The Benevolent Liar/Chapter 11

By mid-afternoon the top layer of logs was removed, and Tom rigged a crude shears and pulley, and, with Edith's enthusiastic assistance, hoisted the first ones away. He affected to ridicule her excitement, but, had he admitted it, his own was scarcely less intense, and when the shadows lengthened, he wished for a longer day. On their return to the cabin, Josh, watching them hopefully, observed a change, and turned his bandaged head to one side with a smile and stared at the wall.

“They're comin' a lot closer together because they ain't no old slob like me hangin' around to interfere,” he thought. “I reckon the search for the old shaft'll have to wait for a while. It'll still be there, somewhere, when I get up and start out again. Tom's got her goin', sure! I'll give him a chance by pretendin' not to notice it and by stickin' to this cussed bunk a week longer'n I wanted to.”

He carried out his part so well that he went to sleep immediately after his supper was eaten, thus giving Frank Barnes an opportunity to slip away and become an adviser in the amiable plot. The mine owner was therefore absent from his own property on the following day, leaving everything to his superintendent. And the superintendent would have been vastly surprised could he have seen the employer of several hundred men, known to be one of the wealthiest in the district, pulling and hauling at a rope to hoist away half-rotten logs, begrimed from head to foot, bareheaded and clad in his undershirt, and as enthusiastic as his two young helpers over the task of discovering what could be found in a mere dirty hole in the earth. He was enjoying an exciting vacation and was as young in spirits as Tom or his own daughter. He had even brought a basket of lunch, and a long plumb line, when he came to the cabin that morning, where he bade Josh an unusually boisterous good-by and tiptoed away lest the stricken prospector hear the direction he took. It was he who shouted the loudest when the first log of the last layer was hoisted out and swung to one side on the moist pile of earth.

“Now, Tom,” he said, “the plumb line! We'll see how far down the water is, and, if we can, how deep those old-timers went.”

He perched himself precariously on the edge of the shaft and let the weighted line slip through his fingers until the first faint splash told him that he had reached water. He dragged it up, counting the white strips as they sped through his hands.

“Ninety-five to water!” he exclaimed, in surprise. “Had no idea they went so deep. How on earth did they hoist enough with the old-time whims to make it pay? Edith, keep farther away from the edge, there! Do you wish to fall in? Now we'll see how deep the water is—if I've got line enough to plumb it.”

In a tense silence he again lowered his weight and looked incredulous when the line suddenly slackened in his hands. He swung it to and fro to make certain, and then said: “Well, that beats me! It's on the bottom.”

He pulled it up while Tom and Edith watched, and exclaimed: “That's odd! And it looks bad. There's less than twenty feet of water. They must have had a sump hole. And they quit work on account of the water, the old chap told Josh.”

They interchanged looks. All were oppressed by a sense of failure. The old-time miner, Juan Carvallo, had done as so many others did—dreamed through the years of what he had left behind, magnifying values and discounting truth, until he had created totally new conditions in his mind and come to believe in them. All were too familiar with mining to believe that but twenty feet of seepage water had kept the Mexicans from delving deeper had there been ore of even fairly paying worth in sight.

“Well,” said Tom, “I'm going to the bottom of that shaft, just the same. And I don't think we should say anything to Josh about it yet.”

“Good for you, Tom!” agreed Barnes. “All we could tell him now would merely disappoint him. Shall we clear the mouth of the shaft?”

“Sure.”

And they fell to work doggedly, but with some of their enthusiasm gone. They carried pails of water from the spring and threw them down to start the dead air. They made a fire crate and lowered it close to the sump to create a circulation of air, after which they were through: for the day. When Barnes arrived the next morning, he came with a cavalcade that, following previous instructions, kept well away from the cabin and went directly to the old shaft. It consisted of two of the mine owner's confidential men, and they brought with them three burros loaded with a triple-geared windlass, a bosn's chair, an air pump, and large supplies of hose, and a miscellaneous outfit of dynamite drills, sampling sacks, and everything that would be required for an examination of the vein, if exposed, or at least the contact where the vein had been worked.

Tom insisted on the right to be lowered first, but Barnes said: “No, Tom, I'm much more experienced than you, and—well, we can't tell how safe it is until we've examined the walls of the shaft.”

“That is the very reason I'm going first,” Tom retorted, as he slid into the bosn's chair with a bull's-eye lamp in his hand, and said to the men on the windlass: “Lower away slowly, and stand by for signal.”

“He's got the grit, all right,” asserted Barnes to Edith. “I like him for that.” But Tom was already beyond hearing, the wire to the gong slipping slowly through. the hollow of his arm. Far below him the candle that had been lowered to test the air burned steadily, seeming to increase in size and brilliancy as he descended. He examined the side walls of the shaft foot by foot, halting once to tap at a threatening point, and getting a sufficiently clear ring of steel to assure him there was scant danger of a cave-in. He was glad to observe that it was good holding ground, free from limestone or swelling rock. The candle burned still brighter as he passed it. Directing his light downward, he saw that he was within a few feet of the water, and signaled for a stop, intending to ascend slowly while examining the shaft as he went for signs of ore. With a kick against the wall, he swung himself around in his chair and gave an exclamation of surprise. Behind him was the opening of a drift.

Tom increased his swing, and landed on his feet in the entrance. His lantern showed that at some time water had filled it, but now it was merely glistening with damp, and a tiny rivulet trickled into the sump hole. It led upward on a gradual ascent for a short distance, and there it was blocked by fallen timbers. The air here was half stagnant; but he persevered, and by dropping to his knees in the opening of the drift and flashing his light forward, saw a clear space beyond. He examined the walls. There was no doubt that the Mexicans had driven on the vein, which had faulted and been picked up.

He went back, resumed his chair, and was hoisted above, where he reported his discovery to Barnes, who, in his turn, was lowered away, made an examination, and returned above ground.

“Well, Tom,” he declared hopefully, “at least we don't know that it's a dead one. I'll tell you what's happened. At the time Carvallo worked it, they probably had to keep water out of the drift. Then comes an earthquake, possibly the one of 1874, that was felt heavily throughout this district. It altered the watercourses in a lot of other mines, I am told, and so it is likely that it cleared some of the subterranean outlet channels below this ground, making this a comparatively dry mine, down to its present depth, at least. When Carvallo stopped work and gave up, the drift filled with water. When the earthquake shifted things and made the drift comparatively dry, the drive caved. The air is none too good. We'll lay the hose line and work the air pumps. I'd shoot it if I wasn't afraid of bringing the whole work down. We'll get a few props while the boys. here, clear the air, and see what is behind that cave.”

At six o'clock that evening, Tom and Barnes succeeded in reaching the end of the drift and found the ore body as it had been left by the Mexicans. They brought away such samples as they could break loose, and Barnes announced that he would take them that evening to his own assay house and bring the returns in the morning. Tom did not know for a long time that the mine owner and his daughter were up nearly all the night listening to the hum of the mufflers and watching the seething cupels; that they hung above the finely adjusted scales, capable of weighing a lead-pencil mark on a piece of paper. His first knowledge of results was when Barnes arrived in the morning and beckoned him out with an emphatic hand.

“Tom,” he said, “if there's much of that ore there, the Bonanza Mine was not badly named. Those samples we took run nearly three hundred dollars a ton!”

Tom leaned against the rear wall of the cabin for support.

“We can't keep it from Josh much longer,” the mine owner added. “My boss carpenter will be here by ten o'clock to decide what he needs, and on a rough guess I ordered twenty full sets of timbers and stulls packed over from my yard this morning. The first lot will be here pretty soon, and I wish you would get your three burros ready to go back with my three for the next lot, because three are all I have. I believe in going after a thing when you want it. We shall know within the next forty-eight hours whether the Bonanza is worth going ahead with. Otherwise Josh would hear something, and perhaps, by getting excited, would check his recovery. Edith, at ten o'clock, will try to keep him interested so that he will not hear anything.”

He was unaware that in the meantime Josh Price had sat up in his bunk, run his fingers thoughtfully around his bandages, and said to himself: “Gosh almighty! I can't keep this bluff up much longer. Not even for Tommy! If he can't win that girl within a day or two more, he don't deserve her. I just naturally got to get out of here and get my boots and pants on, or I'll sure bust!”

He was, however, a hopeless invalid in appearance when Edith Barnes sat beside him at ten o'clock the next morning, talking steadily to prevent him from hearing any unusual noises.

“Where's that Tom?” he asked, interrupting her in something she was saying.

“Out digging holes probably,” she replied.

He rested quietly with half-closed eyes for a moment, and then said: “Oh, diggin', is he? I thought maybe he was just loafin', I'm beginnin' to think he's nothin' but a lazy loafer, after all. Not much good, I'm afraid.”

Had she been watching his face she could have seen that a shrewd, bright eye was turned toward her expectantly, and undoubtedly watching to see how she would accept this innuendo. Also that the eye closed when, taken unawares, and angered, she rushed to Tom's defense:

“A lazy loafer! Not much good? I'm sorry you said that. If you knew what I do: about Tom Rogers, you would be thankful that you have such a partner. I can tell you right now, no matter what you think, that he has half killed himself with work since you have been here with this wound. Loaf? Why, he has done two men's work! The days aren't long enough for him. The only person he thinks about is you.”

Josh sat up suddenly, much to her alarm, and shook a fist in the air.

“Only person he thinks about is me? Why, confound his fool hide! Thinks about me when you're around? What in tarnation. has he been doin' all this time? Here I stick, torturin' myself to give him a show to make good, and all he does is to dig holes! I didn't know there was any such plain, cussed idiots runnin' loose. I'll get out of here and tell him to”

Alarmed by his vehemence, she rushed forward, and, with a hand on his shoulder, begged him to rest quietly.

“Don't think about him,” she said soothingly. “Just be quiet. If you don't, you'll never get well. That's good. Lay yourself down.”

He dropped back under pressure of her hand and shut his eyes.

“Tom has been doing the best he could. You have no idea how hard he has tried. You are very unjust, because, I suppose, you are ill.”

He waited for:more, but, as she did not speak, became crafty again and uttered a loud groan. She gave him a drink of cold water and adjusted his pillow.

“Do you like Tommy?” he asked, in a feeble voice. She turned away, and did not know that he was watching her through his eyelashes. She did not reply, but seated herself and stared away until nothing more than her profile could be seen. “I'm mighty fond of him,” the prospector said quietly. “And, Edie Barnes, if you ain't, too, I'm goin' to be a right disappointed man.”

He saw her face flush, and then she leaped to her feet and started toward the door.

“Edie! Girl! Come back here; I need you!” he shouted after her, in a voice of such assumed distress that she halted and turned toward him. “I'd like another drink of water,” he said feebly, and she hastened to give it to him. He but tasted it, and caught her hand lest she escape. “Sit here by me in that chair,” he said, in a much stronger voice; and, humoring him, she obeyed.

“Little girl,” he said, staring at the poles of the roof above his head lest a direct gaze impel her to flight, “you'll never have a better friend than me. I've nothin' to ask from you. Anything or everything I've got to give, I give to you. And I want to be your friend—your real friend. Frank Barnes is as fine a man as there is. I know. But a daddy can never quite be, in some things, like—like some one else. A girl's sort of ashamed to talk to her father because she's afraid he won't understand. There's a lot of things she wouldn't tell her father that she'll tell some other friend.”:

She wondered what was coming, and was interested through expectancy. She gently released her hand, but sat quietly.

“I've done a lot of thinkin',” he drawled on, “since I've been layin' here on my back, waitin' to get strong enough to go out and find and murder the son of a Piute that creased me! And I'll get him yet—don't forget! I'll carry four guns after this, because five holes through him won't satisfy me. I want to drill him twenty times, and then take off his hide, salt it, and hang it on a rack outside the cabin to tan. But as I said, I've been thinkin',” he went on, unmindful of her horrified start, “and what I've come to is this: That I've got a few friends—your daddy and Specimen are two—but I've got but one thing that's mine. That's Tommy. His dad gave him to me. He belongs to me, Tommy does. I'm responsible for him. I'd wallop him if he done wrong, and, miss, I'd shoot the man that done Tommy wrong. He ain't had a square deal. He ain't had the right chance. And he's got to have it from now on, because I'm his guardian, by will of a white man that's dead and expects me to look out for the son that he gave me.”

He turned his head until his searching eyes caught hers with a look as direct as the thrust of a sword, and said: “I'm dead set on your fallin' in love with him, and him with you, because you're the only girl I've ever seen that was good enough for him, and Tommy Rogers is the only man I've ever seen that was good enough for you!”

She started from her chair and rushed toward the door, but his voice pursued and overtook her:

“And I tell you, you'll do it, because I've got my mind set on it! Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

And then he rolled over in his bunk and chuckled with a sense of duty well done, and said to himself: “He's got her, sure. He's got her!”

With equal abruptness, he sat up with a jerk and dragged the bandage from one ear, listened intently, and said: “What's that? Some mucker is runnin' a string of burros over this claim, and my old Pete's talkin' to 'em. I know Pete, and he don't never squall that way unless he's sayin' 'Hello!' to some strange mule. Wonder what in tarnation that means?”