_ BOOK TWO
CHAPTER XIX. THE MINE--AND THE DEPARTURE
Larry Kildene went around behind the stall where he kept his own horse and returned with a hollow tube of burnt clay about a foot long. Into this he thrust a pine knot heavy with pitch, and, carrying a bunch of matches in his hand, he led the way back of the fodder.
"I made these clay handles for my torches myself. They are my invention, and I am quite proud of them. You can hold this burning knot until it is quite consumed, and that's a convenience." He stooped and crept under the fodder, and then Harry King saw why he kept more there than his horse could eat, and never let the store run low. It was to conceal the opening of a long, low passage that might at first be taken for a natural cave under the projecting mass of rock above them, which formed one side and part of the roof of the shed. Quivering with excitement, although sad at heart, Harry King followed his guide, who went rapidly forward, talking and explaining as he went. Under his feet the way was rough and made frequent turns, and for the most part seemed to climb upward.
"There you see it. I discovered a vein of ore back there at the place we entered, and assayed it and found it rich, and see how I worked it out! Here it seemed to end, and then I was still sane enough to think I had enough gold for my life; I left the digging for a while, and went to find my boy. I learned that he was living and had gone into the army with his cousin, and I knew we would be of little use to each other then, but reasoned that the time was to come when the war would be over, and then he would have to find a place for himself, and his father's gold would help. However it was--I saw I must wait. Sit here a bit on this ledge, I want to tell you, but not in self-justification, mind you, not that.
"I had been in India, and had had my fill of wars and fighting. I had no mind to it. I went off and bought stores and seed, and thought I would make more of my garden and not show myself again in Leauvite until my boy was back. It was in my thought, if the lad survived the army, to send for him and give him gold to hold his head above--well--to start him in life, and let him know his father,--but when I returned, the great madness came on me.
"I had built the shed and stabled my horse there, and purposely located my cabin below. The trail up here from the plain is a blind one, because of the wash from the hills at times, and I didn't fear much from white men,--still I concealed my tracks like this. Gold often turns men into devils."
He was silent for a time, and Harry King wondered much why he had made no further effort to find his son before making to himself the offer he had, but he dared not question him, and preferred to let Larry take his own way of telling what he would. As if divining his thought Larry said quietly: "Something held me back from going down again to find my son. The way is long, and in the old way of traveling over the plains it would take a year or more to make the journey and return here, and somehow a superstition seized me that my boy would set out sometime to find me, and I would make the way easy for him to do it. And here on the mountain the years slip by like a long sleep."
He began moving the torch about to show the walls of the cave in which they sat, and as he did so he threw the light strongly on the young man's face, and scrutinized it sharply. He saw again that terrible look of sadness as if his soul were dying within him. He saw great drops of sweat on his brow, and his eyes narrowed and fixed, and he hurried on with the narrative. He could not bear the sight.
"Now here, look how this hole widens out? Here was where I prospected about to find the vein again, and there is where I took it up. All this overhead is full of gold. Think what it would mean if a man had the right apparatus for getting it out--I mean separating it! I only took what was free; that is, what could be easily freed from the quartz. Sometimes I found it in fine nuggets, and then I would go wild, and work until I was so weak I could hardly crawl back to the entrance. I often lay down here and slept with fatigue before I could get back and cook my supper."
As they went on a strange roaring seemed gradually to fill the passage, and Harry spoke for the first time since they had entered. He feared the sound of his own voice, as though if he began to speak, he might scream out, or reveal something he was determined to hide. He thought the roaring sound might be in his own ears from the surging of blood in his veins and the tumultuous beating of his heart.
"What is it I hear? Is my head right?"
"The roaring? Yes, you're all right. I thought when I was working here and slowly burrowing farther and farther that it might be the lack of air, and tried to contrive some way of getting it from the outside. I thought all the time that I was working farther into the mountain, and that I would have to stop or die here like a rat in a hole. But you just wait. You'll be surprised in a minute."
Then Harry laughed, and the laugh, unexpected to himself, woke him from the trancelike feeling that possessed him, and he walked more steadily. "I've been being more surprised each minute. Am I in Aladdin's cave--or whose is it?"
"Only mine. Just one more turn here and then--! It was not in the night I came here, and it was not all at once, as you are coming--hold on! Let me go in front of you. The hole was made gradually, until, one morning about ten o'clock, a great mass of rock--gold bearing, I tell you--rich in nuggets--I was crazed to lose it--fell out into space, and there I stood on the very verge of eternity."
They rounded the turn as he talked, and Larry Kildene stood forward under the stars and waved the torch over his head and held Harry back from the edge with his other hand. The air over their heads was sweet and pure and cold, and full of the roar of falling water. They could see it in a long, vast ribbon of luminous whiteness against the black abyss--moving--and waving--coming out from nothingness far above them, and reaching down to the nethermost depths--in that weird gloom of night--into nothingness again.
Harry stepped back, and back, into the hole from which they had emerged, and watched his companion stand holding the torch, which lit his features with a deep red light until he looked as if he might be the very alchemist of gold--red gold--and turning all he looked upon into the metal which closes around men's hearts. The red light flashed on the white ribbon of water, and this way and that, as he waved it around, on the sides of the passage behind him, turning each point of projecting rock into red gold.
"Do you know where we are? No. We're right under the fall--right behind it. No one can ever see this hole from the outside. It is as completely hidden as if the hand of the Almighty were stretched over it. The rush of this body of water always in front of it keeps the air in the passage always pure. It's wonderful--wonderful!"
He turned to look at Harry, and saw a wild man crouched in the darkness of the passage, glaring, and preparing to leap. He seized and shook him. "What ails you, man? Hold on. Hold on. Keep your head, I say. There! I've got you. Turn about. Now! It's over now. That's enough. It won't come again."
Harry moaned. "Oh, let me go. Let me get away from it."
The big man still gripped him and held him with his face toward the darkness. "Tell me what you see," he commanded.
Still Harry moaned, and sank upon his knees. "Lord, forgive, forgive!"
"Tell me what you see," Larry still commanded. He would try to break up this vision seeing.
"God! It is the eye. It follows me. It is gone." He heaved a great sigh of relief, but still remained upon his knees, quivering and weak. "Did you see it? You must have seen it."
"I saw nothing, and you saw nothing. It's in your brain, and your brain is sick. You must heal it. You must stop it. Stand now, and conquer it."
Harry stood, shivering. "I wanted to end it. It would have been so easy, and all over so soon," he murmured.
"And you would die a coward, and so add one more crime to the first. You'd shirk a duty, and desert those who need you. You'd leave me in the lurch, and those women dependent on me--wake up--"
"I'm awake. Let's go away." Harry put his hand to his forehead and wiped away the cold drops that stood out like glistening beads of blood in the red light of the torch.
Larry grieved for him, in spite of the harshness of his words and tone, and taking him by the elbow, he led him kindly back into the passage.
"Don't trouble about me now," Harry said at last. "You've given me a thought to clutch to--if you really do need me--if I could believe it."
"Well, you may! Didn't you say you'd do for me more than sons do for their fathers? I ask you to do just that for me. Live for me. It's a hard thing to ask of you, for, as you say, the other would be easier, but it's a coward's way. Don't let it tempt you. Stand to your guns like a man, and if the time comes and you can't see things differently, go back and make your confession and die the death--as a brave man should. Meantime, live to some purpose and do it cheerfully." Larry paused. His words sank in, as he meant they should. He guided Harry slowly back to the place from which they had diverged, his arm across the younger man's shoulder.
"Now I've more to show you. When I saw what I had done, I set myself to find another vein, and see this large room? I groveled all about here, this way and that. A year of this, see. It took patience, and in the meantime I went out into the world--as far as San Francisco, and wasted a year or more; then back I came.
"I tell you there is a lure in the gold, and the mountains are powers of peace to a man. It seemed there was no other place where I could rest in peace of mind. The longing for my son was on me,--but the war still raged, and I had no mind for that,--yet I was glad my boy was taking his part in the world out of which I had dropped. For one thing it seemed as if he were more my own than if he lived in Leauvite on the banker's bounty. I would not go back there and meet the contempt of Peter Craigmile, for he never could forget that I had taken his sister out of hand, and she gone--man--it was all too sad. How did I know how my son had been taught to think on me? I could not go back when I would.
"His name was Richard--my boy's. If he came alive from the army I do not know,--See? Here is where I found another vein, and I have followed it on there to the end of this other branch of the passage, and not exhausted it yet. Here's maybe another twenty years' work for some man. Now, wasn't it a great work for one man alone, to tunnel through that rock to the fall? No one man needs all that wealth. I've often thought of Ireland and the poverty we left there. If I had my boy to hearten me, I could do something for them now. We'll go back and sleep, for it's the trail for me to-morrow, and to go and come quickly, before the snow falls. Come!"
They returned in silence to the shed. The torch had burned well down into the clay handle, and Larry Kildene extinguished the last sparks before they crept through the fodder to their room in the shed. The fire of logs was almost out, and the place growing cold.
"You'll find the gold in a strong box made of hewn logs, buried in the ground underneath the wood in the addition to the cabin. There's no need to go to it yet, not until you need money. I'll show you how I prepare it for use, in the morning. I do it in the room I made there near the fall. It's the most secret place a man ever had for such work."
Larry stretched himself in his bunk and was soon sleeping soundly. Not so the younger man. He could not compose himself after the excitement of the evening. He tossed and turned until morning found him weary and worn, but with his troubled mind more at rest than it had been for many months. He had fought out his battle, at least for the time being, and was at peace.
Harry King rose and went out into the cold morning air and was refreshed. He brought in a large handful of pine cones and made a roaring fire in the chimney he had built, before Larry roused himself. Then he, too, went out and surveyed the sky with practiced eye.
"Clear and cool--that argues well for me. If it were warm, now, I'd hardly like to start. Sometimes the snow holds off for weeks in this weather."
They stood in the pallid light of the early morning an hour before the sun, and the wind lifted Larry's hair and flapped his shirt sleeves about his arms. It was a tingling, sharp breeze, and when they returned to the cave, where they went for Harry's lesson in smelting, the old man's cheeks were ruddy.
The sun had barely risen when the lesson was over, and they descended for breakfast. Amalia had all ready for them, and greeted Larry from the doorway.
"Good morning, Sir Kildene. You start soon. I have many good things to eat all prepare to put in your bag, and when you sit to your dinner on the long way, it is that you must think of Amalia and know that she says a prayer to the sweet Christ, that he send his good angels to watch over you all the way you go. A prayer to follow you all the way is good, is not?" Amalia's frank and untrammeled way of referring to Divinity always precipitated a shyness on Larry,--a shyness that showed itself in smiles and stammering.
"Good--good--yes. Good, maybe so." Harry had turned back to bring down Larry's horse and pack mule. "Now, while we eat,--Harry will be down soon, we won't wait for him,--while we eat, let me go over the things I'm to find for you down below. I must learn the list well by heart, or you may send me back for the things I've missed bringing."
As they talked Amalia took from her wrist a heavy bracelet of gold, and from a small leather bag hidden in her clothing, a brooch of emeralds, quaintly set and very precious. Her mother sat in one of her trancelike moods, apparently seeing nothing around her, and Amalia took Larry to one side and spoke in low tones.
"Sir Kildene, I have thought much, and at last it seems to me right to part with these. It is little that we have--and no money, only these. What they are worth I have no knowledge. Mother may know, but to her I say nothing. They are a memory of the days when my father was noble and lived at the court. If you can sell them--it is that this brooch should bring much money--my father has told me. It was saved for my dowry, with a few other jewels of less worth. I have no need of dowry. It is that I never will marry. Until my mother is gone I can well care for her with the lace I make,--and then--"
"Lass, I can't take these. I have no knowledge of their worth--or--" He knew he was saying what was not true, for he knew well the value of what she laid so trustingly in his palm, and his hand quivered under the shining jewels. He cleared his throat and began again. "I say, I can't take jewels so valuable over the trail and run the risk of losing them. Never! Put them by as before."
"But how can I ask of you the things I wish? I have no money to return for them, and none for all you have done for my mother and me. Please, Sir Kildene, take of this, then, only enough to buy for our need. It is little to take. Do not be hard with me." She pleaded sweetly, placing one hand under his great one, and the other over the jewels, holding them pressed to his palm. "Will you go away and leave my heart heavy?"
"Look here, now--" Again he cleared his throat. "You put them by until I come back, and then--"
But she would not, and tying them in her handkerchief, she thrust them in the pocket of his flannel shirt.
"There! It is not safe in such a place. Be sure you take care, Sir Kildene. I have many thoughts in my mind. It is not all the money of these you will need now, and of the rest I may take my mother to a large city, where are people who understand the fine lace. There I may sell enough to keep us well. But of money will I need first a little to get us there. It is well for me, you take these--see? Is not?"
"No, it is not well." He spoke gruffly in his effort to overcome his emotion. "Where under heaven can I sell these?"
"You go not to the great city?" she asked sadly. "How must we then so long intrude us upon you! It is very sad." She clasped her hands and looked in his eyes, her own brimming with tears; then he turned away. Tears in a woman's eyes! He could not stand it.
"See here. I'll tell you what I'll do. If that railroad is through anywhere--so--so--I can reach San Francisco--" He thought he knew that to be an impossibility, and that she would be satisfied. "I say--if it's where I can reach San Francisco, I'll see what can be done." He cleared his throat a great many times, and stood awkwardly, hardly daring to move with the precious jewels in his pocket. "See here. They'll joggle out of here. Can't you--"
She turned on him radiantly. "You may have my bag of leather. In that will they be safe."
She removed the string from her neck and by it pulled the small embossed case from her bosom, shook out the few rings and unset stones left in it, and returned the larger jewels to it, and gave it into his hand, still warm from its soft resting place. At the same moment Harry arrived, leading the animals. He lifted his head courageously and his eyes shone as with an inspiration.
"Will you let me accompany you a bit of the way, sir? I'd like to go." Larry accepted gladly. He knew then what he would do with Amalia's dowry. "Then I'll bring Goldbug. Thank you, Amalia, yes. I'll drink my coffee now, and eat as I ride." He ran back for his horse and soon returned, and then drank his coffee and snatched a bite, while Amalia and Larry slung the bags of food and the water on the mule and made all ready for the start. As he ate, he tried to arouse and encourage the mother, but she remained stolid until they were in the saddle, when she rose and followed them a few steps, and said in her deep voice: "Yes, I ask a thing. You will find Paul, my 'usband. Tell him to come to me--it is best--no more,--I cannot in English." Then turning to her daughter she spoke volubly in her own tongue, and waved her hand imperiously toward the men.
"Yes, mamma. I tell all you say." Amalia took a step away from the door, and her mother returned to her seat by the fire.
"It is so sad. My mother thinks my father is returned to our own country and that you go there. She thinks you are our friend Sir McBride in disguise, and that you go to help my father. She fears you will be taken and sent to Siberia, and says tell my father it is enough. He must no more try to save our fatherland: that our noblemen are full of ingratitude, and that he must return to her and live hereafter in peace."
"Let be so. It's a saving hallucination. Tell her if I find your father, I will surely deliver the message." And the two men rode away up the trail, conversing earnestly.
Larry Kildene explained to Harry about the jewels, and turned them over to his keeping. "I had to take them, you see. You hide them in that chamber I showed you, along with the gold bars. Hang it around your neck, man, until you get back. It has rested on her bosom, and if I were a young man like you, that fact alone would make it sacred to me. It's her dowry, she said. I'd sooner part with my right hand than take it from her."
"So would I." Harry took the case tenderly, and hid it as directed, and went on to ask the favor he had accompanied Larry to ask. It was that he might go down and bring the box from the wagon.
"Early this morning, before I woke you, I led the brown horse you brought the mother up the mountain on out toward the trail; we'll find him over the ridge, all packed ready, and when I ran back for my horse, I left a letter written in charcoal on the hearth there in the shed--Amalia will be sure to go there and find it, if I don't return now--telling her what I'm after and that I'll only be gone a few days. She's brave, and can get along without us." Larry did not reply at once, and Harry continued.
"It will only take us a day and a half to reach it, and with your help, a sling can be made of the canvas top of the wagon, and the two animals can 'tote it' as the darkies down South say. I can walk back up the trail, or even ride one of the horses. We'll take the tongue and the reach from the wagon and make a sort of affair to hang to the beasts, I know how it can be done. There may not be much of value in the box, but then--there may be. I see Amalia wishes it of all things, and that's enough for--us."
Thus it came that the two women were alone for five days. Madam Manovska did not seem to heed the absence of the two men at first, and waited in a contentment she had not shown before. It would seem that, as Larry had said, there was saving in her hallucination, but Amalia was troubled by it.
"Mother is so sure they will bring my father back," she thought. She tried to forestall any such catastrophe as she feared by explaining that they might not find her father or he might not return, even if he got her message, not surely, for he had always done what he thought his duty before anything else, and he might think it his duty to stay where he could find something to do.
When Harry King did not return that night, Amalia did as he had laughingly suggested to her, when he left, "You'll find a letter out in the shed," was all he said. So she went up to the shed, and there she lighted a torch, and kneeling on the stones of the wide hearth, she read what he had written for her.
"To the Lady Amalia Manovska:
"Mr. Kildene will help me get your box. It will not be hard, for the two of us, and after it is drawn out and loaded I can get up with it myself and he can go on. I will soon be with you again, never fear. Do not be afraid of Indians. If there were any danger, I would not leave you. There is no way by which they would be likely to reach you except by the trail on which we go, and we will know if they are about before they can possibly get up the trail. I have seen you brave on the plains, and you will be as brave on the mountain top. Good-by for a few days.
"Yours to serve you,
"Harry King."
The tears ran fast down her cheeks as she read. "Oh, why did I speak of it--why? He may be killed. He may die of this attempt." She threw the torch from her into the fireplace, and clasping her hands began to pray, first in English her own words, then the prayers for those in peril which she had learned in the convent. Then, lying on her face, she prayed frantically in her own tongue for Harry's safety. At last, comforted a little, she took up the torch and, flushed and tearful, walked down in the darkness to the cabin and crept into bed. _