The Secret of the Reef Page 9

  CHAPTER IX--THE MINE AT SNOWY CREEK

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

  Osborne was of medium height and spare figure, and slightly lame in onefoot. On the whole, his appearance was pleasing; though he was not ofthe type his daughter associated with the successful business man. Therewas a hint of imaginative dreaminess in his expression, and his face wasseamed with lines and wrinkles that spoke of troubles borne, Ruth hadheard him described as headstrong and romantic in his younger days, buthe was now philosophically acquiescent, and marked by somewhat ironicalhumor. She wondered what stern experiences had extinguished his youthfulfire.

  "Aynsley was talking to me a few days ago," she said. "I understand thathe means to take charge of the Canadian mill."

  "Then I suppose you applauded his decision. In fact, I wonder whether hearrived at it quite unassisted? The last time Clay mentioned the matterhe told me the young fool didn't seem able to make up his mind."

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

  "But don't you think Aynsley's right?" she asked.

  "Oh, yes; in a sense. We admire industrial enterprise, and on the wholethat's good; but I've sometimes thought that our bush ranchers andprospectors, who, while assisting in it, keep a little in advance ofcivilized progress, show sound judgment. It's no doubt proper to turnthe beauty of our country into money and deface it with mining dumps andfactory stacks; but our commercial system's responsible for a good dealof ugliness, moral and physical."

  The girl was accustomed to his light irony, and was sometimes puzzled todetermine 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 ourmethods are much better because I've practised them."

  "Where did you first meet Aynsley's father?" Ruth asked. She preferredpersonal to abstract topics.

  Osborne smiled reminiscently.

  "At a desolate settlement in Arizona a number of years ago. The SouthernPacific had lately reached the coast, and I was traveling West without aticket. When it was unavoidable I walked; but railroad hands were moresympathetic in those days, and I came most of the way from Omaha insideand sometimes underneath the freight cars. Down under them was a dustyposition in the dry belts."

  Glancing round from the pretty wooden house, which had been furnishedwithout thought of cost, across the wide stretch of lawn, where a smartgardener was guiding a gasoline mower, Ruth found it hard to imagine herfather stealing a ride on a freight train. But another thought struckher.

  "Where was I then?" she asked.

  "With your aunt, or perhaps you had just gone to school. I can't fix theexact time," Osborne answered unguardedly; and the girl was filled witha confused sense of love and gratitude.

  The school was expensive, and her mother's relatives were by no meansrich, but she knew that her father had been the recipient of a small sumyearly under somebody's will. It looked as if he had turned it all overfor her benefit while he faced stern poverty.

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

  "I understand now," she said softly, "why there are lines on yourforehead and you sometimes look worn. Your life must have been veryhard."

  "Oh, it had its brighter side," Osborne answered lightly. "Well, Claywas also engaged in beating his passage, and I found him enjoying a longdrink from the locomotive tank. We were confronted with the problem howto cross about a hundred miles of arid desert on a joint capital of twodollars. Clay got over the first difficulty by making a water-bag out ofsome railroad rubber sheeting which he borrowed, while I went round thesettlement in search of provisions. I got some, though prices wereruinously high, and at midnight we hid beside the track, waiting for afreight train to pull out. The brakemen had a trick of looking round thecars before they made a start. Though the days were blazing hot, thenights were cold, and we shivered as we lay behind a clump of cacti nearthe wheels. A man almost trod on us as he ran along the line, but justafterward the engine bell rang, and Clay sprang up to push back one ofthe big sliding doors while I held the food and water. The runners werestiff, the train began to move; when he opened the door a few inches Ihad to trot; and by the time he could crawl through, it was too late forme to get up. Then, with a hazy recollection that he had a long way togo, 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 formyself when I stood between the ties and watched the train vanish intothe dark. What made it worse, was that of the joint two dollars onlyfifty 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 theAlaska Commercial Company. That, of course, was before the Klondykerush, and the A.C.C. ruled the frozen North."

  "It was in Alaska that you were first fortunate, wasn't it? You havenever told me much about the mine you found."

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

  "Well," he said, "it was an unlucky mine from the beginning--and I wasnot the first to find it. I had been some years in the company's servicewhen I was sent as agent to one of their factories. It was situated on asurf-beaten coast, with a lonely stretch of barrens and muskegs rollingaway behind, and the climate was severe. There were no trees largeenough to break the savage winds, and for six months the ground wascovered deep with snow. A small bark came up once or twice a year, andmy business was to trade with the Indians and the Russian half-breedsfor furs. In winter we had only an hour or two's daylight, but I gotbooks from San Francisco, and read them by the red-hot stove while theblizzards shook the factory. Even in those days, it was suspected thatthere was gold in Alaska; but the A.C.C. did not encourage prospecting,and the roughness of the country made it almost impossible for astranger to traverse. Still, a few prospectors somehow made their wayinto it, and probably died, for they were seldom seen after their firstappearance. I can recollect two or three, hard-bitten men who stayed aday or two with us and then vanished into the wilds.

  "It was late in the fall when one arrived with two Aleut Indians in askin 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'svessels, but he told us he meant to locate a mine he had heard about andthought he could get back before winter set in. He went off with theAleuts and a few provisions he bought, and that was the last we saw ofhim until the following summer. Then I made a journey inland to visit atribe which had brought in no furs, and one night we made camp among apatch of willows. When we were gathering wood I saw that the largerbushes had been hacked down, and thought it had been done by a whiteman. The next morning we found an empty provision can of the kind wekept, and, later on, bits of charred sticks where a fire had beenlighted. That led us to follow up the cr
eek we had camped by; andpresently 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-pickedskeleton bleached by the snow and a few rags of clothes. The significantthing was that the breast-bone was cut through: sharply cleft, as if byan ax."

  "How dreadful! You think the Indians killed the man?"

  "It looked like it. There may have been a fight over the last of theprovisions, which the Aleuts carried off, because I found very few cansand only one small empty flour-bag; but the tools indicated that it wasthe 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 diedrich."

  "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 scrubwas three or four miles off it was easy to imagine how the man must haveworked 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 beneaththe surface, and there were signs that the early winter had surprisedhim at work. It was obvious that he was a stubborn man, and meant tohold 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 mighthave killed the man for a silver fox's skin: furs were our currency. Ifthere was a quarrel it probably began because he insisted on stayingwhen winter was close at hand and the food almost done. For all that Icouldn't find the gold he must have got, because there was plenty in thewash-dirt he had left--tiny rounded nuggets as well as grains. It was arich alluvial pocket that a man could work with simple appliances, and Imade 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 theyhunted. Gold had no value to them; their highest ambition was to own amagazine 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 itsbusiness to mind, and we had only provisions enough for the trip. TheA.C.C. found the fur-trade more profitable than mining, and did not wantits preserves invaded; and nobody suspected how rich the country reallywas. Anyway, soon after my return, I had a dispute with the chief factorand, fearing trouble, said nothing about my discovery. The officesupported the fellow, and I left the A.C.C. with my secret and three orfour hundred dollars."

  "What did you do then?"

  "I'm afraid an account of all my shifts and adventures would bemonotonous. Sometimes I had two or three hundred dollars in hand,sometimes I had nothing but a suit of shabby clothes; but when thingswere at the worst some new chance always turned up, and I wandered aboutthe 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 askingfavors." Osborne paused and his face turned graver. "Besides, there wererespects in which we didn't agree; and in those days I had anindependent mind."

  "Haven't you now?"

  "I've learned that it's sometimes wiser to reserve your opinions," saidOsborne 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; buthe was short of money and was ready for a shot at anything that promiseda few dollars. Clay never shirked a risk, but I believe he was honestlyglad to see me, and in a moment of expansion I told him about the SnowyCreek mine and the gold that would be waiting for me when I couldreturn."

  "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 washalf afraid of at the beginning, wasn't it?"

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

  "Your aunt has always been inclined to disapprove of my doings, and Idon't suppose she'd be interested in my prospecting experiences. We'lllet them stand over till another day."

  Ruth agreed, but she had a puzzling suspicion that her father wasrelieved by the interruption. When Miss Dexter joined them Ruth wasforced to follow his lead and confine herself to general conversation.This, however, did not keep her from thinking, and she wondered why heraunt, whose love for her she knew, had shown herself so hypercriticalabout her father. Caroline was narrow, but she was upright, and itseemed impossible that she could find any serious fault with him. Forall that, Ruth wished that his connection with Clay were not quite soclose. Clay was not a man of refinement or high principles, and, to dohim justice, he did not pretend to be. Ruth had heard his businessexploits mentioned with indignation and cynical amusement by men ofdifferent temperament. There were, she supposed, envious people whodelighted to traduce successful men; but Clay was certainly not freefrom suspicion, and she would have preferred that her father had chosena different associate.