Two weeks had passed since the accident. Loring, whose life had been at first despaired of, was gaining fast in strength, and enjoying the first real comfort that he had known in months. As he lay quietly on the hard canvas cot, the rough company hospital seemed to him a dream of luxury. His cot had been placed close to the door, where he could look out over the little camp. The early morning light brought the whiteness of the tents scattered about the plateau into clear contrast with the shadowy brownness of the surrounding mountains, while in the sunlight the yellow pine framework of the intermingled shacks sparkled brightly. The smelter pounded away steadily, great wreaths of smoke pouring from its chimneys, the blast sucking and breathing like some huge driven beast. Intermingled with the sound was the clanging rasp of shovels, as the smelter stokers piled coke into the furnace. Over on the far mountain a wood-laden burro train[41] was picking its way slowly down the trail. In the thin morning air the tinkle of the bells on the animals’ necks and the sharp calls of the drivers carried clear across the valley. Close by the smelter, in the midst of the coal dust and cinders, stood a jaded horse, with a harness made of chains. For two days it had fascinated Loring to see the deft way in which the driver hooked this horse to the glowing slag pots, and drove him along the narrow track that led out on the slag dump. With the childishness of the sick, he harbored a deep grudge against the shack, behind which the horse, with his molten load, would always disappear. This prevented his seeing the operation of dumping the slag, which he felt must be highly interesting. At the other side of the doorway he could just see the corner of a newly finished shack. He looked a bit gloomily at the completed building, for it had been delightful to watch the carpenters at work upon it. In two days the whole house had been finished, even to the tin roofing. This tin roofing, by the way, had brought Stephen much joy, for the carpenter’s assistant had laid the plates from top down, instead of beginning at the bottom, so that the joints would overlap and be water-tight.[42] In consequence the whole roofing had been ripped off and done over again.
The morning shift was just going to work, and the hurrying groups of men passed the door on their way up to the mine. At the watering-trough each stopped, and plunging his canteen deep into the water, held it there until the burlap and flannel casing was saturated, ensuring a cooling drink for them during their work. Loring laughed at himself when he found himself wishing that they would not all wear blue denim overalls.
Little water boys struggled past, each with a pole, like a yoke across his shoulders, from either end of which hung a bucket. The men greeted them as they passed, with calls of “Go-od boy!” “Bueno muchacho!” Several of the men, as they passed, greeted Stephen with shy exclamations of “Eh, amigo—Cóm’ estamos?” Then they went on to their work beneath the ground. Loring was touched by these inquiries for his welfare, and smiled in a friendly fashion at each.
Loring’s smile had been one of his worst enemies, for it had so often prevented people from telling him what they thought of him. It combined a sensitiveness which was unexplained[43] by the rather heavy molding of his chin, with a humor which only one who had carefully studied his eyes would be prepared for. It was an exasperating smile to those who did not like him, for it possessed a quality of goodness and strength to which they thought he had no right as an accompaniment to his character. On the other hand, it was one of the attributes which most strongly attracted his friends. It was not an analytical smile, so it put him in touch with unanalytical people, yet it had a certain deprecating twist which could convey a hint of subtlety.
When the seven o’clock whistle blew, Loring thought of the gang at the road camp lined up for ten hours of relentless toil, and he breathed deep in contentment.
“It is great to be laid up for a respectable cause,” he thought. Memories of the times that he had spent at an old university in the East came to him. He looked about him at the rough, bare boards, at the eight canvas cots, at the lumps on three of them, where, wearing the inevitable pink or sky blue undershirt, lay sick Mexican miners. He amused himself by mentally filling with his old-time associates each of the empty cots. “I wish they were all here,” he half exclaimed.[44] Then it occurred to him that this was not a very kindly wish. Loring heard the murmur of voices outside the door, and listened attentively. He recognized the voice of the company doctor. “It must be time for the morning clinic,” he thought to himself. Then he listened to the brisk questioning and prescribing.
“You feeling much mal’? Well, not so much whisky next time; get to work!”
Stephen heard a low-voiced question from some one. Then again the doctor’s decided answer: “Of course not! Hospital fee does not pay for crutches. What do you want for a dollar, anyhow?”
He listened with interest as each man described his symptoms or his needs. “It makes me feel almost well to hear about all those things,” he reflected. The broad shoulders and cheerful smile of the doctor appeared in the doorway, and with heavy footsteps the owner of these two pleasant possessions approached Loring.
“Feeling pretty good this morning?” asked the doctor.
Stephen answered that he was.
“That’s fine,” exclaimed the doctor. “At one time you were a pretty tough case. I thought[45] we’d have the trouble of a funeral in camp. Swell affairs they are, here. But say, did you ever see a funeral in Ph?nix? Why, they trots ’em in Ph?nix!”
Loring expressed his admiration for such a spirit of activity, while the doctor was propping him up in bed, and adjusting the bandages.
“I guess you won’t have to work for some days,” remarked the doctor. “It is lucky you did one day’s work, as it just pays for your hospital fee and medicine.”
“Hard luck, doctor,” laughed Stephen, “but that had to go for traveling expenses.” Hearing light footsteps on the porch outside, the doctor went to the door. Loring heard him answer some question.
“Well, Miss Cameron, I guess it won’t kill him to see you. It may even be good for him. Come in by all means!”
Loring looked up and saw framed in the doorway, like a picture, a girl frank of eyes and fresh of coloring. A little Scotch cap was perched on the waves of her tawny hair. Her gown was of dark blue, relieved at neck and throat by bands of white, and girdled by a ribbon of red and blue plaid. Across her arms lay a sheaf of yellow and[46] red wild flowers such as creep into abundant life among the forbidding rocks. The vision seemed to bring a new tide of life and vigor to Loring. He forgot his weakness and raised himself for a moment on his elbow; but the effort was too much for him, and he sank back exhausted on his pillow.
The girl hesitated for an instant. Then she stepped quickly over to his cot.
“This is Miss Cameron, Loring,” explained the doctor; “she has come to thank you for what you have done.”
The girl impulsively bent over him, and took his big, weak hand in her own small, strong one.
“Oh, I am glad that you are better. I would have come before to see you, but the doctor would not allow it.”
Loring looked malevolently at the doctor.
“How can I thank you?” she went on.
So fascinated was Stephen by the eager breathless way in which she spoke, that he hardly understood what she was saying. With difficulty he raised himself again on his elbow. “Why it was all in the day’s work of a flagman,” he said. “There is nothing at all for which to thank me.”
She shook her head in denial. “It is not in the[47] day’s work of a flagman to risk his life for someone whom he has never seen,” she said quickly. “There is nothing that I can say which can possibly express my gratitude; but you do know, don’t you?” As she spoke she looked at him appealingly.
Stephen murmured something, he scarcely knew what, in reply, and was conscious of wishing vaguely that the doctor would not look at him.
Miss Cameron laid her armful of flowers beside him. As she dropped the red and yellow sheaf, Stephen noticed the delicate modeling of her wrist, and smiled appreciatively. “When you are better, my father will see you,” continued the girl. “He will reward you, and—” With her usual quick intuition she noticed the shade of annoyance on his face. “That is,” she went on rather slowly, “he will do what he can for you.”
“Thank you,” said Loring, “but I think that in two or three weeks I shall be able to work again.”
“I am afraid if I let you talk any more, you won’t ever be able to work,” interrupted the doctor.
“I will come again to-morrow,” said Jean. “If there is anything that you want, you must[48] let us send it to you. Good-bye, and thank you!” Her voice as she spoke had the quality of sympathy.
He watched her for a moment as she stopped by the other cots, inquiring in pretty broken Spanish for the welfare of the occupants. “Hang it,” he thought, “I wish she would not look at that Mexican in just the way that she looked at me!” With his eyes he followed her as long as he could, then when the tents shut her from view, he closed his eyes and imagined that she was still near.
He picked up the flowers and buried his face in them. Their sweetness brought up a wave of memories of the past, of things that he had thrown away. He bit his lip hard and under his breath swore bitterly at himself. Then the fragrance of the flowers soothed him, and he lay back on his pillow thinking of the girl who had brought them. She seemed so strange a figure in the life of Quentin, so aloof, so unrelated! He could not adjust her to her setting. At last it occurred to him that it was not necessary for him to adjust her—in fact that she and her setting were none of his business.
Then tired, with the flowers still crushed in his hand, he fell asleep to the accompaniment[49] of the monotonous pound of the smelter. He dreamed of days gone by, yet through it all, vaguely, intangibly, there drifted a girl, the tenderness of whose eyes was blended with the impersonality of pity.
As they walked together across the camp, Miss Cameron remarked to the doctor: “It is strange how the rough life here seems to train men. He seemed to be almost a gentleman.”
Doctor Kline smiled in an amused fashion.
“There’s a lot here, Miss Cameron, who seem ‘almost a gentleman,’ and they are not the best kind, either. In fact they come pretty near to being the worst. Arizona is not the graveyard of reputations. It’s the hell that comes after that. Men drift here from every corner of the world, and from every sort of life. The undercurrent here is full of derelicts. Nobody questions about the past or the future here. They just drift, and it is not so very long before most of them sink.”
In the course of forty years of varied experience, Dr. Kline had never made so long a speech. He stopped short, and, flushing, looked quickly at Miss Cameron to see if she were laughing at him. Her serious expression reassured him, and he[50] looked at her again; only this time it was for the purpose of admiration.
They had reached the door of her father’s house. It was called a house and not a shack, partly as a matter of etiquette, being the manager’s dwelling, and partly because it had a porch. Also it possessed the added grandeur of two small wings, which were joined to the one-story, central building.
Jean said good-bye to the doctor and went into the house. Her father was busy at his desk with some large blue prints of the workings; but he stopped when she entered.
“How is the man getting along?” he asked. “I hope that the poor devil isn’t laid up so that he can never swing a pick again.”
“He is much better,” answered Jean, as she dropped into a big chair beside her father’s desk, “but, Father, do these men do nothing else all their lives beside swing picks?”
Her father smiled, amused at the earnest manner. “Well, my dear, they are likely to do so, unless they develop aptitude for ‘polishing’ the head of a drill, as they say here. In other words, become miners, instead of ‘muckers,’ in which case they get their three dollars a day instead[51] of two. The difference in social position, however, which I suppose is what you mean, is not very great.”
“I thought that the West was a place where men rose fast from the ranks, where the opportunities for success lay at each man’s feet,” said Jean thoughtfully.
“That is partially true,” replied her father; “but you must remember steadiness is needed as much here as anywhere, and that is a quality which most men, of a type such as I judge this Loring to be, have not. Also to reach success here they have to swim through a river of whisky, and most of them drown in transit.”
Jean sat for a moment in silence, the sun playing tricks of light and shade across the ripples of her hair and in the depths of her level-gazing eyes.
At length she exclaimed suddenly: “Why is it that they all drink?”
“Why?” echoed her father. “I have been so occupied with the result that I have had no time to consider the cause. The fact is—they have no other form of relaxation here. Besides, when men work seven days a week all the year round, after a while they reach a point where they must[52] do something to break the tedium, and drinking whisky is a convenient method.”
“Then why do you make them work on Sunday?” asked Jean. “Why not let them rest on that day?”
Her father laughed. “Well, it doesn’t sound logical after what I have just said, but if they get Sunday to rest, they are all so drunk that we have not enough men on Monday to start the mines. We tried it once. I suppose that the only explanation of the way the men drink here is that they do. I think it is a germ in the air.”
Mr. Cameron turned again to his work. Jean sat silently beside him watching the firm lines with which he traced new winzes, drifts, and cross-cuts on the prints, the precision with which he wrote his comments on the borders.
It was a strong face which bent over the table, strong, stern, and telling of a Scotch ancestry in which Mr. Cameron took great pride, for had not one of his forefathers fought in the army of the Lord of the Isles, and another been a faithful follower to the end of the hopeless Stuart cause!
Clearly loyalty was a tradition of their race, and typical of that allegiance which still made[53] all Scotch things dear to these two descendants of the old Highlanders, which led the father to hang on the bare walls of his cabin the shield of the Camerons with its armorial bearings of “or, three bars gules,” and impelled Jean to wear a Scotch cap, and always, somewhere about her dress, a touch of the red and blue Cameron plaid.
Now, as Jean stood at her father’s side, it was easy to see the family likeness, for all the softening of age and sex, which had changed the lines of his face to the curves of hers. The same spirit looked out from both pairs of eyes, and if ever there should come a conflict of wills between the two, there would be as pretty a fight as once happened at Inverlochie, when Cameron and the Lord Protector fell foul of each other.
Jean Cameron had been only a month in Quentin. She had begged to join her father and he had consented, although he had assured her that she would dislike the life. But from the first she had loved the place and everything about it. The atmosphere of crude labor, the men thrusting down into the mountains and drawing out the green-crusted ore, the rides[54] across the trails, had brought her a sense of exhilaration.
She had expected to find in the West the romance of freedom, of wildness, of the natural type. Instead, she had found, and it was infinitely more fascinating, the romance of work, of risk borne daily as a matter of course, not from love of danger, but because it meant bread. To a girl of her keen perception there was a meaning in it all. It was the first glimpse that she had ever had of a world where the little things of life had no existence and where the big things were the little things.