he should tie the brick to his feet, as he had thought to, the water might not be deep enough, after all. Consequently, he must fasten it about his neck. And thereupon he had a fit of creeping horror at the thought of drowning with his face dragged down into the ooze and slime of the bottom.
Oddly enough, when he came to the brink of the pool these things ceased to trouble him; though even there it was impossible to turn the current of thought into a reflective channel. He made the effort for decency's sake. It was not meet that a thinking being should go out of life like the brutes that perish; without a thought for the past with its lacks and havings, or the future with its untried possibilities. But the effort returned to him void, and presently he stumbled upon the reason: the premeditated fact of self-murder shut him off alike from repentance for what had gone before, and from hope in what should come after.
Very good, he said; and flung himself down to make the most of the present. He was faint and weary, and it would be ill to drown a tired body. There was no moon, but the midsummer night was clear and still. The stars burned steadily overhead, and there was a soft light abroad which seemed to be a part of the atmosphere. Over in the west the black bulk of the range rose up to meet the sky; and poised above one of the highest peaks the planet Mars swung to its setting. Jeffard marked it, saying it should be his executioner; that when the rosy point of light should touch the black sky-line, he would rise up and go to his place.
Meanwhile it was soothing to lie stretched out upon the warm earth with no human future to prefigure, and no past insistent enough to disturb one with its annals. And there was still the present, with its soft light and its dim hemisphere of sky; its balmy air and its vague and shadowy horizon. It was good to be alone with nature in these last few moments; to have done with the tiresome world of man's marring; to be quit of man's presence.
The thought had scarcely shaped itself when it was made of none effect by the appearance of a man at the top of the little knoll. The intruder came straight on, as if in no doubt as to his purpose, and sitting down on the end of the plank bridge, proceeded to fill and light his pipe without saying a word. Jeffard caught a glimpse of a bearded face by the flare of the match, and said, "Oh, it's you again, is it?"
"Right you are, pardner. Hope I ain't intrudin'."
"I suppose you have as good a right here as I have. But I might suggest that the night is fine and the world large, and that there are times when a man has no use for his fellows."
The new-comer smoked in silence for a full minute before he removed his pipe to say: —
"That's a sort of a gilt-edged invitation for me to mog off, ain't it? All right; I'll go pretty middlin' quick; but I've been fool enough to tramp somewheres nigh ten mile behind you to-night for to get a show to say what's on my mind; wher'fore, I'll say it first and vamoose afte'wards."
Jeffard gave him leave, watching the narrowing margin between the star and the mountain-top.
"Well, b'iled down, it's just about this: I know what you're out yere for, – seen it in your eye back yonder on the street corner, – but I says to myself, 'Jim Garvin, you go kinder slow; it ain't none o' your business. When a man takes a mill-run o' hisself and finds out the claim ain't worth workin' no longer, w'y, it's his funeral, and none o' yourn.' And then again I says to myself, 'Maybe that there feller hain't got nary 'nother claim – leastwise, not as he knows of,' and so I follered you, all over the blame' town and out yere."
Jeffard made no reply, and the intruder went on.
"'Course, you understand I ain't a-mixin' up any in your business, not if I know it. You just listen at what I'm goin' to say, and then if you want to go ahead, w'y, all right, do it; and I'll loan you my gun so 't you won't have to get yourself wet in cold water. Is that about right?"
"Go on," said Jeffard.
"Well, it's this-a-way; I'm off on a prospectin' tower to-morrow. Blowed in ever' last thing I had, and took a grub-stake, same as heretofore. Now the old man that puts up the grub-stake, he says, says he, 'Jim, you'll want a pardner. It's gettin' pretty late in the season, and you won't stand no kind of a chance goin' alone.' 'Right you are,' says I,' and I'll pick up some feller on the range as I go in.' 'Good enough,' says he. 'I'll make this here order big enough to stake the two of you.' That's the whole lay-out, and you're the pardner, if you say the word. You don't know beans about me, and I don't know you from Adam's off ox, so that's a stand-off. What do you say?"
Jeffard did not answer until there was but a bare thread of sky between the star and the peak. Then he said: "Do you happen to have a coin of any kind about you?"
Garvin tossed a dollar across to him, and Jeffard spun it. Then he found that he had no match, and asked the miner to give him one. Garvin watched him curiously as he bent over the coin and struck the match.
"The luck's against me – it's heads," he announced gravely. "I'll go with you."
Garvin rose and stretched himself stiffly.
"You're a cool one," he commented. "What if it'd been tails?"
Jeffard got up and kicked the brick into the pond. "In that case I should have been obliged to ask you to lend me your pistol. Let's go back to town and get something to eat with that dollar. I haven't had anything since last night."
CHAPTER XI
After toiling all night through black gorges and over unspeakable mountain passes, the narrow-gauge train from Denver, headed by two pygmy locomotives, came out into daylight, sunshine, and wider horizons at Alta Vista. In the sleeping-car three sections had been transformed by the drowsy porter into daytime smugness, and three persons – two of them in deference to the enthusiasm of the third – were up and dressed.
"Isn't it all perfectly indescribable?" Myra was saying, when the engineer of one of the pygmies sounded the whistle for the station. "Do you know, I couldn't go to sleep for hours last night, late as it was. I put up the window curtain and piled the pillows in the corner so I could look out. The sky was like a great inverted bowl lined with black velvet and spangled with diamonds, circling around us as we darted around the curves. And in the open places there was always a solemn procession of cliffs and peaks, marching with us sometimes, and then turning to slip past again when the bowl whirled the other way. Oh, but it was grand!"
"I'm glad it lays hold of you," said Connie, who was loyally jealous for the scenic renown of her native Colorado. "Now you know why I wouldn't let you go on any of those breathless little one-day excursions from Denver. They just take you up in a balloon, give you a glimpse while you gasp, and drop you without a parachute. The tourist people all make them, you know, – it's in the itinerary, with a coupon in the cute little morocco-bound book of tickets, – and they come back wild-eyed and desperate, and go without their suppers to scribble incoherent notes about the 'Cache la Platte' and 'Clear Poudre Canyon,' and other ridiculous things. It would be funny if it wasn't so exasperating."
Myra nodded. "I'm beginning to 'savez,' as Mr. Bartrow would say. By the way, isn't this the place where he was to meet us? – Why, yes; there he is now!" She waved her hand and struggled with the window-latch as the train drew up to the platform.
He was with them in a moment, carrying a towel-covered basket, and a tin coffee-pot which he waved gingerly by way of salutation.
"The top o' the morning to you all," he said, beaming genially. "I was afraid you wouldn't be up, and then my hot coffee would be cold coffee, and I'd get myself disliked." Then to the drowsy porter: "John, you scoundrel, get us a table before I break you in two and throw you out of the window."
The table was promptly forthcoming, and Myra made room in the narrow seat for Bartrow.
"Excuse me," he begged, laughing, "I'd like to, but I can't. Somebody's got to stand up and do the swing-rack act with this coffee-pot. Just unload that basket, will you, Elliott, and I'll play head waiter while you set the table."
The breakfast was good, and there was a most astonishing variety. Moreover the coffee rose to a degree of excellence which more than atoned for the admixture of condensed milk in lieu of cream, and for the slight resinous taste imparted by the new tin cups. Bartrow apologized for the cups.
"You see, I left the mine rather middling early this morning, and packed things in a hurry. When I was making the coffee over Jim Bryant's stove here at Alta Vista, it struck me all at once that I'd forgotten the cups. The train was in sight, and Jim had only one, and that hadn't been washed for a month of Sundays. Maybe you think I wasn't stampeded for about a minute."
Connie laughed. "I suppose you went out and robbed somebody."
"That's what I did; made a break for the store, and found it locked up, of course. I had to smash a window to get what I wanted."
"Why, you lawless man!" protested Myra, trying to make room on the narrow table for the contents of the inexhaustible basket. "Where in the world did you get such a variety of things?"
"Canned goods," Connie cut in maliciously; "all canned goods, put out in dishes so you won't be reminded of the tinny taste. Everybody lives on canned goods in the mountains."
"Connie, you make me tired," Bartrow retorted, bracing himself as the train whisked around a sharp curve. "Just dig a little deeper and get out that platter of trout; they've never seen the inside of a can."
"Never mind what Connie says; she isn't responsible," said Myra. "The breakfast is just as good as it can be. Besides, you know you promised us that we should live just as you do if we'd visit the Little Myriad. I wish you'd put that coffee-pot on the floor and sit down with us."
Bartrow tried it, and found it possible; after which the talk became general and cheerful over the resinous coffee cups and the lurching dishes. In a lull Elliott asked how the Little Myriad was going on.
"Good enough for anybody," rejoined Bartrow, with enthusiasm alert. "Lead opens out better every day, and we're in only about seventy-five feet."
"No pay-dirt yet, of course," said the older man.
"Well, hardly; not yet. I'm figuring on a hundred and fifty feet of development work at the very least before we begin to take out pay."
"Mr. Bartrow, don't you remember that another thing you promised was that you wouldn't talk mineral-English before me without explaining it?" Myra broke in. "I want to know" – An unexpected plunge of the car made her grasp at the coffee cup, and Connie slipped deftly into the break.
"And it shall know, bless its inquisitive little soul! It shall be stuffed with information like a fat little pillow with feathers. But not here, cuzzy dear. Wait till we're on the ground, and then I'll go off out of hearing, and Dick may turn himself into a glossary, or an intelligence office, or a personal conductor, or anything else you'd like to have him."
Bartrow looked unspeakable things, and put down his knife and fork to say, "Connie, you're a – a" —
"Brute, Dickie; say it right out, and don't spare me on Myra's account. She rather enjoys it; she loves to hear people abuse me."
"Connie, you are perfectly incorrigible," said Myra severely. "With your poor people you are an angel of light, but with your friends" —
"I'm an angel of darkness. That's right, cuzzy dear; pile it on, I'm young and strong. Poppa, can't you think of something mean to say about me? Do try, please."
Bartrow grinned; and Elliott, who knew his daughter's vagaries and delighted in them, laughed outright. Constance made a face across the table at her cousin, and said, "Now talk mines, if you can."
"I shall," asserted Myra calmly. "Mr. Bartrow, how did you ever come to call your mine the 'Little Myriad'?"
If the bottom had suddenly dropped out of his coffee cup, Bartrow could not have been more disconcerted. Constance, who was in his secret, laughed gleefully, and clapped her hands.
"Tell her, Dick; tell her all about it. If you don't I shall."
Bartrow stammered and stumbled until Connie went into ecstasies of mischievous delight. After two or three helpless beginnings, he said, rather tamely, "I thought it was a pretty name."
"But it's so odd; a myriad is many, and a mine is only one."
"Oh, the meaning didn't have anything to do with it," rejoined Bartrow, going straight to his own discomfiture with refreshing candor. "It was the – the suggestion; the similarity; the – By Jove! we're there at last; this is the mine switch."
The exclamation was a heartfelt thanksgiving, and in the confusion of debarking the perilous topic was safely eluded. It was a sharp climb of some distance from the railway track to the mine, and Elliott developed unsuspected reserves of tact by leading the way with Miss Van Vetter, leaving Bartrow to follow with Constance. When they had lagged sufficiently behind the others, and were yet out of earshot of the men who were following with the luggage, Bartrow went back to the unexploded petard.
"Connie, you've just got to help me out now," he declared. "What shall I tell her if she tackles me again?"
"Tell her the truth."
"I don't dare to."
"Then tell her a fib. But no – on second thought I shouldn't do that, if I were you; you'd only make a mess of it. I'll tell you what to do: just fight shy of it till I can get her to myself. I promise you she'll never ask you about the Little Myriad's christening again as long as she lives."
"Thank you," said Bartrow, with the air of a reprieved criminal; and then dubiously: "See here, Connie, how are you going to do it? No monkey business, you know."
"Not a single, solitary monkey," she answered so soberly that Bartrow forgot his suspicions, and plunged into another subject which was also near to his heart.
"About Jeffard; how did you come to think he had shot himself?"
"It was only one of those suppositions you think you have verified when you've only been playing blind-man's bluff with it. The similarity of names misled me at first."
