The Plunderer Read online

  CHAPTER II

  THE CROIX D'OR

  It was the day after the halt at the road house. Half-obliterated bythe debris of snowslide and melting torrents, the trail was hard tofollow. In some places the pack burros scrambled for a footing orskated awkwardly with tiny hoofs desperately set to check theirdescent, to be steadied and encouraged by the booming voice, deep as abell, of the man nearest them. Sometimes in dangerous spots whereshale slides threatened to prove unstable, his lean, grim face andblue-gray eyes appeared apprehensive, and he braced his greatshoulders against one of the bulging packs to assist a sweating,straining animal. After one of these perilous tracts he stopped besidethe burros, pushed the stained white Stetson to the back of his head,exposing a white forehead which had been protected from the sun, andran the sleeve of his blue-flannel shirt across his face from brow tochin to wipe away the moisture.

  "Hell's got no worse roads than this!" he exclaimed. "Next timeanybody talks me into takin' a cut-off over a spring trail to save aday and a half's time, him and me'll have an argument!"

  Ahead, and at the moment inspecting a knot in a diamond hitch, theother man grinned, then straightened up, and, shading his eyes fromthe sun with his hat, looked off into the distance. He was youngerthan his partner, whose hair was grizzled to a badger gray, but noless determined and self-reliant in appearance. He did not look histhirty years, while the other man looked more than his forty-eight.

  "Well, Bill," he said slowly, "it seems to me if we can get through atall we've saved a day and a half. By the way, come up here."

  The grizzled prospector walked up until he stood abreast, and from thelittle rise stared ahead.

  "Isn't that it?" asked the younger man. "Over there--through the gap;just down below that spike with a snow cap." He stretched out a long,muscular arm, and his companion edged up to it and sighted along itslength and over the index finger as if it were the barrel of a rifle,and stared, scowling, at the distant maze of mountain and sky thatseemed upended from the green of the forests below.

  "Say, I believe you're right, Dick!" he exclaimed. "I believe you are.Let's hustle along to the top of this divide, and then we'll know forsure."

  They resumed their progress, to halt at the top, where there wasabruptly opened below them a far-flung panorama of white and gray andpurple, stretched out in prodigality from sky line to sky line.

  "Well, there she is, Dick," asserted the elder man. "That yellow,cross-shaped mark up there on the side of the peak. I kept tellin' youto keep patient and we'd get there after a while."

  His partner did not reply to the inconsistency of this argument, butstood looking at the landmark as if dreaming of all it represented.

  "That is it, undoubtedly," he said, as if to himself. "The Croix d'Or.I suppose that's why the old Frenchman who located the mine in thefirst place gave it that name--the Cross of Gold!"

  "Humph! It looks to me, from what I've heard of it," growled the olderprospector, "that the Double Cross would have been a heap morefittin' name for it. It's busted everybody that ever had it."

  The younger man laughed softly and remonstrated: "Now, what's the usein saying that? It wasn't the Croix d'Or that broke my father----"

  "But his half in it was all he had left when he died!"

  "That is true, and it is true that he sunk more than a hundredthousand in it; but it was the stock-market that got him. Besides, howabout Sloan, my father's old-time partner? He's not broke, by a longshot!"

  "No," came the grumbling response, "he's not busted, just because hehad sense enough to lay his hand down when he'd gone the limit."

  "Lay his hand down? Say, Bill, you're a little twisted, aren't you?Better go back over the last month or two and think it over. We, beingpartners, are working up in the Coeur d'Alenes. Our prospect pinchesout. We've got just seven hundred left between us on the day we bringthe drills and hammers back, throw them in the corner of the cabin,and say 'We're on a dead one. What next?' Then we get the lettersaying that my father, whom I haven't seen in ten years, nor heardmuch of, owing to certain things, is dead, and that all he left washis half of the Croix d'Or. The letter comes from whom? Sloan! And itsays that although he and my father, owing to father's abominabletemper, had not been intimate for a year or two, he still respectedhis memory, and wanted to befriend his son. Didn't he? Then he saidthat he had enough belief left in the Croix d'Or to back it for ahundred thousand more, if I, being a practical miner, thought well ofit. Do you call that laying down a hand? Humph!"

  The elder man finished rolling a cigarette, and then looked at himwith twinkling, whimsical eyes, as if continuing the argument merelyfor the sake of debate.

  "Well, if he thinks it's such a good thing, why didn't he offer to buyyou out? Why didn't they work her sooner? She's been idle, andwater-soaked, for three years, ain't she? As sure as your name's DickTownsend, and mine's Bill Mathews, that old feller back East don'tthink you're goin' to say it's all right. He knows all about you! Heknows you don't stand for no lies or crooked work, and are a fool forprinciple, like a bee that goes and sticks his stinger into somethin'even though he knows he's goin' to kill himself by doin' it."

  "Bosh!"

  "And how do you know he ain't figurin' it this way: 'Now I'll sendDick Townsend down there to look at it. He'll say it's no good. ThenI'll buy him out and unload this Cross of Gold hole and plant it onsome tenderfoot and get mine back!' You cain't make me believe in anyof those Wall Street fellers! They all deal from the bottom of thedeck and keep shoemaker's wax on their cuff buttons to steal the loneace!"

  As if giving the lie to his growling complaints and pessimism, helaughed with a bellowing cachinnation that prompted the burros, nowrested, to look at him with long gray ears thrust forward curiously,and wonder at his noise.

  Townsend appeared to comprehend that his partner was but half inearnest, and smiled good-humoredly.

  "Well, Bill," he said, "if the mine's not full of water or bad air, sothat we can't form any idea at all, we'll not be long in saying whatwe think of it. We ought to be there in an hour from now. Let'shike."

  They began the slow, plodding gait of the packer again, finding iteasier now that they were on the crest of a divide where the trailwas less obstructed and firmer, and the yellow lines on the peak,their goal, came more plainly into view. The cross resolved itselfinto a peculiar slide of oxidized earth traversing two gullies, andthe arm of the cross no longer appeared true to the perpendicular. Thetall tamaracks began to segregate as the travelers dropped to a loweraltitude; and pine and fir, fragrant with spring odor, seemed watchingthem. The trail at last took an abrupt turn away from the cross-markedmountain, and they came to another halt.

  "This must be where they told us to turn off through the woods anddown the slope, I think," said Townsend. "Doesn't it seem so to you,Bill?"

  The old prospector frowned off toward the top of the peak now highabove them, and then, with the peculiar farsightedness of an outdoorman of the West, looked around at the horizon as if calculating theposition of the mine.

  "Sure," he agreed. "It can't be any use to keep on the trail now. We'dbetter go to the right. They said we'd come to a little draw, thenfrom the top of a low divide we'd see the mine buildings. Come on,Jack," he ended, addressing the foremost burro, which patientlyturned after him as he led the way through the trees.

  They came to the draw, which proved shallow, climbed the oppositebank, and gave an exclamation of surprise.

  "Holy Moses! They had some buildings and plant there, eh, Dick?"

  The other, as if remembering all that was represented in the scenebelow, did not answer. He was thinking of the days when his father andhe had been friendly, and of how that restless, grasping, conqueringdreamer had built many hopes, even as he squandered many dollars, onthe Croix d'Or. It was to produce millions. It was to be one of thegreatest gold mines in the world. All that it required was moredevelopment. Now, it was to have a huge mill to handle vast quantitiesof low-grade ore; then all it needed was cheaper powe
r, so it musthave electric equipment. Again the milling results were not good, andwhat it demanded was the cyanide process.

  And so it had been, for years that he could still remember, and alwaysit led his father on and on, deferring or promising hope, to come, atlast, to this! A great, idle plant with some of its buildings fallinginto decay, its roadways obliterated by the brush growth that wascreeping back through the clearings as Nature reconquered her own, andits huge waste dumps losing their ugliness under the green moss.

  It seemed useless to think of anything more than an occasional paychute. Yet, as he thought of it, hope revived; for there had been paychutes of marvelous wealth. Why, men still talked of the Bonanza Chutethat yielded eighty thousand dollars in four days' blasting before itworked out! Maybe there were others, but that was what his father andSloan had always expected, and never found!

  His meditations were cut short by a shout from below. A man appeared,small in the distance, on the flat, or "yard" of what seemed to be theblacksmith shop.

  "Wonder who that can be?" speculated Bill, drawing his hat rim fartherover his eyes.

  "I don't know," answered Townsend, puzzled. "I never heard of theirhaving any watchmen here. But we'll soon find out."

  They started down the hillside at a faster pace, the tired animalssurmising, with their curiously acute instinct, that this must be theend of the journey and hastening to have it over with. As they brokethrough a screen of brush and came out to the edge of what had been aclearing back of a huge log bunk-house, the man who had shouted camerapidly forward to meet them. There was a certain shiftless, sullen,yet authoritative air about him as he spoke.

  "What do you fellers want here?" he asked. "I s'pose you know that noone's allowed on the Cross ground, don't you?"

  "We didn't know that," replied Townsend, inclined to be pacific, "butI fancy, we are different from almost any one else that would come. Werepresent the owners."

  "Can't help that," came the blustering answer. "You'll have to hit thetrail. I don't take orders from no one but Presby."

  A shade of annoyance was depicted on Townsend's face as he continuedto ignore the watchman's arrogance, and asked: "And please tell us,who is Presby?"

  "Presby? Who's Presby? What are you handin' me? You don't knowPresby?"

  "I don't, or I shouldn't have asked you," Townsend answered with lesspatience.

  "Say," drawled his companion, with a calm deliberation that would havebeen dreaded by those who knew him, "does it hurt you much to becivil? You were asked who this man Presby is. Do you get that?"

  The watchman glared at him for a moment, but there was something inthe cold eyes and firm lines of the prospector's face that caused himto hesitate before venturing any further display of officiousness.

  "He's the owner of the Rattler," he answered sullenly, "and I've gotorders from him that nobody, not any one, is to step a foot on thisground. If you'd 'a' come by the road, you'd 'a' seen the sign."

  The partners looked at each other for an instant, and the younger man,ignoring the elder's apparent wrath, said: "Well, I suppose the bestthing we can do is to leave the burros here and go and see Presby, andget this man of his called off."

  "You'll leave no burros here!" asserted the watchman, recovering hiscombativeness.

  "Why, you fool," exploded Mathews, starting toward him with his fistsclenched and anger blazing from his eyes at the watchman's obstinatestupidity, "you're talking to one of the owners of this mine! This isMr. Townsend."

  For an instant the man appeared abashed, and then grumbled acridly:"Well, I can't help it. I've got orders and----"

  "Oh, come on, Bill," interrupted the owner, stepping to the nearestburro's head. "We'll go on over to Presby, and get rid of this man ofhis. It won't hurt the burros to go a little farther."

  He turned to the watchman, who was scowling and obdurate.

  "Where can Presby and the Rattler be found?" he asked crisply.

  "Around the turn down at the mouth of the canyon," the watchmanmumbled. "It's not more than half or three-quarters of a mile fromhere, but you'd better go back up the hill."

  As if this last suggestion was the breaking straw, the big prospectorjumped forward, and caught the man's wrist with dexterous, sinewyfingers. He gave the arm a jerk that almost took the man from hisfeet. His eyes were hard and sharp now, and his jaw seemed to haveshut tightly.

  "We'll go back up no hill, you bet on that!" he asserted belligerently."We go by the road. We're done foolin' with you, my bucko! You goahead and show the way and be quick about it! If you don't, you'llhave trouble with me. Now git!"

  He released the wrist with a shove that sent the watchman ten feetaway, and cowed him to subjection. He recovered his balance, andhesitated for a minute, muttering something about "being even forthat," and then, as the big, infuriated miner took a step toward him,said: "All right! Come on," and started toward a roadway that, halfruined, led off and was lost at a turn. Cursing softly and telling theburros that it was a shame they had to go farther on account of afool, the prospector followed, and the little procession resumed itsstraggling march.

  They passed the huge bunk-house, a mess-house, an assay office, whatseemed to be the superintendent's quarters, and a dozen smallerstructures, all of logs, and began an abrupt descent. The top of thecanyon was so high that they looked down on the roof of the big, silentstamp mill with its quarter of a mile of covered tramway stretchinglike a huge, weather-beaten snake to the dumps of the grizzly andbreakers behind it.

  The road was blasted from the side of the canyon on which they were,and far below, between them and the hoisting house and the mill, rana clear little mountain stream, undefiled for years by the silt ofindustry. The peak of the cross, lifting a needle point high abovethem, as if keeping watch over the Blue Mountains, the far-distantIdaho hills, the near-by forests of Oregon, and the puny, man-madestructures at its feet, appeared to have a lofty disdain of them andthe burrowings into its mammoth sides, as if all ravagers were mereparasites, mad to uncover its secrets of gold, and futile, ifsuccessful, to wreak the slightest damage on its aged heart.