The Benevolent Liar/Chapter 10

A week slipped past, during which both Frank Barnes and his daughter slept at the cabin, Edith acting as day nurse, while Tom took the task of night watchman over his wounded friend. And then the surgeon announced that the prospector was out of danger and no longer required constant watching. Josh, in the meantime, had come to long hours of lazy silence, but he imparted no confidences as to his trend of thought. To Tom, who for a whole week had been brought into such close contact with the mine owner's daughter, her departure was like the breaking up of the world. Living together in such circumstances—for the sick room has no etiquette—had brought about an intimacy that could not have been accomplished in months under ordinary circumstances. His fear of loneliness was mitigated by Edith's announcement that she would come each day and watch her patient while Tom renewed his work. He was abashed by secret exultation, and yet heartsick, knowing that he could never be anything more to her than they had been during that one week.

“Well, Tom,” she said, early in the next forenoon, when she arrived and dismounted, “I am here. I brought one of father's old picket ropes, and if you'll stake my horse out where he can be happy it will save me a lot of trouble.”

She thus came without pretense to meet the altered conditions, and Tom learned to watch for her coming. Intent on doing two men's work in prospecting for the lost shaft, he fell to his task. And he had but one great ambition, which was to find it himself and surprise his wounded benefactor with the result.

“You see,” he admitted shyly to Edith one afternoon when, Josh being asleep, she came down to where he stood buried waist-deep in the latest hole, “Josh Price has been a foster father to me. Quite that, and more—more than you know.”

He stood looking meditatively at the pile of clay and gravel beside him and did not observe her smile. She remembered the prospector's crude appeal for her assistance, and her consent to it; but now she was ready to admit to herself that she sought Tom's companionship for Tom alone.

“I'd give almost anything to find the old Bonanza Mine myself and surprise him with the find when he is able to come out. It would be, in a way, proof that I appreciate all that he has done for me and all his enormous kindness.”

“You are fond of him?” she asked.

“Fond of him!” His youthful eyes lifted themselves to her face with no trace of embarrassment. “I'm more than that, Edith, I'd—I'd give my life for him.”

He climbed up and sat beside her on the barricade of earth he had thrown out while digging the pit, wiped his perspiring forehead with a not overly clean handkerchief he dragged from his hip pocket, and added: “You don't know what he means to me. You can't begin to measure his patience—his kindliness—his philosophies—his astounding decency. Why, do you know, I couldn't have believed, a little while ago, that there were such men on earth. I was a lot worse than friendless when I met him.”

“My father is fond of him,” she said thoughtfully.

But, as if his mind had leaped past her speech, he added: “And about the only way I can show him, just now, how much I appreciate all he has done for me is to find this shaft before he can get out again. Do you understand what I am trying to express?”

“Of course I do,” she replied, smiling at his eagerness. “It would be fine. I'm going to help. I like him, too. We shall be partners in the search.”

And she was better than her word, for thereafter, for three weeks, there was not a day when she did not put in all her spare time trying to assist him, until she, too, became absorbed in the quest. Each night her father came for her, and to pay a visit to his old friend. She succeeded in quietly enthusing Barnes, and cautioned him that they hoped for a surprise.

The flat showed the scars of Tom's wasted industry. It was pitted with the shallow holes he had dug in his quest; and even his helper, Edith, began to betray discouragement. She took to wandering away from the pits and scrutinizing the ground foot by foot, as if doubting the study Tom and Josh had given it before beginning work. One day she came in short skirt and high boots, and scaled a cliff that overlooked the flat, as if from that lofty height to discover its secret. She “helloed” to Tom, who paused long enough to wave his shovel at her before continuing work. When he looked again, she had disappeared. On the following day she trudged boldly away in a direction of her own choice, and that night made no comment on her new efforts; but when she came at an unusually early hour on the next morning, did her volunteer household work, left Josh propped up with his necessities within reach, and hastened away, Tom saw that she was carrying a stout walking stick of cudgel proportions.

“What on earth are you carrying that timber for?” he asked jokingly.

“Oh, prospecting on my own,” she asserted. “And where I go there might be a stray rattler or two.”

He looked solicitous.

“I don't think you should take such chances,” he declared. “It alarms me.”

She laughed gayly at his grave face.

“Why, son,” she said, in admirable imitation of Josh's rumbling drawl, “I reckon as how I killed more'n a million of 'em before you were born'd.”

But Tom, as he worked that morning, could not help being anxious for her; and hence, when but an hour or two later she appeared, running and calling to him, said to himself: “Guess she's found one at last, and is going to ask me to come up and slaughter his snakeship.”

“I want you,” she called, within talking distance. “Up this way!”

“Is your snake a big one?” he asked good-humoredly.

“It looks fair sized—to me,” she said, with a half smile.

“Thought you had killed a million of them.”

“Not like this,” she replied. “But—here, you'd best let me show you the way!”

“I'll not step on him,” Tom retorted. “And, besides, by this time he's probably rattled his good-by and gone.”

“I hope not. Oh, you just wait till you see!” she said, leading the way almost recklessly through a heavy tangle of brush and undergrowth.

Tom suddenly broke through a thorny patch of wild blackberries, and stopped with an exclamation of surprise.

“Why—why who on earth would have thought there was a little cove in here like this? Josh and I didn't even suspect it. And—say, Edith, is that the ruin of an old cabin over there? And there's another one!”

“Yes, and that's not all!” she exclaimed, giving way to her excitement and seizing his hand. “Come on, Tom! Run!”

Humoring her, and himself excited, he ran forward by her side until she came to a quick stop and pointed at her feet.

“Look! Look!” she commanded. “I was not brought up around mines for nothing. That stuff, there, is not country rock. It's ore, Tom! I think I've found an old waste dump.”

Eagerly he began picking up and examining the pieces of rock at his feet. He gave a low whistle of amazement.

“If it's not an old dump,” he declared, “it is worth investigation. That is very promising float Um-m-mh! No, I don't think it is a float. It's hard to tell, but I doubt if that was ever surface rock.” He looked at her with excited eyes, holding the piece of ore in his hand. “By Jove, Edith! Suppose you really have located the old Bonanza! But I can't see how you found this place.”

“I found it from the top of the cliff,” she said gleefully. “It is just a cove in the foothill with a narrow entrance, and it can't be seen from any place except by looking downward from high above. That is why you and Josh missed it. Tom, do go back and bring the pick and shovel up here. I'm too curious to wait very long. I shall begin to dig with my hands!”

He scrambled through the barrier across the gap of the cove, and with long strides ran back to his uncompleted pit, possessed himself of the tools, and regained her side, panting heavily.

“You say where I shall dig,” he invited, opening the collar of his flannel shirt for coolness' sake, and his eyes danced with excitement as they met hers.

“I think it is safe to dig just about here,” she advised. “You see, there is a little slope here, and if this was the old waste dump it would have traveled quite a little distance in fifty years' time. Dig right here,” she indicated with the toe of her boot. “Pshaw! I wish I had a shovel to help!”

He seized his. pick and drove it into the earth with the gritty sound of steel striking rubble.

“Hear that?” he asked, without looking up. “Sounds good to me.”

“Me, too!” she agreed. “You just pick along there about ten feet in that direction.”

He obeyed, his strong young shoulders driving the steel with all their weight and strength, and when he looked up again she had seized the shovel and was throwing aside the loosened earth. He smiled at her enthusiasm and impatience, and drove the pick harder. He took the shovel from her hands, and she sat as closely as she could without interfering, and with her eyes fixed on the bottom of the hole he dug.

“It's—it's like some sort of romance or fairy story or big hazard!” she declared breathlessly. “It's just like digging at the end of the rainbow for the pot of gold. Oh, I do hope we find it! I should be so happy for your sake and Josh's.”

He was not too engrossed in his toil to note that she mentioned him first, and a strange glow amounting to semi-intoxication warmed him.

“I don't care for myself so much,” he asserted, in words broken by his constant physical effort, “as I do for Josh. It seems to me that if I could make him happy, I should myself be the happiest man on earth.”

She did not answer, but continued staring with an eager, curious gaze as each shovelful of earth was thrown. Child of the mines that she was, she looked with an experienced eye on the character of the earth and bits of stone and ore that his vigorous young arms were tossing from around his feet. She got up to seize it in handfuls, the clean, moist-smelling earth, and to inspect pieces that she picked from it.

“If this isn't the old Bonanza, Tom,” she said gravely, “it is at least worth prospecting. There's a lot of ore. Good ore, I'm certain.”

He looked up at her from the corners of his eyes, as he saw her cleansing a piece now and then with reckless disregard for her rough skirt, and smiled. She laid her selections to one side in a little pile.

“I wish we had some water here,” she said plaintively. “I'd like to wash some of this stuff off. I think some of it would show gold. I'll bet there's a ledge somewhere around here that threw some of the gold that made the placers in the flat below.”

He delighted in the unconscious way in which she relapsed to mining phraseology, but did not pause in his work. Now, as the ground hardened, he alternated shovel and pick. The sun was climbing higher and burned his broad back with its glare. He had to pause at last and rest.

“Whew! You can't say I'm not working my best, boss!” he exclaimed, leaning against the edge of his little pit that was now waist-deep.

“That's all right,” she retorted, in the same vein. “Maybe I'll raise your wages. While you are resting, suppose we look around a little way. I've something to show you.”

He climbed from the pit, glad to rest a muscles for a spell, and followed her.

“There,” she said, pointing with all an explorer's triumph, “is the ruins of what was once a cabin. See it?”

“It does look like it,” he assented.

“And over here,” she declared, again leading the way, “is another one. There are at least ten or twelve of them here that I have found, so far.”

She pointed them out with her earth-soiled fingers. She laughed when indicating one, and said: “It was lucky I had on these high, stiff boots over there, because I did kill a rattler. Five rattles and a button! Wish to see it for proof?” she concluded gayly, looking up at him with dancing eyes.

“No,” he said soberly, “I'll take your word. I don't like the thought of your being so near to harm.”

He spoke with unconscious betrayal of his heart, and then was abashed. She suddenly turned from him to hide the swift tenderness of her face, lest she also betray a secret that hitherto she had not admitted.

“Well, this must have been the Bonanza that you are looking for,” she said, in haste to divert the conversation. “I've no doubt that in the undergrowth over there we could find traces of other cabins and all that. Naturally there could have been no town here. The camp stayed where it was in the first place—that is, down there in the flat below. More room there to build.”

“I think we must go back,” he announced; and then, with an assumption of gayety: “I'm too anxious to get that hole down to six-feet depth to stay here and look at heaps of stone and buried logs.”

She followed somewhat soberly behind him, and again took her post at the edge of the excavation. He seized the pick and drove it heavily into the bottom of the pit. Then instantly all else was forgotten, for it did not yield. He twisted it backward and forward until it was released, seized his shovel and forced it through the disturbed earth, while the girl leaned forward on hands and knees. He threw the earth away rapidly, exposing a log, earth-rotted, then by its side another and yet another. He threw the shovel down and looked up at her, exulting.

“Well, Edith,” he said, suppressing his excitement and gratification, “it looks to me as if you had found the old Bonanza shaft.”

“You mean we have,” she said, meeting his eyes; and, although neither could have told why, they both flushed and looked away.