_ CHAPTER XVI. A FRIEND
A new spirit, a strange gladness, had come over Drusilla and parts which had been difficult became suddenly easy when she took up her work the next day; but when she walked out in the cool of the evening the sombrero and boy's boots were gone. She wore a trailing robe, such as great ladies wear when they go to keep a tryst with knightly lovers, and she went up the trail to where Denver was working on the last of her father's claims. He was up on the high cliff, busily tamping the powder that was to blast out the side of the hill, and she waited patiently until he had fired it and come down the slope with his tools.
"That makes four," he said, "and I'm all out of powder." But she only answered with a smile.
"I'll have to wait, now," he went on bluffly, "until McGraw comes up again, before I can do any more work."
"Yes," she answered and smiled again; a slow, expectant smile.
"What's the matter?" he demanded and then his face changed and he fumbled with the strap of his canteen. And when he looked up his eyes met hers and there was no longer any secret between them.
"You can rest a few days, then," she suggested softly, "I'd like to hear some of your records."
"Yes--sure, sure," he burst out hastily and they walked down the trail together. She went on ahead with the quick step of a dancer and Denver looked up at an eagle in the sky, as if in some way it could understand. But the eagle soared on, without effort and without ceasing, and Denver could only be glad. In some way, far beyond him, she had divined his love; but it was not to be spoken of--now. That would spoil it all, the days of sweet communion, the pretence that nothing had changed; yet they knew it had changed and in the sharing of that great secret lay the tie that should bind them together. Denver looked from the eagle to the glorious woman and remembered the prophecy again. Even yet he must beware, he must veil every glance, treat her still like a simple country child; for the seeress had warned him that his fate hung in the balance and she might still confer her hand upon another.
In the happy days that followed he did no more work, further than to sack his ore and ship it; but all his thoughts were centered upon Drusilla who was friendly and elusive by turns. On that first precious evening she came up with her father and inspected his smoke-blackened cave, and over his new records there sprang up a conversation that held him entranced for hours. She had been to the Metropolitan and the Boston Opera Houses and heard the great singers at their best; she understood their language, whether it was French or Italian or the now proscribed German of Wagner, and she listened to the records again and again, trying to steal the secret of their success. But through it all she was gentle and friendly, and all her old quarrelsomeness was gone.
A week passed like a day, full of dreams and half-uttered confidences and long, contented silences; and then, as they sat in the shade of the giant sycamore Denver let his eyes that had been fixed upon Drusilla, stray and sweep the lower road.
"What are you looking for now?" she demanded impatiently and he turned back with a guilty grin.
"McGraw," he said and she frowned to herself for at last the world had come between them. For a week he had been idle, a heaven-sent companion in the barren loneliness of life; but now, when his powder and mining supplies arrived, he would become the old hard-working miner. He would go into his dark tunnel before the sun was up and not come out till it was low in the west, and instead of being clean and handsome as a young god he would come forth like a groveling gnome. His face would be grimy, his hands gnarled with striking, his digging-clothes covered with candle-grease: and his body would reek with salty sweat and the rank, muggy odor of powder fumes. And he would crawl back to his cave like an outworn beast of burden, to sleep while she sang to him from below.
"Will you go back to work?" she asked at last and he nodded and stretched his great arms.
"Back to work!" he repeated, "and I guess it's about time. I wonder how much credit Murray gave me?"
Drusilla said nothing. She was looking far away and wondering at the thing we call life.
"Why do you work so hard?" she inquired, half complainingly. "Is that all there is in the world?"
"No, lots of other things," he answered carelessly, "but work is the only way to get them. I'm on my way, see? I've just begun. You wait till I open up that mine!"
"Then what will you do?" she murmured pensively, "go ahead and open up another mine?"
"Well, I might," he admitted. "Don't you remember that other treasure? There's a gold-mine around here, somewhere."
"Oh, is that all you think about?" she protested with a smile. "There are lots of other treasures, you know."
"Yes, but this one was prophesied," returned Denver doggedly. "I'm bound to find it, now."
"But Denver," she insisted, "don't you see what I mean? These fortune-tellers never tell you, straight out. Yours said, 'a golden treasure,' but that doesn't mean a gold mine. There are other treasures, besides."
"For instance?" he suggested and she looked far away as if thinking of some she might name.
"Well," she said at length, "there are opals, for one. They are beautiful, and look like golden fire. Or it might be a rare old violin that would bring back your music again. I saw one once that was golden yellow--wouldn't you like to play while I sing? But if you spend all your life trying to grub out more riches you will lose your appreciation of art."
"Yes, but wait," persisted Denver, "I'm just getting started. I haven't got a dollar to my name. If Murray don't send me the supplies that I ordered I'll have to go to work for my grub. The jewels can wait, and the yellow violins, but I know that she meant a mine. It would have to be a mine or I couldn't choose between them--and when I make my stake I'm going to buy out the Professor and see what he's got underground. Of course, it's only a stringer now but----"
"Oh dear," sighed Drusilla and then she rose up, but she did not go away. "Aren't you glad," she asked, "that we've had this week together? I suppose I'm going to miss you, now. That's the trouble with being a woman--we get to be so dependent. Can I play over your records, sometimes?"
"Sure," said Denver, "say, I'm going up there now to see if McGraw isn't in sight. Would you like to come along too? We can sit outside in the shade and watch for his dust, down the road."
"Well, I ought to be studying," she assented reluctantly, "but I guess I can go up--for a while."
They clambered up together over the ancient, cliff-dwellers' trail, where each foothold was worn deep in the rock; but as they sat within the shadow of the beetling cliff Drusilla sighed again.
"Do you think?" she asked, "that there will be a great rush when they hear about your strike down in Moroni? Because then I'll have to go--I can't practice the way I have been with the whole town filled up with miners. And everything will be changed--I'd almost rather it wouldn't happen, and have things the way they are now. Of course I'll be glad for father's sake, because he's awfully worried about money; but sometimes I think we're happier the way we are than we will be when we're all of us rich. What will be the first thing you'll do?"
"Well," began Denver, his eyes still on the road, "the first thing is to open her up. There's no use trying to interest outside capital until you've got some ore in sight. Then I'll go over to Globe to a man that I know and come back with a hundred thousand dollars. That's right--I know him well, and he knows me--and he's told me repeatedly if I find anything big enough he's willing to put that much into it. He came up from nothing, just an ordinary miner, but now he's got money in ten different banks, and a hundred thousand dollars is nothing to him. But his time is valuable, can't stop to look at prospects; so the first thing I do is to open up that mine until I can show a big deposit of copper. The silver and lead will pay all the expenses--and you wait, when that ore gets down to the smelter I'll bet there'll be somebody coming up here. It runs a thousand ounces to the ton or I'm a liar, the way I've sorted it out; but of course old Murray and the rest of 'em will rob me. I don't expect more than three hundred dollars."
"Isn't it wonderful," murmured Drusilla, "and to think it all happened just from having your fortune told! I'm going over to Globe before I start back East and get her to tell my fortune, too; but of course it can't be as wonderful as yours--you must have been just born lucky."
"Well, maybe I was," said Denver with a shrug, "but it isn't all over yet--I still stand a chance to lose. And she told me some other things that are not so pleasant--sometimes I wish I'd never gone near her."
"Oh, what are they?" she asked in a hushed eager voice; but Denver ignored the question. Never, not even to his dearest friend, would he tell the forecasting of his death; and as for dearest friends, if he ever had another pardner he could never trust him a minute. The chance slipping of a pick, a missed stroke with a hammer, any one of a thousand trivial accidents, and the words of the prophecy would come to pass--he would be killed before his time. But if he favored one man no more than another, if he avoided his former pardners and friends, then he might live to be one of the biggest mining men in the country and to win Drusilla for his wife.
"I'll tell you," he said meditatively, "you'd better keep away from her. A man does better without it. Suppose she'd tell you, for instance, that you'd get killed in a cave like she did Jack Chambers over in Globe; you'd be scared then, all the time you were under ground--it ruins a man for a miner. No, it's better not to know it at all. Just go ahead, the best you know how, and play your cards to win, and I'll bet it won't be but a year or two until you're a regular operatic star. They'll be selling your records for three dollars apiece, and all those managers will be bidding for you; but if Mother Trigedgo should tell you some bad news it might hurt you--it might spoil your nerve."
"Oh, did she tell you something?" cried Drusilla apprehensively. "Do tell me what it was! I won't breathe it to a soul; and if you could share it with some friend, don't you think it would ease your mind?"
Denver looked at her slowly, then he turned away and shook his head in refusal.
"Oh, Denver!" she exclaimed as she sensed the significance of it, and before he knew it she was patting his work-hardened hand. "I'm sorry," she said, "but if ever I can help you I want you to let me know. Would it help to have me for a friend?"
"A friend!" he repeated, and then he drew back and the horror came into his eyes. She was his friend already, the dearest friend he had--was she destined then to kill him?
"No!" he said, "I don't want any friends. Come on, I believe that's McGraw."
He rose up hastily and held out his hand to help her but she refused to accept his aid. Her lips were trembling, there were tears in her eyes and her breast was beginning to heave; but there was no explanation he could give. He wanted her, yes, but not as a friend--as his beloved, his betrothed, his wife! By any name, but not by the name of friend. He drew away slowly as her head bowed to her knees; and at last he left her, weeping. It was best, after all, for how could he comfort her? And he could see McGraw's dust down the road.
"I'm going to meet McGraw!" he called back from the steps and went bounding off down the trail. _