The La Chance Mine Mystery

As I swore it I turned away from the dead fire and the dark room, that looked as if we'd all deserted it hours ago, and went Indian-silent into the hallway. And my heart contracted in a hard, tight lump.

The passage was light as day, with the moon full on the window at the end of it. And wrapped in a shawl, with her back to me, stood my dream girl, undoing the front door as noiselessly as I had come into the passage.

I let her do it. The hallway on which Marcia's bedroom door opened, let alone Dudley's, was no place for Paulette Brown and myself to talk. But I was just three feet behind her as she slid around the corner of the shack, toward the bush that lay dark against the cold winter moon. And I rustled with my feet on purpose, so that she turned and saw me, with the moon full on my face.

"You sha'n't do it," I said. I did not know I had made a stride to her till I felt her arm under my hand. "You sha'n't go!"

My dream girl, who had two names and belonged to Dudley anyhow, said nothing at all. She and I, who had really nothing to do with one another, if I would have laid my soul under her little feet, stood still in the cold moonlight, looking inimically into one another's eyes.

CHAPTER XI

MACARTNEY HEARS A NOISE: AND I FIND FOUR DEAD MEN

We must have stood silent for a good three minutes. I think I was furious because Paulette did not speak to me. I said, "You're not to go – you're never to go and meet Hutton again, as long as you live!" And for the first time I saw my dream girl flinch from me.

"What?" she gasped so low I could hardly hear. "You know that? What am I going to do? My God, what am I going to do?"

"You're coming back into the shack with me!" We were on the blind side of the house for Marcia and Dudley, but we were in plain view from Charliet's window, and I was not going to have even a cook look out and see Paulette talking to a man in the middle of the night. Her despair cut me; I had never seen her anything but valiant before, and I had a lump in my throat. But I spoke roughly enough. "I didn't know the whole of things till to-night, but now I do, you'll have to trust me. Can't you see I mean to do all I can to help you – and Dudley?" If it were tough to have to add Dudley I did it. But I felt her start furiously.

"Dudley?" she repeated almost scornfully. "Nobody can help Dudley but me – and there's only one way! Mr. Stretton, I promise you I'll never ask again, but – for God's sake let me go to meet Dick Hutton to-night!"

"Not blindly," said I brutally. "If you tell me why, perhaps – but we can't talk here. If you'll come into the house and trust me about what you want to do, I may let you go – just this once – if I think it's the right way!"

"I've only half an hour before it's too late – for any way!" But she turned under the hand I had never lifted from her arm.

I led her noiselessly into the office. I was afraid of the living room. Marcia might come back to it for a book or something. No one but Dudley ever went near the office, and he was safely dead to the world, judging from the horn of whisky he had gone to bed on. The place was freezing, for the inside sash was up, leaving only the double window between us and the night; and it was black-dark too, with the moon on the other side of the house. But there were more things than love to talk about in the dark, – to a dream girl you would give your soul to call your own, and know you never will. And I began bluntly, "You've never had any reason to distrust me. I've helped you – "

"Three times," sharply. "I know. I've been – grateful."

It was four, counting to-night when I had warned her to hide her signature from Macartney; but I was not picking at trifles. I said: "Well, I've trusted you, too! I knew the first night I came back here that you were meeting some man secretly, in the dark. But it was none of my business and I held my tongue about it; then, and when you met him again – when it was my business."

"Again?" I heard the little start she gave, if I could not see it.

"The night before you and I took the gold out," I answered practically, "when I told you your hair was untidy. I suppose you only thought I knew you had been out of doors, but I heard the man you met leave you and heard you say to yourself that you'd have to get hold of the gold. I didn't know whether you were honest or not then, or when I gave you back your little seal; and not even when you started for Billy Jones's with me. I knew by the time I got there, if I was fool enough to believe it was Collins you were fighting instead of helping. But any fool must see now that Hutton was the only man likely to have followed you out here! I suppose he told you some lie about giving you up for Van Ruyne's necklace, unless you made silence worth while with Dudley's gold?" and her assent made me angry clear through.

"My soul, girl," I burst out, "you balked him about that, even when you knew he'd put that wolf dope in my wagon, and you were risking your life – you put a bullet in him in the swamp – I can't see why you should be worrying to conciliate him by meeting him to-night!"

But she caught me up almost stupidly. "Put a bullet in him? I didn't – you must know I didn't!"

"There was blood in the swamp and on the road!"

I felt her staring at me in the dark. "It wasn't Dick's," she said almost inaudibly. "It must have been some one else's. And – he doesn't know it was he I shot at that night!"

"It might do him good if he did!" I felt like shaking her, if I had not wanted to take her in my arms more. "Can't you see you've no reason to worry about Hutton? If Dudley told the truth to-night, and he stole those emeralds and shifted the crime on to you, it's you who have the whip hand of him!"

"But he didn't," Paulette exclaimed wildly. "He wasn't near the Houstons' house! It's mad of Dudley to think so. I know he believes it, but – oh, it's mad all the same! And even if Dick did take those emeralds – though I can't see how it was possible – it wouldn't clear me! It would only mean he was able to drag me into it, somehow."

"But you never touched the necklace!" For I knew that.

"No," simply, "but I'm afraid of Dick all the more. If he did take it, to get me into his power" – she caught my arm in her slim hands I had always known were so strong – "can't you see he's got me?" she said between her teeth, "and that, next thing, he'll get the La Chance gold? If you don't let me meet him to-night I'll be helpless. I – Oh, can't you see I'll be like a rat in a trap? – not able to do anything? I can make him go away, if I meet him! Otherwise" – the passion in her voice kept it down to a whisper – "it's not only that I'm afraid he can make things look as if I stole from Dudley as well as from Van Ruyne: I'm afraid —for Dudley!"

The two last words gave me a jar. I would have given most of the world to ask if she loved Dudley, but I didn't dare: I suppose a girl could love a man with a face like an egg, if she owed him enough. But whether she cared for him or not, "By gad, you've got to tell Dudley that Hutton's here," I said roughly, because I was sick with the knowledge that anyhow she did not love me.

"Tell him?" Paulette gasped through the dark that was like a curtain between us. "I've told him twenty times – all I dared. And he wouldn't listen to a word I said. Ask him: he'll tell you that's true!"

I had no doubt it was. Even on business Dudley's brain ran on lines of its own; you might tell him a thing till you were black in the face, and he would never believe it. Lately, between drugs and drink, he was past assimilating any impersonal ideas at all. Macartney was so worried about him that he'd told off Baker, one of his new men, to go wherever Dudley went. I had no use for the man: he was a black and white looking devil and slim as they make them, in my opinion, though Dudley took to him as though he were a long-lost brother luckily, – how luckily I couldn't know. But I wasn't thinking about Baker that night.

"We can't worry over Dudley," I said shortly, "he'll have to take care of himself. But you won't be helpless with Hutton, if I meet him to-night – in your place!"

"You? I couldn't bear you to be in it!" so sharply that I winced.

"It won't hurt you to take that much from me!" It wasn't till long afterwards that I knew I'd been a fool not to have said it with my arms round her, while I told her why – but since I didn't do it there's no sense in talking about it. I went on baldly: "I've got to be in it! I'm not concerned with post-mortems and your past. All I know, personally, is that Hutton's hiding somewhere round this mine to hold up our gold shipments and get even with Dudley; and if you'll tell me where to meet him to-night I can stop both – and be saved the trouble of looking for him from here to Caraquet, let alone getting you some peace of mind instead of the hell you're living in."

"Oh, my God," said Paulette, exactly as if she were in church. "I can't take peace of mind like blood-money – I can't tell you where to find Dick, if you don't know now," and I should have known why if I had had any sense, but I had none. "It's no use, Mr. Stretton, I must go to Dick, alone. I – " But suddenly she blazed out at me: "I won't let you see him! And I'm going to him – now. Take your hand off me!"

I tightened it. "You'll stay here! Please! And you can't go on preventing me from meeting Hutton, either. What about the first time I take any gold out over the Caraquet road – and he and his gang try a hold-up on me?"

I said gang without thinking, for I was naturally dead sure he had one. But I was not prepared to have the cork come straight out of the bottle. Paulette clutched me till I bit my lip to keep steady.

"His gang's what I'm afraid of – for Dudley," she gasped, which certainly steadied me – like a bucket of ice. "Look here, when first I met Dick, he told me things, to frighten me – that he'd eighteen or twenty men laid up between here and Caraquet – enough to raid us here, even, if he chose. It was because I knew they were waiting somewhere on the road that night that I drove to Billy Jones's with you. It was one of them I shot when we tore through the swamp. But something went wrong with them; either they'd no guns, or they didn't want to give themselves away by shooting when they saw we were ready – I don't know. But anyhow, something went wrong. And Dick was black angry. He – the last time I spoke to him – he wouldn't even tell me what he'd done with his gang; just said he had them somewhere safe, in the last place you or Dudley would ever look for them. Oh, you needn't hold me any more; I've given in; I'm not going to meet Dick to-night. But I had to tell you about his gang, if I can't about him. And listen, Mr. Stretton. I've tried every possible way to get it out of him, but Dick won't even answer when I taunt him for a coward who has to be backed up. I know he has men somewhere, but he won't tell me where they are, or who they are – now. I believe – " but her voice changed sharply. "Those two boys, Dunn and Collins! You don't think Dudley can be right and they are still alive – and have joined Dick's gang?"

"They're dead!" I was about sick of Dunn and Collins, and anyhow I was wondering where the devil Hutton's gang could have gone after their fiasco in the swamp. "They may have meant to join Hutton. But I found what the wolves left – and that was dead, right enough!"

"I don't believe they're dead," said Paulette quietly.

I shrugged my shoulders. But I never even asked her why. For suddenly – with that flat knowledge you get when you realize you should have put two and two together long ago – I knew where Hutton's gang was now and always had been. "Skunk's Misery," I thought dumbfounded. "By gad, Skunk's Misery!" For the thing I should have added to the Skunk's Misery wolf dope was my dream of men talking and playing cards under the very floor where I slept in the new hut the Frenchwoman's son had built and gone away from, – because it had been no dream at all. I had actually heard real men under the bare lean-to where I lay; and knowing the burrows and runways under the Skunk's Misery houses, I knew where – and that was just in some hidden den under the rocks the new house had been built on – that house left with the door open, ostentatiously, for all the world to see!

I was blazing, as you always are blazing when you have been a fool. But I could start for Skunk's Misery the first thing in the morning and start alone, with my mouth shut. None of our four old men could be spared from the mill, and I had no use for any of Macartney's new ones; or for Macartney either, for he was no good in the bush. As for Dudley, nerves and a loose tongue would do him less harm at home. Besides, any ticklish job is a one-man job and I was best alone: once I got hold of Hutton there would be no trouble with his followers. But I had no intention of mentioning Skunk's Misery to the girl beside me; she was as capable of following me there as of fighting wolves for me, and with no more reason.

"It's late, and neither you nor I are going to meet Hutton to-night," I said rather cheerlessly. "You'd better go to bed."

"I want to say something first," slowly, as if she had been thinking. "What Macartney said to-night – that I was engaged to Dick Hutton when Mr. Van Ruyne said I took those emeralds – wasn't true! I never was engaged to Dick. I was sorry for him once, because I knew he did – care for me. But I always hated him – I can't tell you how I hated him! I didn't think I could ever love any man till – just lately."

It made me sick to know she meant Dudley. I would have blurted out that shrinking from the mere touch of his hand was a queer way to show it; only I was afraid to speak at all, for fear I begged her for God's sake not to speak of love and Dudley to me! And suddenly something banged even that out of my head. "Listen," I heard my own whisper. "Somebody's awake – walking round!"

It was only the faintest noise, more like a rustle than a footstep, but it sounded like Gabriel's trumpet to a man alone in the middle of the night with a girl he had no shadow of right to. If it were Marcia, – but I knew that second it was not Marcia, or even Dudley; though I would rather have had his just fury than Marcia's evil thoughts and tongue.

"By gad, it's outside," I breathed. "Look out!" But suddenly I changed my mind on it. There was only one person who could be outside, and that was Hutton, sick of waiting for Paulette and come to look for her. I had no desire for her to see how I met him instead, and my hands found her shoulders in the dark. "Get back, in the corner – and don't stir!" As she moved under my hands the faint sweet scent of her hair made me catch my breath with a sort of fierce elation. The gold and silk of it were not for me, I knew well enough, but at least I could keep Hutton's hands off it. I slipped to the side of the window and stared out into the dark shadow of the house, that lay black and square in the white moonlight. On the edge of it was a man – and the silly elation left my heart as the gas leaves a toy balloon when you stick a pin in it. It was not Hutton outside. It was – for the second time that night – only Macartney!

I stood and stared at him like a fool. It was a good half minute before I even wondered what had brought Macartney out of his bed in the assay office. I watched him stupidly, and he moved; hesitated; and then turned to the house door. My heart gave a jump Hutton never could have brought there. Macartney in the house with a light, coming into the office for something, for all I knew, and finding Paulette and me, would be merely a living telephone to Marcia! I tapped at the office window.

Macartney had good ears, I praised the Lord. He turned, not startled, but looking round him searchingly, and I stuck my head out of the hinged pane of the double window, thanking the Lord again that I had not to shove up a squeaking inside sash. "What's brought you back again?" I kept my voice down, remembering Marcia. "Anything gone wrong?"

"What?" said Macartney rather sharply. He came close and stared at me. "Oh, it's you, Stretton? I thought it was Wilbraham, and he wouldn't be any good. It was you I wanted. I've got a feeling there's some one hanging round outside here."

I hoped to heaven he had not seen Hutton, waiting for an appointment a girl was not going to keep, and I half lied: "I haven't seen any one. D'ye mean you thought you did?"

Macartney nodded. "Couldn't swear to it, but I thought so. And I'd too much gold in my safe to go to bed; I cleaned up this afternoon. I was certain I glimpsed a strange man slipping behind the bunk house when I went down an hour ago, and I've been hunting him ever since. I half thought I saw him again just now. But, if I did, he's gone!"

"I'll come out!"

But Macartney shook his head sententiously. "I'm enough. I've guns for the four mill men who sleep in the shack off the assay office, and you've a whack of gold in that room you're standing in; you'd better not leave it. Though I don't believe there's any real need for either of us to worry: if there was any one around I've scared him. I only thought I'd better come up and warn you I'd seen some one. 'Night," and he was gone.

I had a sudden idea that he might be a better man in the woods than I had thought he was, for he slid out of the house shadow into the bush without ever showing up in the moonlight. And as I thought it I felt Paulette clutch me, shivering from head to foot. It shocked me, somehow. I put my arm straight around her, like you do around a child, and spoke deliberately, "Steady, sweet, steady! It's all right. Hutton's gone by now. Anyhow, Macartney and I'll take care of you!"

"Oh, my heavens," said Paulette: it sounded half as if she were sick with despair, and half as if I were hopelessly stupid. "Take care of me – you can't take care of me! You should have let me go. It's too late now." She pushed my arm from her as if she hated me and was gone down the passage to her room before I could speak.

I shut the office window, with the inside sash down this time, and took a scout around outside. But Macartney was right; if any one had been waiting about he was gone. I could not find hide or hoof of him anywhere, and the moon went down, and I went in and went to bed. In two minutes I must have been asleep like a log, – and the first way I knew it was that I found myself out of bed, dragging on my clothes and grabbing up my gun.

Whatever the row was about it was in the assay office. I heard Macartney yell my name through a volley of shots and knew we had both been made fools of. I had stopped Paulette meeting Hutton, and Hutton had dropped on Macartney and the assay office gold! I shook Dudley till he sat up, sober as I never could have been in his shoes, saw him light out in his pyjamas to keep guard in his own office that Paulette and I had only just left, and legged it for the assay office and Macartney.

I didn't see a soul on the way, except the men who were piling out of the bunk house at the sound of a row, as I had piled out of bed; and I thought Macartney had raised a false alarm. But inside his office door I knew better. The four mill men who slept in the shack just off it were all on the office floor, dead, or next door to it. Their guns were on the floor too, and Macartney stood towering over the mess.

"Get those staring bunk-house fools out of here," he howled, as the men crowded in after me. "I haven't lost any gold, only somebody tried to raid me. Why didn't you come and cut them off when I yelled for you? They – they got away!"

And suddenly, before I even saw he was swaying, he keeled over on the floor.

CHAPTER XII

THOMPSON'S CARDS: AND SKUNK'S MISERY

For that second I thought Macartney was dead. But as I jumped to him I saw he had only fainted, and that nothing ailed him but a bullet that had glanced off his upper arm and left more of a gouge than a wound. Why it made him faint I couldn't see, but it had. I left him where he had dropped and turned to the four men he had been standing over. But they were past helping. They were decent men too, for they were the last of our own lot, – and it smote me like a hammer that they might have been alive still if I had not interfered with Paulette that night and kept her from meeting Hutton.

I knew as I knew there was a roof over my head that it was he who had fallen on Macartney, and I would have chased straight after him if common sense had not told me he would be lying up in the bush for just that, and all I should get for my pains would be a bullet out of the dark that would end all chance of me personally ever catching Hutton. I took stock of things where I stood, instead. Whether he had a gang or not, I knew he had been alone in the thing to-night, and he had done a capable job. Our four men had been surprised, for they were all shot in the back, as if they had been caught coming in the office door.

Whether Macartney had been surprised or not I could not tell. The revolver he had dropped as he fainted lay beside him empty, and there were slivers out of the doorpost behind the dead men. None of them seemed to have been much help to him. Three had not fired a shot; the fourth had just one cartridge missing from his revolver, where he lay with his face to the door – and I saw it accounted for by a tearing slash in a blue print stuck on the wall to the left of the doorway. I turned to the inside wall to see where the bullet that had glanced off Macartney had landed, and as I swung round he sat up.

"You may well look – it was one of our own men got me," he said thickly, and his curse turned my stomach; I never knew any good come of cursing the dead. I told him to shut up and tell how the thing had happened. And he grinned with sheer rage.

"It was plain damn foolery! I told you I believed I'd seen some one spying around the mine, and after I'd left you I didn't feel so sure that I'd cleared him out. I woke those fools up," his glance at the dead matched his curse at them, "and said if they heard any one prowling round my door they were to lie low in their own shack, let him get in at me here, and then bundle out and cut him off from behind. And what they did was to lose their heads. They heard some one or they didn't – I don't know. But the crazy fools piled out of their shack and ran in to me; and a man behind them —behind them, mind you – came on their heels and plugged every son of them before they were more than inside my door! It was then I yelled for you."

"D'ye mean you saw him – when he shot them?"

"I didn't see what he looked like," scornfully, "with four yelling, tumbling men between him and me. But I guess he was the man I'd been looking for. I fired and missed him, and when I lit for him over the men he'd killed he was gone. I emptied my gun into the dark on chance and yelled some more for you, and it was then I got it myself. As I turned around in the doorway, Sullivan," he pointed to the only man whose gun had been fired, "that I thought was dead, sat up and let me have it in the arm." He pointed to the ripped blue print. "You see what I'd have got if it had caught me straight! And that's all there was to it."

"D'ye mean" – I bit back Hutton's name. I had no time to hatch up a lie about him, and I was not going to drag in Paulette – "that – whoever was there, never even fired at you?"

"How do I know who he fired at? – I couldn't see inside of his head! I know he hit those chumps who could have got him if they had obeyed orders – let alone that if they'd stayed out I'd have got him clean myself when he came in. As it was, he cleared out before I could do it," said Macartney blackly, but the excitement had gone from his voice. "Call a couple of the bunk-house men to carry these four back to their shack and clean up this mess, will you? And come into my room while I tie up this cut. It's no good going after whoever was here now."

I knew that: also that I could get after him better single-handed at Skunk's Misery, where he would not expect me; or I would have been gone already. But I didn't air that to Macartney as I followed him into the partitioned-off corner he called his room. He had the last two clean-ups in his safe there, and he nodded to it as he hauled off his shirt for me to bind up his arm.

"With what's there, and what you and Wilbraham have in his office, we've too much around to be healthy," he observed succinctly, "and I guess some one's got wind of it. I don't know that it'll be any healthier for you to try running it out to Caraquet and get held up on the road! But I suppose it's got to go."