The Popular Magazine/Volume 58/Number 4/The Implacable Friend/Chapter 20

Whatever the values might be in the bench placers of Midas Creek, Bruce Waring knew that Ticely knew them now. Doubtless he knew what they were a very few minutes after Bruce precipitated himself down the hill and essayed the rôle of placer plutocrat—his first and only:attempt at the histrionic. A temporary self-conviction, born of desperation and an iron will, had enabled him to act this part with a success that amazed him. But it was a success destined to be as ephemeral as the conviction that had achieved it, unless those bench values—which Ticely now knew—should be very like the values that Ticely had noted in his Klondike diary!

As he threaded his devious way through the dark spruce of the bench land, dogged by the little procession of men who were still his enemies—unless he made good, Bruce Waring hoped as he had never hoped before, that his “front” would be justified when next he looked into the face of the man whom he had snatched back from safety to meet the fury of a raging mob!

When in sight of the bluish-gray dump, unconsciously he quickened his footsteps. Then he resumed his previous pace, or made it even slower, to avoid the slightest suspicion of excitement or uncertainty. Once in the camp, it would be up to Ticely to take the colossal burden off his shoulders.

Nor was Ticely unprepared for his visitors. From a coign of vantage near the camp, he had seen them coming, had returned, picked a pan of the stickiest bed rock, and as Bruce and the closest to him climbed the flat surface of the big dump, he rose from his knees, pipe in mouth, the pan under his arm and looked them over with amiable, whimsical surprise.

“Bringing some visitors, Bruce?” he asked between slow puffs.

His heart pounding in his breast, Waring scanned his partner's face for a message—a sign. In vain! Ticely was too finished an actor to reveal to the riveted scrutiny of his enemies by so much as the quiver of an eyelash that all was not well with the mining partnership of Ticely & Waring.

“Yes, I brought 'em,” answered Bruce. “They were making trouble for the judge, here, on some fool idea that you and I had beat it for Nome, and he had helped us make the get-away.”

“Sorry to hear that,” said Ticely reprovingly, pausing in his passage to the panning pool. “Fact is, we hadn't figured on letting you know anything about our prospects up here till we were good and ready. Between you and me and that birch tree yonder, you didn't deserve it—the low-down tricks you played to get information which was too dangerous for me to give out. However, now that you're here” and he waved his free hand magnanimously, as he turned to the pool and immersed his heaping pan in the murky water.

Even then, Waring did not know whether that dirt was running eighty-five cents to the pan or eighty-five dollars! It was evident that Ticely would bluff to the end, and die hard. He edged close, ready to slip him a gun at the first sign of little gold and much trouble!

Ticely whirled and shook the pan expertly in the water, drawing it up only for a moment, now and then, to toss out the lighter gravels and chunks of bed rock, and giving no chance for a glimpse at the heavier sediments beneath, Then he raised it for a casual glance.

“Rotten,” he remarked cheerfully. But Bruce Waring's eyes nearly jumped out of his head—as did those of several other stooping men. Dark-gray, speckled with clean yellow, was the hue of the full third of the pan remaining.

They lined the little pool—a circle of men on hands and knees, with another tier of pop-eyed onlookers bending over them, and still others, crowding their heads between the shoulders and bodies of those in front—as Ticely dipped, shook and tipped, dipped, shook, and tipped the crescent of sandy sediment and pure, virgin gold, very coarse and also very fine, as the diary had said! A third around the pan that broad crescent extended, and Collins, whom nothing could now enthuse, but whose appraisal of a prospect pan was known to be marvelously accurate, put it at “about twenty ounces.” Ticely gave the pan a few last, quick tippings, and turned, as it were privately, to Waring:

“Not very good to-day, huh, Bruce? I guess we're getting off to the side of the pay streak.”

“Must be,” agreed Waring. He was able to keep his countenance only by pinching Ticely's arm till the other almost bit his tongue in the effort to avoid crying out. It would not have mattered, for excitement reigned. There were eyes only for the pan and ears only for each other's comments, One-word Watkins started the ball rolling. “Eureka!” he shouted, and tossed his hat in the air.

“You got to hand it to 'em,” yelled Othmer. “They done the right thing. Pay like that has got to be kept under your hat. Yet got ter hand it to 'em!”

“I told you!” exclaimed several wiseacres, and at least one: “Darn it, I knew it all the time!”

“That's good enough, boys, as far as it goes,” conceded Rosslyn, when the noise had partially subsided, “but don't forget this is on the bench. Where do we come in, Ticely?”

“Oh, that's right. Say, Bruce—we might as well tell em. You got those deeds?”

“Miss Manners has them. They were to be recorded, you know, when we instructed her to do so.”

Instantly all eyes swiveled upon Joan.

“That is correct,” she admitted in a businesslike manner. “They were filed with me some time ago, and locked away.”

“What were they?” asked Judge Manners. It was evident to the most suspicious—if any were longer suspicious—that whatever might have been the commissioner's leanings in respect to the discoverers of Midas Creek, at least they had not taken him into their confidence. He knew nothing of this private transaction with his daughter in her capacity of recorder.

“As nearly as I remember,” replied Joan, “they correspond exactly with the creek claims conveyed in Nome by Ticely and Waring to various purchasers, name for name; interest for interest and claim for claim—only on the corresponding claims on the bench, instead of the creek.”

“Quite an idea,” smiled Tholmes.

“Durn white of 'em, I call it,” admitted Colwell cordially.

“Han'some!” from One-word Watkins.

“Handsome? Why it's magnifercent!” declared Othmer, wildly enthusiastic. “I allus said”

His voice was drowned in laughter, which Ticely hushed by a raised hand.

“It's what I intended doing all along. But you see, don't you, that we couldn't make it public until we got things lined up right on the bench here, and everything safe with the recorder?”

“Perfectly correct,” corroborated Tholmes. His face lit with a sudden comprehension. “And until you did make it public, you couldn't explain about that diary you kept of your pannings up here!”

Ticely shrugged his shoulders—and smiled. While the crowd, partly dispersing, wandered along the bench ground, discussing the direction and formation of the old channel, Waring lured Joan into the little tent. He knew she must be utterly at sea—fairly dizzy with puzzlement over these new developments.

“Joan—Joan, you've been a trump. You've said the right thing, and done the right thing—kept our secret, helped us get out of that fearful scrape we were in.”

“And made a liar of myself!” she returned fiercely. She would not look him in the face.

“Did they—do they know about the red canoe yet? That is the weak point in our alibi.”

“Yes,” she replied, her eyes still downcast. “Coming up the hill they asked me why I went to all the trouble of deceiving them—if you had not gone away! I replied that you had sent me a message that you might not return to the creek for some time, and I naturally supposed you had lit out to save your lives; and as I was averse, like my father, to see murder committed, I—did as I did!”

“It was like you, Joan, dear—and very, very clever.”

“Don't talk of cleverness to me! I despise you for it. I do not know why you came back, or how you came suddenly to know of this wealth up here. I only know you stood before me like a man and promised—that's what it really was—to fight it out like men. And then you turned and fled in the night!”

He could only look at her and murmur falteringly:

“Can't you forgive me, Joan? Your forgiveness means everything to me.”

She turned to him wistfully, her anger gone. She touched his sleeve.

“Bruce, in spite of it all, I can't help being glad you escaped, and glad of this sudden miracle of gold—for dad's sake especially. That much I can say, if it will comfort you any. But—there's a wall between us. You know it.”

She left him there, staring at the sleeve she had lightly touched. And Ticely found him—still staring. He had passed Joan, pale, eyes turned from him, leaving the tent. The situation was exceedingly plain.

“High-spirited girl, that,” observed Ticely cheerfully. “All she needs is the truth!”

“No human being is going to know that,” declared Bruce, grasping his partner's arm. “No secret is safe forever in the keeping of any one. She—then Manners—then Tholmes—then others—finally your wife! We've got to consider her!”

“I promise to,” returned Ticely, looking at him queerly. “But I've known her longer than you. Starting supper?”

“I will,” said Bruce in a woebegone voice. He slouched over to the sheet-iron stove.

Ticely found Joan Manners, and took her aside—under a tree.

“Are you fond of facts?” he asked her.

“From you?” she replied, with raised eyebrows.

Ticely winced. “Here are a few real ones about the realest man you've ever known or ever will know. When I wrote Bruce Waring that I'd sold forty thousand dollars' worth of Midas Creek, he nearly threw a fit. When I gave him further particulars on the trail, his face went black. When he told you in my presence that we would 'not go!' he meant it. And when, hours later, he came back to our cabin and found my note saying I had gone, he undoubtedly ground his teeth and cursed!”

“But he followed you!” said Joan icily.

“Oh, he followed me! And he caught up with me while I was asleep in my camp. When I awoke, I could see right into the barrel of his automatic. It was a very captivating view! And he brought me back—this way!”

He held out his wrists to Joan, who stared at them fascinatedly. Ticely himself was capable of romancing, but his wrists were not. Still red and swollen from the thongs, they told a story that compelled belief.

“He captured and brought you back to face them!”

“Just that. But there was a possible way to avoid a scrap—just a chance. He had a good prospect here; but he had kept that a secret. We came up here early this morning, and took out the last thawing. The little god of chance was our third partner!”

Joan blinked hard, as at new white light.

“Why does he let me think he, too, was guilty; that he, too, fled?”

“Loyalty to a partner, and to the partner's wife—who befriended him. He insists that it be kept a secret, lest my wife should ever learn the truth. That, my girl, is sacrifice, for he loves you better than his life!”

“And you? You refuse the sacrifice?”

“Naturally! And, by the way, a fellow who is as loyal as that to a man partner, is likely to be as loyal to a—woman partner!”

She shook his hand and, in a broken voice, said:

“You are right, Mr. Ticely. I—we—thank you!”

Lightly she fled away, her contrite heart shining in her face. And Ticely smiled as he watched her make straight for the tent.