The Plunderer Read online

  CHAPTER III

  AN UGLY WATCHMAN

  By easy stages indicating competent engineering and a lavishexpenditure of money, the road led them downward to a barricade oflogs, in an opening of which swung a gate barely wide enough to passthe tired burros and their packs.

  "You'll find Presby over there," said their unwilling guide, pointingat a group of red-painted mining structures nestled in a flat lap inthe ragged mountains.

  They surmised that this must be the Rattler camp, and inspected itsdisplay of tall smokestacks, high hoists, skeleton tramways, and bleakdumps. Before they could make any reply, the gate behind them slammedshut with a vicious bang that attracted their attention. They turnedto see the watchman hurrying back up the road. Fixed to the barricadewas a sign, crudely lettered, but insistently distinct:

  No one allowed on these premises, by order of the owners. For anybusiness to be transacted with the Croix d'Or, apply to Thomas W.Presby.

  "Curt enough, at least, isn't he?" commented Townsend, half-smiling.

  "Curt!" growled his companion, frowning, with his recent anger buthalf-dissipated. "Curt as a bulldog takin' a bite out of your leg.Don't waste no time at all on words. Just says: 'It's you I'm lookin'after.' Where do you reckon we'll find this here Thomas Presbyperson?"

  "I suppose he must have an office up there somewhere," answeredTownsend, waving his arm in the direction of the scattered buildingsspread in that profligacy of space which comes where space is free.

  "These mules is tired. It's a shame we couldn't have left them upthere," Mathews answered, looking at them and fondling the ears of thenearest one. "You go on up and get an order letting us into your mine,and I'll wait here. No use in makin' these poor devils do any more'nthey have to."

  Townsend assented, and followed a path which zigzaged around bowldersand stumps up to the red cluster on the hillside above him. He wasimpatient and annoyed at the useless delays imposed upon them in thisnew venture, and wondered why his father's partner had not informedhim of the fact that he would find the mine guarded by the owner ofthe adjoining property.

  A camp "washwoman," with clothespins in her mouth, and a soggy grayshirt in her hands, paused to stare at him from beneath a row of othergray and blue shirts and coarse underwear, dripping from the linesabove her head.

  Two little boys, fantastically garbed in faded blue denim which hadevidently been refashioned from cast-off wearing apparel of theirsires, followed after him, hand in hand, as if the advent of astranger on the Rattler grounds was an event of interest, and he foundhimself facing a squat, red, white-bordered, one-storied building,over whose door a white-and-black sign told the stranger, or applicantfor work, that he was at the "office."

  A man came to a window in a picketed wicket as he entered, and saidbriskly: "Well?"

  "I want to see Mr. Presby," Dick answered, wasting no more words thanhad the other.

  "Oh, well, if nobody else will do, go in through that door."

  Before he had finished his speech, the bookkeeper had turned againtoward the ledgers spread out on an unpainted, standing desk againstthe wall behind his palings, and Dick walked to the only door insight. He opened it, and stepped inside. A white-headed, scowling man,clean shaven, and with close-shut, thin, hard lips, looked up over apile of letters and accounts laid before him on a cheap, flat-toppeddesk.

  Dick's eyes opened a trifle wider. He was looking at the man who haddefied the mob at the road house, and at this close range studied hisappearance more keenly.

  There was hard, insolent mastery in his every line. His face had thesternness of granite. His hands, poised when interrupted in theirtask, were firm and wrinkled as if by years of reaching; and his heavybody, short neck, and muscle-bent shoulders, all suggested the man whohad relentlessly fought his way to whatever position of dominancy hemight then occupy. He wore the same faded black hat planted squarelyon his head, and was in his shirt-sleeves. The only sign ofself-indulgence betrayed in him or his surroundings was an oldcrucible, serving as an ash tray, which was half-filled with cigarstumps, and Dick observed, in that instant's swift appraisement, thateven these were chewed as if between the teeth of a mentally restlessman.

  "You want to see me?" the man questioned, and then, as if the thinpartition had not muffled the words of the outer office, went on:"You asked for Presby. I'm Presby. What do you want?"

  For an instant, self-reliant and cool as he was, Dick was confused bythe directness of his greeting.

  "I should like to have you tell that watchman over at the Croix d'Orthat we are to be admitted there," he replied, forgetting that he hadnot introduced himself.

  "You should, eh? And who are you, may I ask?" came the dry, satiricalresponse.

  Dick flushed a trifle, feeling that he had begun lamely in thisreception and request.

  "I am Richard Townsend," he answered, recovering himself. "A son ofCharles Townsend, and a half-owner in the property. I've come to lookthe Croix d'Or over."

  He was not conscious of it then, but remembered afterward, that Presbywas momentarily startled by the announcement. The man's eyes seemedintent on penetrating and appraising him, as he stood there without aseat having been proffered, or any courtesy shown. Then, as ifthinking, Presby stared at the inkwell before him, and frowned.

  "How am I to know that?" he asked. "The Cross has had enough menwanting to look it over to make an army. Maybe you're one of them. Gotany letters telling me that I'm to turn it over to you?"

  For an instant Dick was staggered by this obstacle.

  "No," he said reluctantly, "I have not; that is, nothing directed toyou. I did not know that you were in charge of the property."

  He was surprised to notice that Presby's heavy brows adjustedthemselves to a scowl. He wondered why the mine owner should beantagonistic to him, when there was nothing at stake.

  "Well, I am," asserted Presby. "I hired the watchman up there, and Isee to it that all the stuff lying around loose isn't stolen."

  "On whose authority, may I ask?" questioned Dick, without thought ofgiving offense, but rather as a means of explaining his position.

  "Sloan's. Why, you don't think I'm watching it because I want it, doyou, young man? The old watchman threw up his job. I had Sloan'saddress, and wrote him about it. Sloan wrote and asked me to get a manto look after it, and I did. Now, you show me that you've got a rightto go on the grounds of the Cross Mine, and I'll give an order to thewatchman."

  There was absolute antagonism in his tone, although not in his words.Dick thought of nothing at the moment but that he had one sole proofof his ownership, the letter from Sloan himself. He unbuttoned theflap of his shirt pocket, and, taking out a bundle of letters,selected the one bearing on the situation.

  "That should be sufficient," he said, throwing it, opened, beforePresby.

  The latter, without moving his solid body in the least, and as if hisarms and hands were entirely independent of it, stolidly picked up theletter and read it. Dick could infer nothing of its reception. Hecould not tell whether Presby was inclined to accept it as sufficientauthority, or to question it. Outside were the sounds of the Rattler'sactivity and production, the heavy, thunderous roar of the stamp mill,the clash of cars of ore dumped into the maws of the grizzly to behammered into smaller fragments in their journey to the crusher, andthence downward to end their journeys over the thumping stamps, andout, disintegrated, across the wet and shaking tables.

  It seemed, as he stood waiting, that the dust of the pulverizedmountains had settled over everything in the office save thegranite-like figure that sat at the desk, rereading the letter whichhad changed all his life. For the first time he thought that perhapshe should not have so easily displayed that link with his past. Itseemed a useless sacrilege. If the mine-owner was not reading theletter, he was pondering, unmoved, over a course of action, and tookhis time.

  Dick thought bitterly, in a flash, of all that it represented. Thequarrel with his father on that day he had returned from ColumbiaUniversity with a m
ining course proudly finished, when each, stubbornby nature, had insisted that his plan was the better; of hisrebellious refusal to enter the brokerage office in Wall Street, anddeclaration that he intended to go into the far West and follow hisprofession, and of the stern old man's dismissal when he asserted,with heat:

  "You've always taken the road you wanted to go since your mother died.I objected to your taking up mining engineering, but you went ahead inspite of me. I tried to get you to take an interest in the businessthat has been my life work, but you scorned it. You wouldn't be abroker, or a banker. You had to be a mining engineer! All right,you've had your way, so far. Now, you can keep on in the way you haveselected. I'll give you five thousand dollars, but you'll never getanother cent from me until you've learned what a fool you're making ofyourself, and return to do what I want you to do. It won't be long!There's a vast difference between dawdling around a universitylearning something that is going to be useless while your father paysthe bills, and turning that foolish education into dollars to staveoff an empty belly. You can go now."

  In those days the house of Phillip Townsend had been a great name inNew York. Now this was all that was left of it. Dissolution, death,and dust, and a half-interest in an abandoned mine! The harsh voice ofBully Presby aroused him from his thoughts.

  "All right," it said. "This seems sufficient, but if you've got thesense and judgment Sloan seems to think you have, you'll come to theconclusion that there's not much use in wasting any of his good, harddollars on the Croix d'Or. It never has paid. It never will pay. Ioffered to buy it once, but I wouldn't give a dollar for it now,beyond what the timber above ground is worth. It owns a full sectionof timberland, and that's about all."

  He reached for a pen and wrote a note to the watchman, telling himthat the bearer, Richard Townsend, had come to look over the propertyand that his orders must be accepted, and signed it with hishard-driven scrawl. He handed it up to Dick without rising from hisseat, and said: "That'll fix you up, I think."

  As if by an afterthought, he asked: "Have you any idea of thecondition of the mine?"

  "No," Dick answered, as he folded the letter and put it into hispocket, together with the one from his late father's partner.

  "Well, then, I can tell you, it's bad," said Presby, fixing him withhis cool, hard stare. "The Cross is spotted. Once in a while they hadpay chutes. They never had a true ledge. There isn't one there, as faras anybody that ever worked it knows. They wasted five hundredthousand dollars trying to find it, and drove ten thousand feet ofdrifts and tunnels. They went down more than six hundred feet. She'sunder water, no one knows how deep. It might take twenty thousand toun-water the sinking shaft again, and at the bottom you'd findnothing. Take my advice. Let it alone. Good-day."

  Dick walked out, scarcely knowing whether to feel grateful for thechurlish advice or to resume his wonted attitude of self-reliance andhold himself unprejudiced by Presby's condemnation of the Croix d'Or.He wondered if Bully Presby suspected him of having been friendly withthe mob of drunken ruffians at the road house, but he had been givenno chance to explain.

  At the bottom of the gulch he found Bill sprawled at length on hiselbows almost under the forefeet of one of the burros which was nosinghim over in a friendly caress. He called out as he approached, and thebig prospector sat up, deftly snapped the cigarette he had beensmoking into the creek with his thumb and forefinger, and got to hisfeet.

  "Do we get permission to go on the claim?" he grinned, as Townsendreached him.

  "Yes, I've got an order to the watchman. The old man doesn't seem tothink much of it. Says it's spotted. Had rich pay chutes, but theypinched. No regular formation. Always been a loser. Thinks we'd befoolish to do anything with it."

  "Good of him, wasn't it?"

  Dick looked quickly at the hard, lined face of his companion.

  "That's the first thing I've heard that made me feel better," declaredthe prospector, as he swung one of the burro's heads back into thetrail and hit the beast a friendly slap on the haunches to start itforward. "Whenever a man, like this old feller seems to be, gives methat kind of advice, I sit up and take notice."

  "Why--why, what do you know about him?" Dick asked, falling into thetrail behind the pack animals, which had started forward with theirslow jog trot, and ears swaying backward and forward as they went.

  "While you was gone," Mathews answered, "I had a long talk with a boythat came along and got friendly. You can believe boys, most of 'em.They know a heap more than men. They think out things that men don't.Kids are always friends with me; you know that. I reckon, from what Igathered, that this Presby man is about as hard and grasping an oldcuss as ever worked the last ounce of gold out of a waste dump. Hemakes the men save the fags of the candles and the drips, so's he canmelt 'em over again. He runs a company store, and if they don't buyboots and grub from him, they have to tear out mighty quick. He fireda fireman because the safety-valve in the boiler-house let go one daytwenty minutes before the noon shift went back to work. If he says,'Let the Cross alone,' I think it's because he wants it."

  "You couldn't guess who he is," Dick said, preparing to move.

  "Why? Do I know him?"

  "In a way. He's the man we saw the mob tackle, back there at the roadhouse."

  Bill gave a long whistle.

  "So that's the chap, eh? Bully Presby! Well, if we ever run foul ofhim, we've got our work cut out for us. Things are beginnin' to getinterestin'. 'I like the place,' as Daniel said when he went to sleepin the lion's den."

  They opened the gate through the barricade without any formality, andwere well started up the inclined road of the Croix d'Or before theyencountered the watchman who had given them so much trouble. As hecame toward them, frowning, they observed that he had buckled a pistolround him as if to resist any intrusion in case it should be attemptedwithout instructions. Dick handed him Presby's order, and the man readit through in surly silence; then his entire attitude underwent aswift change. He became almost obsequiously respectful.

  "I'll have to go down and have a talk with Mr. Presby," he said, andwould have ventured a further remark, but was cut short by themine-owner.

  "Yes, you'd better go and see him," Dick said concisely. "And when yougo, take all of your dunnage you can carry, then come back and get therest. I shall not want you on the claim an hour longer than necessaryfor you to get your stuff away. You're too good a man to have aroundhere."

  The fellow gave a shrug of his shoulders, an evil grin, andturned back up the road to vanish in what had evidently been thesuperintendent's cabin, and noisily began to whistle as he gatheredhis stuff together. The partners halted before the door, and Dicklooked inside.

  "I suppose you have the keys for everything, haven't you?" he called.

  The man impudently tossed a bundle at him without a word. Apparentlyhis belongings were but few, which led the newcomers to believe thathe had taken his meals at the Rattler, and perhaps slept there on manynights. They watched him as he rolled his blankets, and prepared tostart down the trail.

  "The rest of that plunder in there, the pots and the lamp, belong tothe mine," he said. And then, without other words, turned away.

  "That may be the last of him, and maybe it won't!" growled Bill, as hebegan throwing the hitches off the tired burros that stood pantingoutside the door. "Anyway, it's the fag end of him to-night."

  They were amazed at the lavish expenditure of money that had been madein the superintendent's quarters. There were a porcelain bathtubbrought up into the heart of the wilderness, a mahogany desk whoseedges had been burned by careless smokers, and a safe whose door swungopen, exposing a litter of papers, mine drawings, and plans. The fourrooms evidently included office and living quarters, and theybetokened a reckless financial outlay for the purpose.

  "Poor Dad!" said Dick, looking around him. "No wonder the Cross lostmoney if this is a sample of the way the management spent it."

  He stepped outside to where the canyon was beginning to sink into thedusk. The
early moon, still behind the silhouette of the easternfringe of peaks and forests, lighted up the yellow cross mark highabove, and for some reason, in the stillness of the evening, heaccepted it as a sign of promise.