“Yes, I know,” Aynsley said despondently. “I’m not to talk like that. When I play the good-natured idiot people applaud, but they put me down smartly when I speak the truth.”

“You are never in the least idiotic,” Ruth smiled. “But if you are to cross the hills before dark, it’s time we gave you something to eat.”

He turned to her, half resigned and half indignant.

“Oh, well! If the auto jumps a bushman’s bridge or goes down into a gulch, you’ll be sorry you snubbed me.”

“We won’t anticipate anything so direful,” Ruth responded; then, with a sudden change of tone, she added: “Take that post in your father’s mill, Aynsley; I think you ought.”

He studied her a moment and then made a sign of assent.

“All right! I’ll do it,” he said.

An hour later she watched him start the car, and then sat down among the pines to think, for there were questions which required an answer. Aynsley was very likable. Beyond that she did not go. Her thoughts turned to Farquhar, and she wondered why she so resented his dropping out of sight. She knew little about him, but she could not forget the evenings when they leaned on the rails together as the great ship went steadily across the moonlit sea. Now, for she believed he was the man Aynsley had met, he was in the desolate North, and she wondered what he was doing there, and what perils he had to face. It cost her an effort to banish him from her mind; but there was another question which had aroused her curiosity. How had her father spent the years when she was in her aunt’s care, before he had grown rich? He had told her nothing about his struggles, but she must ask. Sometimes he looked careworn and she could give him better sympathy if it were based on understanding. And how had his riches been gained, so quickly? Ruth had the utmost confidence in her father, which even her aunt’s doubts could not shake; nevertheless, she resolved to question him.

CHAPTER IX – THE MINE AT SNOWY CREEK

Osborne was sitting on his veranda one hot evening while Ruth reclined in a basket-chair, glancing at him thoughtfully. Of late she had felt that she did not know her father as well as she ought: there was a reserve about him which she had failed to penetrate. He had treated her with indulgent kindness and had humored her every wish since she came to him; but before that there had been a long interval, during which he had sent her no word, and these years had obviously left their mark on him. She felt compassionate and somewhat guilty. So far, she had been content to be petted and made much of, taking all and giving nothing. It was time there should be a change.

Osborne was of medium height and spare figure, and slightly lame in one foot. On the whole, his appearance was pleasing; though he was not of the type his daughter associated with the successful business man. There was a hint of imaginative dreaminess in his expression, and his face was seamed with lines and wrinkles that spoke of troubles borne, Ruth had heard him described as headstrong and romantic in his younger days, but he was now philosophically acquiescent, and marked by somewhat ironical humor. She wondered what stern experiences had extinguished his youthful fire.

“Aynsley was talking to me a few days ago,” she said. “I understand that he means to take charge of the Canadian mill.”

“Then I suppose you applauded his decision. In fact, I wonder whether he arrived at it quite unassisted? The last time Clay mentioned the matter he told me the young fool didn’t seem able to make up his mind.”

Ruth grew somewhat uneasy beneath his amused glance. Her father was shrewd, and she was not prepared to acknowledge that she had influenced Aynsley.

“But don’t you think Aynsley’s right?” she asked.

“Oh, yes; in a sense. We admire industrial enterprise, and on the whole that’s good; but I’ve sometimes thought that our bush ranchers and prospectors, who, while assisting in it, keep a little in advance of civilized progress, show sound judgment. It’s no doubt proper to turn the beauty of our country into money and deface it with mining dumps and factory stacks; but our commercial system’s responsible for a good deal of ugliness, moral and physical.”

The girl was accustomed to his light irony, and was sometimes puzzled to determine how far he was serious.

“But you are a business man,” she said.

“That’s true. I’ve suffered for it; but it doesn’t follow that our methods are much better because I’ve practised them.”

“Where did you first meet Aynsley’s father?” Ruth asked. She preferred personal to abstract topics.

Osborne smiled reminiscently.

“At a desolate settlement in Arizona a number of years ago. The Southern Pacific had lately reached the coast, and I was traveling West without a ticket. When it was unavoidable I walked; but railroad hands were more sympathetic in those days, and I came most of the way from Omaha inside and sometimes underneath the freight cars. Down under them was a dusty position in the dry belts.”

Glancing round from the pretty wooden house, which had been furnished without thought of cost, across the wide stretch of lawn, where a smart gardener was guiding a gasoline mower, Ruth found it hard to imagine her father stealing a ride on a freight train. But another thought struck her.

“Where was I then?” she asked.

“With your aunt, or perhaps you had just gone to school. I can’t fix the exact time,” Osborne answered unguardedly; and the girl was filled with a confused sense of love and gratitude.

The school was expensive, and her mother’s relatives were by no means rich, but she knew that her father had been the recipient of a small sum yearly under somebody’s will. It looked as if he had turned it all over for her benefit while he faced stern poverty.

Ruth impulsively pulled her chair nearer to her father, and her cool little fingers closed over one of his big hands.

“I understand now,” she said softly, “why there are lines on your forehead and you sometimes look worn. Your life must have been very hard.”

“Oh, it had its brighter side,” Osborne answered lightly. “Well, Clay was also engaged in beating his passage, and I found him enjoying a long drink from the locomotive tank. We were confronted with the problem how to cross about a hundred miles of arid desert on a joint capital of two dollars. Clay got over the first difficulty by making a water-bag out of some railroad rubber sheeting which he borrowed, while I went round the settlement in search of provisions. I got some, though prices were ruinously high, and at midnight we hid beside the track, waiting for a freight train to pull out. The brakemen had a trick of looking round the cars before they made a start. Though the days were blazing hot, the nights were cold, and we shivered as we lay behind a clump of cacti near the wheels. A man almost trod on us as he ran along the line, but just afterward the engine bell rang, and Clay sprang up to push back one of the big sliding doors while I held the food and water. The runners were stiff, the train began to move; when he opened the door a few inches I had to trot; and by the time he could crawl through, it was too late for me to get up. Then, with a hazy recollection that he had a long way to go, I threw the food and water into the car.”

“That was just like you!” Ruth exclaimed with a flush of pride.

“I imagine it was largely due to absence of mind. I felt very sorry for myself when I stood between the ties and watched the train vanish into the dark. What made it worse, was that of the joint two dollars only fifty cents was his.”

“When did you meet him again?”

“Several years afterward in San Francisco. He seemed to be prospering, and my luck had not been good. Through him, I entered the service of the Alaska Commercial Company. That, of course, was before the Klondyke rush, and the A.C.C. ruled the frozen North.”

“It was in Alaska that you were first fortunate, wasn’t it? You have never told me much about the mine you found.”

Osborne looked as if the recollection was unpleasant, but he saw that she was interested, and he generally indulged her. Though she believed in and was inclined to idealize him, Ruth was forced to admit that there was nothing in his appearance to suggest the miner. His light summer clothes were chosen with excellent taste, and there was a certain fastidiousness in his appearance and manners which was hardly in keeping with his adventurous past.

“Well,” he said, “it was an unlucky mine from the beginning – and I was not the first to find it. I had been some years in the company’s service when I was sent as agent to one of their factories. It was situated on a surf-beaten coast, with a lonely stretch of barrens and muskegs rolling away behind, and the climate was severe. There were no trees large enough to break the savage winds, and for six months the ground was covered deep with snow. A small bark came up once or twice a year, and my business was to trade with the Indians and the Russian half-breeds for furs. In winter we had only an hour or two’s daylight, but I got books from San Francisco, and read them by the red-hot stove while the blizzards shook the factory. Even in those days, it was suspected that there was gold in Alaska; but the A.C.C. did not encourage prospecting, and the roughness of the country made it almost impossible for a stranger to traverse. Still, a few prospectors somehow made their way into it, and probably died, for they were seldom seen after their first appearance. I can recollect two or three, hard-bitten men who stayed a day or two with us and then vanished into the wilds.

“It was late in the fall when one arrived with two Aleut Indians in a skin canoe. I never learned where he came from nor how he got so far, for there was no communication with the North except by the company’s vessels, but he told us he meant to locate a mine he had heard about and thought he could get back before winter set in. He went off with the Aleuts and a few provisions he bought, and that was the last we saw of him until the following summer. Then I made a journey inland to visit a tribe which had brought in no furs, and one night we made camp among a patch of willows. When we were gathering wood I saw that the larger bushes had been hacked down, and thought it had been done by a white man. The next morning we found an empty provision can of the kind we kept, and, later on, bits of charred sticks where a fire had been lighted. That led us to follow up the creek we had camped by; and presently we found the man who had made the fire.”

“Dead!” Ruth exclaimed.

“He had been dead for months. All that was left was a clean-picked skeleton bleached by the snow and a few rags of clothes. The significant thing was that the breast-bone was cut through: sharply cleft, as if by an ax.”

“How dreadful! You think the Indians killed the man?”

“It looked like it. There may have been a fight over the last of the provisions, which the Aleuts carried off, because I found very few cans and only one small empty flour-bag; but the tools indicated that it was the same man who had visited the factory. I had not even heard his name, and if he had any friends they never learned his fate; but he died rich.”

“He had found the gold?” Ruth’s eyes were large with excitement.

“Yes,” said Osborne. “Not far away, where the creek had changed its bed, there was a shallow hole, part of it filled with ashes, but as the scrub was three or four miles off it was easy to imagine how the man must have worked carrying the half-dry brush to keep a big fire going.”

“But why did he want a big fire?”

“To soften the ground. It never thaws deeper than a foot or two beneath the surface, and there were signs that the early winter had surprised him at work. It was obvious that he was a stubborn man, and meant to hold on until the last moment.”

“Do you think his companions murdered him for the treasure?”

“No; in those days the Indians cared nothing for gold, though they might have killed the man for a silver fox’s skin: furs were our currency. If there was a quarrel it probably began because he insisted on staying when winter was close at hand and the food almost done. For all that I couldn’t find the gold he must have got, because there was plenty in the wash-dirt he had left – tiny rounded nuggets as well as grains. It was a rich alluvial pocket that a man could work with simple appliances, and I made up my mind to go back to Snowy Creek some day.”

“But you were not alone! What about your companions?”

“I had two half-breeds with Russian blood in them; good trappers, but, except for that, with little more intelligence than the animals they hunted. Gold had no value to them; their highest ambition was to own a magazine rifle.”

“But couldn’t you have washed out some of the gold?”

“I got a small quantity; but I was the company’s servant, and had its business to mind, and we had only provisions enough for the trip. The A.C.C. found the fur-trade more profitable than mining, and did not want its preserves invaded; and nobody suspected how rich the country really was. Anyway, soon after my return, I had a dispute with the chief factor and, fearing trouble, said nothing about my discovery. The office supported the fellow, and I left the A.C.C. with my secret and three or four hundred dollars.”

“What did you do then?”

“I’m afraid an account of all my shifts and adventures would be monotonous. Sometimes I had two or three hundred dollars in hand, sometimes I had nothing but a suit of shabby clothes; but when things were at the worst some new chance always turned up, and I wandered about the Pacific slope until I fell in with Clay again.”

“Then you didn’t go to him when you left the A.C.C.?”

“No; he had done me one good turn, and I couldn’t be continually asking favors.” Osborne paused and his face turned graver. “Besides, there were respects in which we didn’t agree; and in those days I had an independent mind.”

“Haven’t you now?”

“I’ve learned that it’s sometimes wiser to reserve your opinions,” said Osborne dryly. “You can best be independent when you have nothing, because it doesn’t matter then whom you offend.”

“Was Clay prosperous?” Ruth asked.

“He was getting known as a man who would have to be reckoned with; but he was short of money and was ready for a shot at anything that promised a few dollars. Clay never shirked a risk, but I believe he was honestly glad to see me, and in a moment of expansion I told him about the Snowy Creek mine and the gold that would be waiting for me when I could return.”

“Ah! I was waiting until you came to that again. I felt its importance. It was the mine that made you rich and surrounded me with a luxury I was half afraid of at the beginning, wasn’t it?”

Miss Dexter came toward them along the terrace and Osborne smiled as he indicated her.

“Your aunt has always been inclined to disapprove of my doings, and I don’t suppose she’d be interested in my prospecting experiences. We’ll let them stand over till another day.”

Ruth agreed, but she had a puzzling suspicion that her father was relieved by the interruption. When Miss Dexter joined them Ruth was forced to follow his lead and confine herself to general conversation. This, however, did not keep her from thinking, and she wondered why her aunt, whose love for her she knew, had shown herself so hypercritical about her father. Caroline was narrow, but she was upright, and it seemed impossible that she could find any serious fault with him. For all that, Ruth wished that his connection with Clay were not quite so close. Clay was not a man of refinement or high principles, and, to do him justice, he did not pretend to be. Ruth had heard his business exploits mentioned with indignation and cynical amusement by men of different temperament. There were, she supposed, envious people who delighted to traduce successful men; but Clay was certainly not free from suspicion, and she would have preferred that her father had chosen a different associate.

CHAPTER X – THE WRECK OF THE KANAWHA

Ruth had time to ponder her father’s unfinished story, for a week elapsed before she could persuade him to continue it. Osborne was away for a few days, and when he came home his preoccupied manner suggested that he had business of importance on hand, and Ruth refrained from questioning him. The subject, however, had its fascination for the girl. She had been too young to retain more than a hazy recollection of her father in his struggling days, and she had fallen into the way of thinking of him as the polished and prosperous gentleman whom she had rejoined after a long separation. Now it was difficult to readjust her ideas and picture him as a needy adventurer, taking strange risks and engaging in occupations of doubtful respectability. She was, she hoped, not hypercritical, but she found it hard to reconcile the two sharply contrasted sides of his character.

At last, one evening, when they strolled across the lawn as dusk was falling, she determinedly led up to the subject, regardless of the smile with which he evaded her first questions.

“I don’t know why you should be so bent on hearing about the mine,” he said. “On the whole, I’d rather forget the thing, because good luck never followed the gold that was taken from Snowy Creek. There seemed to be a curse upon it.”

They sat down on a bench beneath a tall, ragged pine, and Osborne lighted a cigar.

“Well,” he began, “some time after the Klondyke rush started, when gold had been found freely on American as well as Canadian soil, I went up to Alaska to re-locate the mine. Clay had gone north before this, but not as a miner – he said it was cheaper to let somebody else dig the gold for him. He had a share in a wooden steamboat, started a transport service to several mining camps, and financed prospectors who made lucky finds. Everything he touched prospered, and the man was popular where the canvas towns sprang up; so I was not surprised when I found him unenthusiastic about my project. However, after much persuasion, he agreed to come, and we set off with two hired packers and supplies enough to give us a good chance of success.

“Summer was late that year, and we hauled the hand-sledges two hundred miles over the snow; but I needn’t tell you about our journey. We made it with some trouble, and one afternoon came down to the creek, wet and worn out, plowing through belts of melting snow and soft muskegs made by the sudden thaw. I had hide moccasins which were generally soaked and they had given out under the fastenings of the snowshoes. My foot, which had been frost-bitten on the march when I first found the mine, was cut deep, and it cost me a pretty grim effort to hold out for the last few miles. I made it because I couldn’t let another night come before I learned my luck. All I had was in the venture, and if it failed I must go back to camp destitute.”

“One can understand that you were anxious.”

“It was hard to keep cool, but weariness and pain steadied me. I believe I showed no excitement, but I envied the others’ calm. I can picture them now: Clay, shuffling along in his old skin-coat and torn gum-boots; the two packers, grumbling at the slush and bent a little by their loads. All round us a desolate wilderness ran back to the skyline; gray soil and rocks streaked with melting snow, out of which patches of withered scrub stuck forlornly. Well, we struck the creek, by compass, near where I intended, for soon afterward I picked up one landmark and Clay another.”

“Clay? But he hadn’t been there before!”

“You’re keen,” Osborne observed. “We had often talked over my plans, and he must have known nearly as much about the place as I did. Then one couldn’t mistake a prominent strip of rising ground, though it was some distance off when Clay saw it.”

“But the mine?”

“We made the spot in the evening, and I got there first, though it hurt me badly to put down my foot, and I’ve sometimes thought Clay held back to let me pass. Then I had to get a stern grip on my self-control, and for a few moments I stood there with my hands clenched, unable to speak. Where I had left a small hole there was a large one, and a great pile of tailings was thrown up in the bed of the creek. It was obvious that we had come too late.”

“How dreadful!” Ruth exclaimed. “After all you had gone through, it must have been almost too hard to bear. What did you do?”

“I can’t remember. Clay was the first to speak and I can recall his level voice as he said, ‘It looks as if somebody has been here before us, partner!’”

“But how inadequate and commonplace! Didn’t he do anything?”

“He sat down on his pack and lighted a cigar; but he was always cool in time of strain. All I remember of my own doings was that some time afterward I fired a stick of dynamite at the bottom of the hole and dug out the bits and half-thawn dirt until it was dark. I knew it was wasted labor, because whoever had found the pocket wouldn’t have stopped until he had cleaned it up. Then I threw down my tools and lay among the stones, limp and shivering, while Clay began to talk.”

“But who had found the mine?” Ruth interrupted.

“I never learned. But Clay dealt with the situation sensibly. After all, he said, it was only a pocket; a small alluvial deposit. The stream which had brought the gold there had, no doubt, left some more in the slacker eddies, and it might be worth while to look for the mother-lode, where the metal came from. We had food enough to last while we prospected the neighborhood. The next morning we set about it, and, following up the creek, we found gold here and there; but our provisions threatened to run out before we came to the watershed.”

“Were any of the pockets as rich as the stolen one?” Ruth asked.

“No,” her father answered with a hint of reserve. “Still, we found some gold and got back safely to the coast. For a while I helped Clay, and then he told me he must go south before the ice closed in. We sailed in the vessel that he and some of his friends had bought, and when we rowed off to her one misty day through a heavy surf I did not look forward to a comfortable trip. She was an old wooden steamer that had been whaling, with tall bulwarks and cut-down masts, and the topsail yards she still carried gave her a top-heavy look. The small, dirty saloon and part of the ’tween-decks were crowded with successful miners and others who were at least fortunate in having money enough to take them out of the country before winter set in. None of them, I think, wished to see the North again, and nobody who knew it could blame them. Those who had gold had earned it by desperate labor and grim endurance; those who had none were going back broken men – frost-bitten, crippled by accidents, and ravaged by disease.

“We had some trouble in getting to sea. Several of the crew had deserted, and the rest were half-mutinous because they had been forcibly kept on board. They struck me as a slipshod, unsailorly lot. To make things worse, it was blowing fresh on-shore, and she lay, straining at her cables and dipping her bows, in the long roll, in an open roadstead. They broke a messenger chain that drove the rickety windlass in getting the stream anchor up, and the miners had to help with tackles before they could bring the kedge to the bows. Then she crawled slowly out to sea under half steam, and, although there was not much prospect of it, I hoped she would make a quick passage. The young first mate and one of the engineers seemed capable men, but there was nothing to recommend the rest, and the skipper was slack and too convivial in his habits. He was a little, slouching man, with an unsteady look.”

“How did such an old ship get passengers, and why didn’t they engage a better crew?” Ruth wanted to know.

“Passengers were not particular during the gold rush, and good seamen were scarce on the Pacific slope. All who were worth anything had gone off to the diggings.”

“Oh! Where was the gold she carried kept?”

“In a strong-room under the floor of the stern cabin; that is, the gold that was formally shipped by her, because I believe some of the miners carried as much as possible on their persons and stowed the rest under their bunks. Anyway, you saw men keeping watch while the bedroom stewards were at work, and I imagine it would have been dangerous to mistake one’s berth at night. I generally struck a match to make sure of my number. However, for the most part, the passengers seemed an honest lot, and I had more confidence in them than I had in the crew.

“Our troubles began on the first day out, for she burst a pipe in the engine room; but there was no excitement when she stopped and a cloud of steam rushed out of the skylights. Men who had faced the Alaskan winter in the wilds and poled their boats through the rapids when the ice broke up were not easily alarmed.

“‘The blamed old boiler’s surely blowing. Guess that means another day or two on the road,’ one remarked, and the fellow he spoke to coolly lighted his pipe.

“‘Well,’ he said, ‘they’ve got some sails up there. She’ll make it all right if you give her time.’

“She lay a good many hours in the trough of the sea, rolling so wildly that nobody could keep his feet, while a miner and the second engineer strapped the pipe with copper wire and brazed the joint; but the next accident was more serious. She was steaming before a white sea with two topsails set when there was a harsh grinding and the engines stopped with a bang. A collar on the propeller shaft had given way, the bolts had broken, and until it could be mended there was nothing to connect the engines with the screw.

“They set more sail while the engineers got to work; and some hours later Clay and I were sitting in the captain’s room. Clay took the accident lightly, but the skipper had a nervous look and had been drinking more than was good for him. There was a bottle in the rack, and Clay was filling a glass when a miner came in. He was a big man with a quiet, brown face and searching eyes.

“‘Can your engine crowd fix this thing, Cap?’ he asked.

“‘They’re trying,’ said the skipper shortly. ‘It may take some time.’

“‘What are you going to do while they’re at the job?’

“‘Head south under sail.’ The skipper began to look angry. ‘Is there anything else you want to know?’

“‘Just this – do you reckon you can handle her all right with the boys you have?’

“The skipper got up with a red face, and I expected trouble, but Clay glanced at the miner and pulled the skipper down.

“‘You had better answer him,’ he said.

“‘If the wind holds, I can keep her on her course until the engines start. That should be enough for you.’

“‘Certainly,’ said the miner. ‘If you’d found the contract too big, we’d have found you boys to help with the shaft or get sail on her. Anyway, if you want them later, you can let me know.’ Then he went out and the skipper drained his glass. It was a thing he did too often.”

“But could the miner have done what he promised?” Ruth interrupted.

“It’s very likely. In fact, I think if we had wanted a doctor, an architect, or even a clergyman, we could have found one among the crowd on board. The fellow certainly found two or three mechanics, and once I crawled into the shaft tunnel to watch them at work. As it was impossible to get the damaged length out, they worked at it in place, crouching awkwardly in an iron tube about four feet wide while they cut slots in the iron. There was hardly room to use the hammer and hold the chisel; black oil washed about the tunnel mixed with salt-water that had come in through a strained gland. Open lamps smoked and flickered close above their heads as she rolled and the air was foul; but they kept it up in turns with the ship’s engineers for several days while the weather got worse and the boat lurched along before an angry sea with her canvas set. The decks were wet because the big rollers that came up astern splashed in across her rail. It was bitterly cold and a gray haze shut in the horizon. As the captain could get no sights, he had to make his course by dead reckoning, which is seldom accurate.”

“You must have felt anxious with all your gold on board,” Ruth said.

“No,” replied Osborne, with a moment’s hesitation, which she missed. “Clay had insured the vessel and his shipments by her on a kind of floating policy. I believe he had some trouble to effect it, but he managed to get the thing arranged through a broker with whom he had a little influence.”

“Clay seems to have a good deal of influence,” Ruth thoughtfully remarked. “How does he get it?”

“It’s a gift of his,” Osborne answered, with a curious smile. “However, to go back to my tale, I knew the gold was insured, because, as joint owner, I had to sign a declaration about its value, which would go by another vessel with the bill of lading. To tell the truth, I was getting more anxious about my personal safety, for the cold and mist and wild weather were wearing on the nerves. At last, the gale blew itself out; but the haze got thicker as the sea began to fall; and one night I was awakened by a shock that threw me out of my berth. As I got a few clothes on I felt her strike again, and when I ran out on the deck, half dressed, it was clear that she had made her last voyage. She lay, canted over, across the sea, with her after-part sinking and the long swell which still ran breaking over her. You could see the smooth slopes of water roll out of the dark and melt into foam that covered half the deck, while the planking crushed in with a horrible sound as the reef ground through her bilge. There was, however, no panic. The miners quietly helped to swing the boats out; and, seeing that she was holding together, I went with Clay and two seamen to open the strong-room. It was reached through a trap in the cabin floor, but some beams in breaking had jambed this fast, and we attacked the deck with bars and axes.

“It was sharply slanted, the poop heaved and worked as the swell roared about it, and a big lamp that still burned hung at an extraordinary angle with the bulkhead. I remember that a maple sideboard which had wrenched itself away and slipped down to leeward, lay, smashed to pieces, in a pool of water; but there was no time to lose in looking about. We all worked well, but Clay did more than any of us. He was half dressed, his face was savage and dripping with sweat, and he swung his ax in a fury, regardless of the rest. In fact, his mood puzzled me afterward.”