Thurston of Orchard Valley

Black Christy found, however, that a life of virtuous toil grew distinctly monotonous, and one morning, when Mattawa Tom's vigilance was slack, he departed in search of diversion in the settlement of Red Pine, which lay beyond the range. He found congenial society there, and, unfortunately for himself, went on with a boon companion next morning to a larger settlement beside the railroad track. He intended to complete the orgie there, and then to return to camp. Accordingly it happened that, when afternoon was drawing towards a close, he sat under the veranda of a rickety wooden saloon, hurling drowsy encouragement at the freighter who was loading rock-boring tools into a big wagon. He wondered how far his remaining dollar would go towards assuaging a thirst which steadily increased, and two men, who leaned against the wagon, chuckled as they watched him. The hands of one of the men were busy about the brass cap which decorated the hub of the wheel, but neither Black nor the teamster noticed this fact. Black had seen one of the men before, for the two had loafed about the district, ostensibly prospecting for minerals, and had twice visited Thurston's camp.

It was a pity Black had absorbed sufficient alcohol to confuse his memory, for when the men strolled towards him he might have recognized the one whose hat was drawn well down. As it was, he greeted them affably.

"Nice weather for picnicking in the woods. Not found that galena yet? I guess somebody in the city is paying you by the week," he observed jocosely.

"That's about the size of it!" The speaker laughed. "But we've pretty well found what we wanted, and we're pulling out with the Pacific express. There don't seem very much left in your glass. Anything the matter with filling it up with me?"

"I'm not proud," was the answer. "I'm open to drink with any man who'll set them up for me." When the prospector called the bar-tender, Black proceeded to prove his willingness to be "treated."

Nothing moved in the unpaved street of the sleepy settlement, when the slow-footed oxen and lurching wagon had lumbered away. The sun beat down upon it pitilessly, and the drowsy scent of cedars mingled with the odors of baking dust which eddied in little spirals and got into the loungers' throats. The bar-tender was liberal with his ice, however, and Black became confidential. When he had assured them of his undying friendship, one of the prospectors asked:

"What's a smart man like you muling rocks around in a river-bed for, anyway? Can't you strike nothing better down to the cities?"

"No," declared Black, thickly. "Couldn't strike a job nohow when I left them. British Columbia played out – and I had no money to take me to California."

"Well," said the prospector, winking at his comrade, "there is something we might put you on to. The first question is, what kin you do?"

According to Black's not over-coherent answer, there was little he could not do excellently. After he had enumerated his capabilities, the other man said:

"I guess that's sufficient. Come right back with us to 'Frisco and we'll have a few off days before we start you. This is no country for a live man, anyway."

Black nodded sagaciously and tried hard to think. He was afraid of Thurston, but more so of the other man connected with the Enterprise Company. In San Francisco he would be beyond the reach of either, and the city offered many delights to a person of his tastes with somebody else willing to pay expenses.

"I'll come," he promised thickly. "So long as you've got the dollars I'll go right round the earth with either of you."

"Good man!" commended the prospector. "Bring along another jugful, bar-tender."

The attendant glanced at the three men admiringly, for the speaker was plainly sober, and he knew how much money Black had paid him. He went back to his bottles, and there was nobody to see the other prospector, who had kept himself in the background, pour something from a little phial beneath his hand, into Black's liquor.

"Not quite so good as last one. I know 'Frisco. Great time at China Joe's, you an' me," murmured Black as he collapsed with his head upon the table. He was soon snoring heavily.

"Your climate has been too much for him," one of the men declared, when the saloon-keeper came in. "Say, hadn't you better help us heave him in some place where he can sleep, unless you'd prefer to keep him as an advertisement?"

Black was stored away with some difficulty, and two hours later he was wheeled on a baggage-truck into the station, where half the inhabitants of the settlement assembled to see him off. The big cars were already clanging down the track, when a tall man riding a lathered horse appeared among the scattered pines on the shoulder of the hill above the settlement. A bystander commented:

"Thurston's foreman coming round for some of his packages. As usual he's in an almighty hurry. That place is 'most as steep as a roof, and he's coming down it at a gallop."

The prospectors glanced at each other, and one of them said, "Lend me a hand, somebody, to heave our sick partner aboard."

Black was unceremoniously deposited upon the platform of the nearest car, where he sat blinking vacantly at the assembly, while the conductor, leaning out from the door of the baggage-car, looked back towards the rider who was clattering through a dust cloud down the street, as he asked: "Anybody else besides the tired man? Is that fellow yonder coming?"

"No," answered the prospector. "He's only wanting one of those cases you've just dumped out. Likes to fancy his time's precious. I know him."

The conductor waved his hand, the big bell clanged, and the train had just rolled with a rattle over a trestle ahead, when Mattawa Tom, grimed with thick red dust, flung himself down beside the agent's office.

"Has a dark-faced thief in a plug hat with two holes in the top of it, gone out on the cars?" he shouted, and the spectators admitted that such a person boarded the train.

"Why didn't you come in two minutes earlier, Tom?" one of them inquired. "He lit out with two strangers. Has he been stealing something?"

"He's been doing worse, and I'd have been in on time, but that I stopped ten minutes to help freighter Louis cut loose the two live oxen left him," said the foreman, breathlessly. "One wheel came off his wagon going down the Clearwater Trail, and the whole blame outfit pitched over into a ravine. There's several thousand dollars' worth of our boring machines smashed up, and Louis, who has pretty well split his head, is cussing the man who took the cotter out of his wheel hub."

The two prospectors were heartily tired of their charge by the time they passed him off as the sick employé of an American firm, at the nearest station to the Washington border. When Black showed signs of waking up he was soothed with medicated liquor, and his guardians, who several times had high words with the conductor, at last unloaded him in a station hewn out of the forests encircling Puget Sound, where they managed to hoist him into a spring wagon. Black leaned against one of the men, for he was feeling distressfully ill. His head throbbed, his vision was hazy and his throat was dry. Blinking down at the rows of wooden houses among the firs, and the tall spars of vessels behind them, he said: "This isn't 'Frisco – not half big enough. Somebody made mistake somewhere. Say! Lemme out; I'm going back to the depot."

"You're coming along with us," was the decided answer. "Sit down at once before we make you."

Black slowly doubled up a still formidable fist, and grasping a rail, lurched to and fro unsteadily. "Lemme out 'fore I kill somebody. Claim rightsh of British citizensh," he said.

"You'll get them if you're not careful," was the threat, and the speaker jerked Black's feet from under him. "I was told to remind you if you made trouble that a sheriff on this side of the frontier had some papers describing you. There's one or two patrolmen yonder handy."

"It was an accident," temporized Black, endeavoring to pull his scattered wits together.

"Juss so!" was the answer, given with a gesture of indifference. "I was only told a name for the patrolmen, and to remind you that a man, who knows all about it, has got his eye on you."

Black leered upon him with drunken cunning, then his face grew stolid, and he said nothing further until the wagon drew up in a by-street, before a door, hung across with quaint signboards of Chinese characters. The door opened and closed behind him when his companions knocked, and Black, who recognized a curious sour smell, choked out, "Gimme long drink of ice watah!"

He drained the cool draught that was brought him, then flinging himself on a pile of matting in a corner of a dim room, sank forthwith into slumber. He had intended to pretend to sleep, but to lie awake and think. His custodians, however, had arranged things differently, and Black's wits were not working up to their usual power.

Whenever railroad extension or mining enterprise provided high wages for all strong enough to earn them and crews deserted wholesale, seamen were occasionally shipped in a very irregular fashion from the ports of the Pacific slope. At the time Black was brought into one of the seaboard cities, the purveying of drugged and kidnaped mariners had risen to be almost a recognized profession.

It accordingly happened that when the unfortunate Black first became clearly conscious of anything again, he heard the gurgle of sliding water close beside his head, and, opening his eyes, caught sight of a smoky lamp that reeled to and fro, in very erratic fashion. Moisture dripped from the beams above him, and there was a sickly smell which seemed familiar. Black, who had been to sea before, decided that he caught the aroma of bilge water. Rows of wooden shelves tenanted by recumbent figures, became discernible, and he started with dismay to the full recognition of the fact that he was in a vessel's forecastle.

Somebody or something was pounding upon the scuttle overhead. A black gap opened above him, a rush of cold night wind swept down, followed by a gruff order:

"Turn out, watch below, and help get sail upon her. Stir round before I put a move on to you!"

Men scrambled from the wooden shelves growling as they did so. Two lost their balance on the heaving floor, went down headlong, and lay where they fell. When a man in long boots floundered down the ladder, Black sat up in his bunk.

"Now there's going to be trouble. Some blame rascals have run me off aboard a lumber ship," he said.

"Correct!" observed a man who was struggling into an oilskin jacket. "You're blame well shanghaied like the rest of us, and as the mate's a rustler, you've got to make the best of it."

"Hello! What's the matter with you? Not feeling spry this morning, or is it hot water you're waiting for?" the mate said, jerking Black out of his bunk as he spoke. "Great Columbus! What kind of a stiff do you call yourself? Up you go!"

Black went, with all the expedition he was capable of, and, blundering out through the scuttle, stood shivering on a slant of wet and slippery deck. A brief survey showed him that he was on board a full-rigged ship, timber laden, about to be cast off by a tug. There was a fresh breeze abeam. Looking forward he could see dark figures hanging from the high-pointed bowsprit that rose and dipped, and beyond them the lights of a tug reeling athwart a strip of white-streaked sea. Mountains dimly discernible towered in the distance, and he fancied it was a little before daybreak. Bursts of spray came hurtling in through the foremast shrouds, and the whine and rattle of running wire and chain fell from the windy blackness overhead whence the banging of loosened canvas came to his ears. Glancing aloft he watched the great arches of the half-sheeted topsails swell blackly out and then collapse again with a thunderous flap. Somebody was shouting from the slanted top-gallant-yard that swung in a wide arc above them, but Black had no time for further inspection.

"Lay aloft and loose maintopsails! Are you figuring we brought you here to admire the scenery?" a hoarse voice challenged.

Half-dazed and sullenly savage Black had still sense enough to reflect that it would be little use to expect that the harassed mate would listen to reason then. Clawing his way up the ratlines he laid his chest upon the main-topsail-yard and worked his way out to the lower end of the long inclined spar. Here, still faint and dizzy, he hung with the footrope jammed against his heel, as he felt for the gasket that held the canvas to the yard. Swinging through the blackness across a space of tumbling foam he felt a horrible unsteadiness. There were other men behind him, for he could hear them swearing and coughing until a black wall of banging canvas sank beneath him when somebody roared: "Sheet her home!"

Then a hail came down across the waters from the tug. There was a loud splash beneath the bows, while shadowy figures that howled a weird ditty as they hove the hawser in, rose and fell black against the foam-flecked sea on the dripping forecastle. Nobody had missed Black, who now sat astride the yard watching the tug, as the ship, listing over further and commencing to hurl the spray in clouds about her plunging bows, gathered way. The steamboat would slide past very close alongside, and he saw a last chance of escape. Moving out to the very yard-arm he clutched the lee-brace, which rope led diagonally downwards to the vessel's depressed rail. He looked below a moment, bracing himself for the perilous attempt.

The tug was close abreast of the ship's forecastle now, evidently waiting with engines stopped until the vessel should pass her. The crew was still heaving in the cable or loosing the top-gallants, and froth boiled almost level with the depressed rail. Black was a poor swimmer, but he could keep his head above water for a considerable time. If the tug did not start her engines within the next few seconds she must drive close down on him. Otherwise – but filled with the hope of escape and the lust for revenge Black was willing to take the risk.

He hooked one knee around the brace, gripped it between his ankles and slackened the grip of his hands. The topsails slid away from him, the spray rushed up below, his feet struck the rail, and the next moment he was down in utter blackness and conscious of a shock of icy cold water. He rose gasping and swung around, buffeted in the vessel's eddying wake. There was no shouting on board her, and, with a choking cry, he struck out for the black shape of the tug, now only a short distance away. Somebody heard and flung down a line. He clutched at it and, by good fortune, grasped it. Head downward he was drawn on board by the aid of a long boathook, and hauled, dripping, before the skipper.

"Did you fall or jump in?" asked the skipper.

"I jumped," confessed Black, putting a bold face on it, and the master of the towboat laughed.

"Shanghaied, I guess!" he said. "Well, I don't blame you for showing your grit. The master of that lumber wagon is a blame avaricious insect! He beat us down until all we got out of him will hardly pay for the coal we used – that's what he did. So if you slip ashore quietly when we tie up, he'll think you pitched over making sail, and I'll keep my mouth shut."

Accordingly it happened that next morning Black, who had left the wooden city before daylight to tramp back to the bush, sat down to consider his next move.

"There's one thing tolerably certain, Black Christy's drowned, and he'll just stop drowned until it suits him," he decided. "Next, though he's not over fond of it, there's lots of work for a good carpenter in this country and newspapers are cheap. So when it's worth his while to strike in with the Thurston Company and get even with the other side he'll probably hear of it."

He laughed a little as he once more read the message on a strip of pulpy paper somebody had slipped into his pocket.

"You are going to China for your health, and you had better stop there if you want to keep clear of trouble."

Black Christy got upon his feet again and departed into the bush, where he wandered for several weeks, building fences and splitting shingles for the ranchers in return for food and shelter, until he found work and wages at a saw-mill.

Shortly after he was employed at the mill, the director who held Leslie's receipt sat in his handsome offices with the Englishman. A newspaper lay open on the table before him, and the director smiled as he read, "Ship, Maria Carmony, timber laden for China, meeting continuous headwinds after sailing from this port, put into Cosechas, Cal., for shelter, and her master reported the loss of a seaman when making sail in the Straits of San Juan. The man's name was T. Slater, and must have been a stranger, as nobody appears to have known him in this city."

"Those fellows haven't managed it badly," he commented. "Anyway, there's an end of him."

"They told me they had some trouble over it, and I gave them fifty dollars extra," said Leslie. "They used the hint you mentioned – said it worked well. But the two men are always likely to turn up, unfortunately."

"It wouldn't count," the other answered confidently. "You will have to bluff them off if they do. Deny the whole thing – nobody would believe them – it's quite easy. It would have been different with that confounded Black, for he would have had Thurston's testimony. The joke of the whole thing is, that although he knew I held evidence which would likely hang him with a jury of miners, it's tolerably certain Black never did the thing he was wanted for."

Thus, the two parties interested remained contented, and only Thurston was left bewildered and furious at the loss of a witness who might be valuable to him. Moreover, the destruction of machinery which, having been made specially for Thurston, in England, could not be replaced for months. And not once did it ever occur to his subordinate, English Jim, that he himself had furnished the clue which led to the abduction of the missing man.

CHAPTER XX

UNDER THE STANLEY PINES

It was a pleasant afternoon when Millicent Leslie stood in the portico of her villa, which looked upon the inlet from a sunny ridge just outside Vancouver. Like the other residences scattered about, the dwelling quaintly suggested a doll's house – it was so diminutively pretty with its carved veranda, bright green lattices, and spotless white paint picked out with shades of paler green and yellow. Flowers filled tiny borders, and behind the house small firs, spared by the ax, stood rigid and somber. With clear sunshine heating upon it and the blue waters sparkling close below, the tiny villa was so daintily attractive that one might almost suppose its inhabitants could carry neither care nor evil humor across its threshold, but there was disgust and weariness in Millicent's eyes as she glanced from the little pony-carriage waiting at the gate to her husband leaning against a pillar.

Leslie was evidently in a complacent frame of mind, and he did not notice his wife's expression. There was a smile upon his puffy face which suggested pride of possession. It was justifiable, for Mrs. Leslie was still a distinctly handsome woman, and she knew how to dress herself.

"You will meet very few women who excel you, and the team is unique," he remarked exultantly. "Drive around by some of the big stores and let folks see you before you turn into the park. Since that affair of Thurston's I am almost beginning to grow proud of you."

"Isn't it somewhat late in the day?" was the answer, and Millicent's tone was chilly. "If you had wished to pay me a compliment that was not intended ironically, it would have been wiser to omit all reference to the subject you mentioned. It is done now – and heaven knows why I told you – but I can't thank you for reminding me of a deed I am ashamed of. Further, I understood the ponies were for my pleasure, and I have stooped far enough in your interest without displaying myself as an advertisement of a prosperity which does not exist."

Leslie laughed unpleasantly, noticing the flash in the speaker's eyes before he rejoined: "Perhaps it is tardy praise I give you, but regarding your last remark, to pretend you have achieved prosperity is, so far as I can see, the one way to attain it, and I have a promising scheme in view. It is not a particularly pleasant part to play, and there was a time when it appeared very improbable that either of us would be forced, as you say, to stoop to it. Neither was it my ambition which brought about the necessity. As to the ponies – I had fancied they might do their part, too, but they are a reward for services rendered in finding me a clue to the missing-man mystery. Nobody need know that they're not quite our own. Now you have got them, isn't it slightly unfair to blame me because you were willing to earn them?"

"I suppose so," admitted Millicent. "Still, I can't help remarking that you take the man's usual part of blaming the woman for whatever happens. To-day I will not drive through the city, but straight into the park."

Leslie said nothing further, but followed his wife to the gate. On his way to his office, he turned and looked after her with a frown as she rattled her team along the uneven road. She was a vain and covetous woman with a bias towards intrigue, but there had been times since her marriage when she despised herself, and as a natural consequence blamed her husband. Sometimes she hated Thurston, also, though more often she was sensible of vague regrets, and grew morbid thinking of what might have been. Now she flushed a little as she glanced at the ponies and remembered that they were the price of treachery. The animals were innocent, but she found satisfaction in making them feel the sting of the whip.

She looked back at the city.

It rose in terraces above the broad inlet – a maze of wooden buildings, giving place to stone. Over its streets hung a wire network, raised high on lofty poles, which would have destroyed the beauty of a much fairer city. Back of the city rose the somber forest over which at intervals towered the blasted skeleton of some gigantic pine.

Millicent felt that she detested both the city, with its crude mingling of primitive simplicity and Western luxury, and the life she lived in it. It was a life of pretense and struggle, in which she suffered bitter mortifications daily. Presently she reined the team in to a walk as she drove under the cool shade of the primeval forest which, with a wisdom not common in the West, the inhabitants of Vancouver have left unspoiled as Nature. A few drives have been cut through the trees and between the long rows of giant trunks she could catch at intervals the silver shimmer of the Straits. In this park there was only restful shadow. Its silence was intensified by the soft thud of hoofs. A dim perspective of tremendous trees whose great branches interlocked, forming arches for the roof of somber green very far above, lured her on.

Millicent felt the spell of the silence and sighed remembering how the lover whom she had discarded once pleaded that she would help him in a life of healthful labor. She regretted that she had not consented to flee with him to the new country. Now she was tied to a man she despised, and who had put her, so she considered, to open shame. She could not help comparing his weak, greedy, yet venomous nature, with the other's courage, clean purpose and transparent honesty.

"I was a fool, ten times a fool; but it is too late," she told herself, and then tightening her grip on the reins she started with surprise. The man to whom her thoughts had strayed was leaning against a hemlock with his eyes fixed on her face. It was the first time they had met since she played the part of Delilah, and, in spite of her customary self-command, Millicent betrayed her agitation. A softer mood was upon her and she had the grace to be ashamed. Still, it appeared desirable to discover whether he suspected her.

"I was quite startled to see you, Geoffrey, but I am very glad. It is almost too hot for walking. Won't you let me drive you?" she said with flurried haste.

If Geoffrey hesitated Millicent noticed no sign of it beyond that he was slow in answering. He was conscious that Mrs. Leslie looked just then a singularly attractive companion, but she was the wife of another man, and, of late, he had felt a vague alarm at the confidences she seemed inclined to exchange with him. Nevertheless, he could find no excuse at the moment which would not suggest a desire to avoid her, and with a word of thanks he took his place at her side.