The next morning Stephen awoke with a start, conscious that some one was standing beside his cot, as he lay fully dressed outside the blankets. Mr. Cameron was looking down upon him. When he struggled to his feet, Loring’s mind was all confused. He ran his hand through his matted hair. “Where am I?” he murmured.
Mr. Cameron’s face was set decisively. It was easy to see from which parent Jean had inherited the modeling of the lower portion of her face.
“Come outside, Loring!” There was a chill incisiveness in the words which shocked Stephen into recollection. He followed Mr. Cameron out of the tent.
The bright, early morning sunlight made his hot eyeballs water, and he blinked uncomfortably. His knees shook from weakness so that he leaned against the fence beside his tent. Such absolute misery possessed him that he[145] could not think. His brain was numb. His mouth felt as if all the moisture had been baked out of it.
Mr. Cameron looked him over carefully and contemptuously, then fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and produced a cigar. Eyeing Loring all the while, he slowly bit off the end, and lighted the cigar. Before he spoke, he took several deliberate puffs. It was a good cigar; but the rich smell of the fumes made Loring turn a shade whiter.
“Well, Loring, I suppose you know what this means for you?” began Mr. Cameron slowly. “A rather nice piece of work of yours, on the whole. Two men killed by your efficiency! I do not suppose that there is any use in asking you if you were drunk?” There was very little of the question in Mr. Cameron’s voice.
Stephen gripped the fence hard, then shook his head.
“I do not like to dismiss you, Loring, for I am in your debt for saving my daughter’s life.” Judging from his expression as he said this, the thought of the debt did not greatly please Mr. Cameron.
[146]
Stephen looked out over the mountains. His eyes were glistening with moisture—and this time it was not caused by the glare. It cut him to the quick that the man who was so righteously dismissing him should be the father of the girl whom he loved. In a bitter moment there flashed before his mind the vision of all his broken resolutions, of his now useless plans for success. The whole fabric, which in the past months he had woven for himself, he suddenly saw torn to shreds.
Mr. Cameron’s next words were lost to Stephen. It was some seconds before he could again focus his attention. When he caught up the thread, Mr. Cameron was saying: “I had hoped better things from you, Loring. I should have known better, that when a man is a drifter, such as you are, there is no hope. Still I had hoped! Well, I was wrong. Here is your pay check, for what is due to you. That is all.”
Mr. Cameron turned and walked towards the office. Stephen stood looking dumbly after him, with the check fluttering loosely in his fingers. McKay, going by on his way to work, saw him, and came up to him. He held out his hand in sympathy.
[147]
“Damn it, Steve, I’m sorry for you! You ain’t worth a damn; but I like you.”
Stephen looked at him in silence. His only conscious thought, as he gripped McKay’s hand, was the mental reiteration: “I am worth a damn, I am worth a damn.”
McKay went on in friendly solicitude: “Of course, it ain’t none of my business, Steve, but if I was you I’d beat it pretty quick. Just at present the friends of those men ain’t losing any love on you. I think if I was in your boots the Dominion trail would look pretty good to me. It’s about up to you to vamos.”
“I will go,” said Loring. “It isn’t that I fear what these Mexicans may do, because I don’t care. But I can’t stand it here. Good-bye, Mac! You have been a good friend to me. I know I deserved to be fired. Deserved a lot worse; but Mac,” he added desperately, “I will make good somewhere!”
McKay almost imperceptibly shook his head, then smiled and again extended his hand.
“Well, anyhow, buck up, Steve! I’ve got to get down to work now. Good-bye, and good luck!”
[148]
“Wait just a minute!” Loring called after him.
McKay turned, and Stephen held out his newly received pay check.
“Will you be kind enough to give this to Hankins up at the saloon, when you get time? I owe it to him, and to his partner.”
“You certainly did do things up in great shape last night, Steve,” said McKay, as he took the check, after Stephen had endorsed it with a shaking hand. “Got cheated, I suppose?”
“Rather,” answered Loring.
“It is strange,” thought McKay to himself, as he walked away, “with fellows like these saloon keepers. You could give them everything that you have, and no matter what happened they would keep it safely for you. But play cards and they’ll stick it into you for keeps.”
Re-entering his tent, Stephen began to put his few belongings into a saddle-bag. His packing was not a long operation. He looked rather wistfully about the little tent, which had grown to seem to him almost a home. Then, slinging the bag over his shoulder, he started for the corral.
[149]
It was still very early, and few people were about. One or two of the Mexican teamsters were at the corral, sleepily kicking their horses into the traces. These looked at Stephen blackly, for in a mining camp news travels very fast.
Stephen’s hands shook so that he had great difficulty in forcing the bit into the restive jaws of his pony. At last, however, “Muy Bueno” was saddled, and led out into the road. As Loring was putting up the corral bars again, a bare-footed little Mexican girl came pattering past. Stephen had often befriended her in small ways, so now she greeted him with shy warmth.
“Buenos dies, amigo!” she chattered.
The little child’s greeting started the tears to his eyes. Fumbling in his pocket, from among his few coins, he brought out a quarter. With a dismal attempt at a smile, he tossed it to her.
“Eh, Se?orita Rosa, here is two bits for you, dos reales, buy candy with big pink stripes.”
The child ran up to him and gratefully seized his hand with both of her grimy little paws. He cut short her repeated thanks with a quick “No hay de que,” and swung into the saddle.
“á Dios,” he called to her. Then slowly he rode to the watering-trough. “Muy Bueno”[150] buried his nose deep in the cool water, and drank with great gulps. Stephen could feel the barrel of the pony swell beneath the cinch. When he could hold no more, “Muy Bueno” raised his head from the trough questioningly, the drops of water about the gray muzzle glistening in the sun. Stephen pressed the reins against the horse’s neck, and turned him towards the Dominion trail, which showed as a ribbon of white upon the hills to the eastward.
Close behind him he heard a familiar voice singing an old song: “La, la, boom, boom. La, la, boom, boom.” The last word was sung with unusual emphasis, serving as a salutation and hail.
Wah, beaming with his usual joyousness, was trotting towards him.
“Hey, me bludder, me bludder. You gettee canned! Oh, me bludder, you allee samee fool gettee drunk. You beat it to Dominion? Me bludder welly wise! La, la, boom, boom!” Wah concluded his outburst with a peal of laughter.
Stephen looked down solemnly at him.
“Damned funny, isn’t it, Wah?”
“Oh, me bludder, me bludder!”—Wah[151] could get no further, before another paroxysm of laughter overcame him. Recovering somewhat, he produced from his blouse a greasy looking package.
“Me bludder get nothing to eat before he come to Dominion. Wah bring him pie, oh, lubbly, lubbly pie.”
Stephen was deeply touched by the Chinaman’s kindness. He shook his hand warmly.
“I had forgotten all about food. Good-bye, Wah, and thank you a lot.”
“Oh, me bludder, wait one minnie moming. I have note. Missee Cameron, she send me bludder a note!”
Wah, with some labor, produced from his pocket a little envelope, and handed it to Loring.
“Oh, lubbly, lubbly note! Oh, lubbly—”
“Shut up, Wah!” flared Stephen. White as death, he took the note from Wah, and slipped it inside his shirt. He could not trust himself to read it.
“Please thank her, Wah, and—” He could say no more. Slowly he turned his horse, and rode towards the hills.
Wah walked away, murmuring beneath his[152] breath: “La, la, boom, boom, me poor bludder. He must habee hellee headache. La, la, boom, boom.”
Stephen soon reached the place on the trail where was situated the old deserted “Q” ranch. A rusty iron tank by the shanty bore the crudely painted sign: “Water, Cattle 10 cts. per head. Horses 25 cts.” Beside the tank, however, in what had evidently formerly been an empty bed, gushed a clear stream of water. Stephen smiled when he saw how nature had thwarted the primitive monopoly.
Dismounting, he lifted the saddle from his horse’s back. Then he deftly hobbled him, and left him to eat what grass there was by the rocky stream bed, within a radius which he could cover with his fore legs tied together. Stephen then seated himself on the ground, propped the saddle behind his back, and proceeded to light a pipe, and to think. All the events of the past few hours had come upon him with such rapidity that he had had no time for reflection.
Seated there in the open, beneath the vivid blue sky, with no sound but that of the softly, coolly running water near, all the scene of the accident loomed clearly before him, far more[153] clearly than it had done in the morning when he had still been in the camp, and surrounded by the routine of life there. The very warmth of the sunlight, which should have made a man’s heart bound with the joy of living, merely added to the blackness of his mood.
He was very nervous, and smoked with quick, hard puffs. Once his pony started at something. The sound brought Loring to his feet, all of a qu............