THE water front had a strong attraction for Helen Chester, and rarely did a fair day pass without finding her in some quiet spot from which she could watch the shifting life along its edge, the ships at anchor, and the varied1 incidents of the surf.
This morning she sat in a dory pulled high up on the beach, bathed in the bright sunshine, and staring at the rollers, while lines of concentration wrinkled her brow. The wind had blown for some days till the ocean beat heavily across the shallow bar, and now, as it became quieter, longshoremen were launching their craft, preparing to resume their traffic.
Not until the previous day had the news of her friends’ misfortune come to her, and although she had heard no hint of fraud, she began to realize that they were involved in a serious tangle2. To the questions which she anxiously put to her uncle he had replied that their difficulty arose from a technicality in the mining laws which another man had been shrewd enough to profit by. It was a complicated question, he said, and one requiring time to thrash out to an equitable3 settlement. She had undertaken to remind him of the service these men had done her, but, with a smile, he interrupted; he could not allow such things to influence his judicial4 attitude, and she must not endeavor to prejudice him in the discharge of his duty. Recognizing the justice of this, she had desisted.
For many days the girl had caught scattered5 talk between the Judge and McNamara, and between Struve and his associates, but it all seemed foreign and dry, and beyond the fact that it bore on the litigation over the Anvil6 Creek7 mines, she understood nothing and cared less, particularly as a new interest had but recently come into her life, an interest in the form of a man—McNamara.
He had begun with quiet, half-concealed admiration8 of her, which had rapidly increased until his attentions had become of a singularly positive and resistless character.
Judge Stillman was openly delighted, while the court of one like Alec McNamara could but flatter any girl. In his presence, Helen felt herself rebelling at his suit, yet as distance separated them she thought ever more kindly10 of it. This state of mind contrasted oddly with her feelings towards the other man she had met, for in this country there were but two. When Glenister was with her she saw his love lying nakedly in his eyes and it exercised some spell which drew her to him in spite of herself, but when he had gone, back came the distrust, the terror of the brute11 she felt was there behind it all. The one appealed to her while present, the other pled strongest while away. Now she was attempting to analyze12 her feelings and face the future squarely, for she realized that her affairs neared a crisis, and this, too, not a month after meeting the men. She wondered if she would come to love her uncle’s friend. She did not know. Of the other she was sure—she never could.
Busied with these reflections, she noticed the familiar figure of Dextry wandering aimlessly. He was not unkempt, and yet his air gave her the impression of prolonged sleeplessness13. Spying her, he approached and seated himself in the sand against the boat, while at her greeting he broke into talk as if he was needful only of her friendly presence to stir his confidential14 chords into active vibration15.
“We’re in turrible shape, miss,” he said. “Our claim’s jumped. Somebody run in and talked the boy out of it while I was gone, and now we can’t get ’em off. He’s been tryin’ this here new law game that you-all brought in this summer. I’ve been drunk—that’s what makes me look so ornery.”
He said the last, not in the spirit of apology, for rarely does your frontiersman consider that his self-indulgences require palliation, but rather after the manner of one purveying16 news of mild interest, as he would inform you that his surcingle had broken or that he had witnessed a lynching.
“What made them jump your claim?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know nothin’ about it, because, as I remarked previous, I ’ain’t follered the totterin’ footsteps of the law none too close. Nor do I intend to. I simply draws out of the game fer a spell, and lets the youngster have his fling; then if he can’t make good, I’ll take the cards and finish it for him.
“It’s like the time I was ranchin’ with an Englishman up in Montana. This here party claimed the misfortune of bein’ a younger son, whatever that is, and is grubstaked to a ranch17 by his people back home. Havin’ acquired an intimate knowledge of the West by readin’ Bret Harte, and havin’ assim’lated the secrets of ranchin’ by correspondence school, he is fitted, ample, to teach us natives a thing or two—and he does it. I am workin’ his outfit18 as foreman, and it don’t take long to show me that he’s a good-hearted feller, in spite of his ridin’-bloomers an’ pinochle eye-glass. He ain’t never had no actual experience, but he’s got a Henry Thompson Seton book that tells him all about everything from field-mice to gorrillys.
“We’re troubled a heap with coyotes them days, and finally this party sends home for some Rooshian wolf-hounds. I’m fer pizenin’ a sheep carcass, but he says:
“ ‘No, no, me deah man; that’s not sportsman-like; we’ll hunt ’em. Ay, hunt ’em! Only fawncy the sport we’ll have, ridin’ to hounds!’
“ ‘We will not,’ says I. ‘I ain’t goin’ to do no Simon Legree stunts19. It ain’t man’s size. Bein’ English, you don’t count, but I’m growed up.’
“Nothin’ would do him but those Uncle Tom’s Cabin dogs, however, and he had ’em imported clean from Berkshire or Sibeery or thereabouts, four of ’em, great, big, blue ones. They was as handsome and imposin’ as a set of solid-gold teeth, but somehow they didn’t seem to savvy20 our play none. One day the cook rolled a rain bar’l down-hill from the kitchen, and when them blooded critters saw it comin’ they throwed down their tails and tore out like rabbits. After that I couldn’t see no good in ’em with a spy-glass.
“ ‘They ’ain’t got no grit21. What makes you think they can fight?’ I asked one day.
“ ‘Fight?’ says H’Anglish. ‘My deah man, they’re full-blooded. Cost seventy pun each. They’re dreadful creatures when they’re roused—they’ll tear a wolf to pieces like a rag—kill bears—anything. Oh! Rully, perfectly22 dreadful!’
“Well, it wasn’t a week later that he went over to the east line with me to mend a barb23 wire. I had my pliers and a hatchet24 and some staples25. About a mile from the house we jumped up a little brown bear that scampered26 off when he seen us, but bein’ agin’ a bluff27 where he couldn’t get away, he climbed a cotton-wood. H’Anglish was simply frothin’ with excitement.
“ ‘What a misfortune! Neyther gun nor hounds.’
“ ‘I’ll scratch his back and talk pretty to him,’ says I, ‘while you run back and get a Winchester and them ferocious28 bull-dogs.’
“ ‘Wolf-hounds,’ says he, with dignity, ‘full-blooded, seventy pun each. They’ll rend29 the poor beast limb from limb. I hate to do it, but it’ll be good practice for them.’
“ ‘They may be good renders,’ says I, ‘but don’t forgit the gun.’
“Well, I throwed sticks at the critter when he tried to unclimb the tree, till finally the boss got back with his dogs. They set up an awful holler when they see the bear—first one they’d ever smelled, I reckon—and the little feller crawled up in some forks and watched things, cautious, while they leaped about, bayin’ most fierce and blood-curdlin’.
“ ‘How you goin’ to get him down?’ says I.
“I’ll shoot him in the lower jaw,’ says the Britisher, ‘so he cawn’t bite the dogs. It’ll give ’em cawnfidence.’
“He takes aim at Mr. Bear’s chin and misses it three times runnin’, he’s that excited.
“ ‘Settle down, H’Anglish,’ says I. ‘He ’ain’t got no double chins. How many shells left in your gun?’
“When he looks he finds there’s only one more, for he hadn’t stopped to fill the magazine, so I cautions him.
“ ‘You’re shootin’ too low. Raise her.’
“He raised her all right, and caught Mr. Bruin in the snout. What followed thereafter was most too quick to notice, for the poor bear let out a bawl30, dropped off his limb into the midst of them ragin’, tur’ble, seventy-pun hounds, an’ hugged ’em to death, one after another, like he was doin’ a system of health exercises. He took ’em to his boosum as if he’d just got back off a long trip, then, droppin’ the last one, he made at that younger son an’ put a gold fillin’ in his leg. Yes, sir; most chewed it off. H’Anglish let out a Siberian-wolf holler hisself, an’ I had to step in with the hatchet and kill the brute though I was most dead from laughin’.”
“That’s how it is with me an’ Glenister,” the old man concluded. “When he gets tired experimentin’ with this new law game of hisn, I’ll step in an’ do business on a common-sense basis.”
“You talk as if you wouldn’t get fair play,” said Helen.
“We won’t,” said he, with conviction. “I look on all lawyers with suspicion, even to old bald-face—your uncle, askin’ your pardon an’ gettin’ it, bein’ as I’m a friend an’ he ain’t no real relation of yours, anyhow. No, sir; they’re all crooked31.”
Dextry held the Western distrust of the legal profession—comprehensive, unreasoning, deep.
“Is the old man all the kin9 you’ve got?” he questioned, when she refused to discuss the matter.
“He is—in a way. I have a brother, or I hope I have, somewhere. He ran away when we were both little tads and I haven’t seen him since. I heard about him, indirectly33, at Skagway—three years ago—during the big rush to the Klondike, but he has never been home. When father died, I went to live with Uncle Arthur—some day, perhaps, I’ll find my brother. He’s cruel to hide from me this way, for there are only we two left and I’ve loved him always.”
She spoke34 sadly and her mood blended well with the gloom of her companion, so they stared silently out over the heaving green waters.
“It’s a good thing me an’ the kid had a little piece of money ahead,” Dextry resumed later, reverting35 to the thought that lay uppermost in his mind, “ ‘cause we’d be up against it right if we hadn’t. The boy couldn’t have amused himself none with these court proceedings38, because they come high. I call ’em luxuries, like brandied peaches an’ silk undershirts.”
“I don’t trust these Jim Crow banks no more than I do lawyers, neither. No, sirree! I bought a iron safe an’ hauled it out to the mine. She weighs eighteen hundred, and we keep our money locked up there. We’ve got a feller named Johnson watchin’ it now. Steal it? Well, hardly. They can’t bust39 her open without a stick of ‘giant’ which would rouse everybody in five miles, an’ they can’t lug40 her off bodily—she’s too h............