The Fifth Ace Part 39

"I wish to the Lord you would go to the governor yourself!" exploded Winnie. "He wouldn't listen to me in a million years, and even you would have to show him! He has looked thoroughly into the proposition according to his judgment and he has the utmost faith in it or he wouldn't plan to back it at all. Are you sure, Kearn?"

"Which means that you are not; I haven't succeeded in convincing you."

Thode shrugged. "What chance would I have of convincing your father?

I'm warning you, Win, I can't do any more. It's up to you now; remember that I am as earnest in this as I have ever been in my life, and it is only because of our old friends.h.i.+p that I have dropped you a hint. Whether your father acts upon it or not, beg him to respect my confidence, at any rate for the time being. I asked you to meet me to-day----"

"Yes?" Winnie's tone was absent, his mind still grappling with the quandary into which the other's warning had plunged him. "What is it, Kearn?"

"Do you remember our last meeting before I went away, when you picked me up in the Park?" Thode pushed his cup aside and leaned forward over the table. "You told me you knew where Miss Murdaugh went when she left the Halsteads. I want you to take me to her at once, without delay."

Winnie shook his head.

"Sorry, old man. I saw her within an hour after dropping you at the Park entrance and found her on the eve of departure. She told me she was leaving New York that night, but she wouldn't tell me her destination. I called again the next day and found she had gone; I haven't heard anything of her since."

"That's a facer!" Thode groaned. "I had counted on finding her here.

Could she have returned to Limasito?"

"No, I've made inquiries. You see," Winnie explained hastily, "we'd grown to be pretty-good friends and naturally the governor felt responsible for her, in a way. He's been in constant communication with Jim Baggott down there--the man who runs the hotel----"

"I remember."

"The governor located her first through him, you know, and he seems to have been the one she trusted most after her foster father died, but even he has heard nothing from her, or pretends he hasn't." Winnie paused. "The governor has done everything possible to find her and satisfy himself that she was all right, but she has dropped completely from sight. He has aged over the whole thing, I can tell you! I think he would give half he possesses to know that all was well with her."

Thode beckoned once more to the waiter, and, throwing a bill upon the table, rose.

"If Miss Murdaugh has gone, I'm off to-night," he announced. "It was to see her that I returned to New York, but since there's no chance of that now I must take the trail again."

"I say, you haven't stumbled upon anything that would be to her advantage, have you?" Winnie demanded suddenly as he followed his friend to the door. "Anything about the past, I mean----?"

"No, Win." Thode spoke without turning. "It was just a--a little private matter."

"And you're really off to-night? When are we going to see you again, old man?"

"I don't know." He wheeled about swiftly, then held out his hand.

"Don't forget to repeat what I have told you to your father and make it as strong as you can. I'm playing a game of my own, and when we meet again it will be cards on the table. Good-bye, Win."

"Good luck!" The other hesitated wistfully. "If--if you should happen by any chance to run across Willa in your wanderings, will you tell her for me that I'm still waiting, as I said I should be; that I am still, as always, at her service?"

CHAPTER XXII

WHERE TRAILS MEET

A long, narrow valley between snow-capped mountains glistening under the January sun; a cl.u.s.ter of ramshackle, weather-beaten wooden houses elbowing each other on either side of a single straggling street, with here and there a newer concrete building planted firmly like respectable citizens in a disreputable mob. Stray dogs sniffing at heaps of refuse, a group of tethered horses s.h.i.+vering under thin blankets in the hotel shed, a battered jitney or two stalled before shop and saloon. A Chinaman with a huge bundle upon his head, a slatternly woman brus.h.i.+ng the dry, powdered snow from the path, a tawdry one pattering along, her rouged face pitiful in the clear merciless light; red-s.h.i.+rted miners crawling like ants to the yawning shaft-mouths half way up the mountainside.--This was Topaz Gulch on a certain wintry morning.

In the office of the Palace Hotel, the proprietor tossed aside his week-old Chicago newspaper and rose with alacrity as a slender, girlish figure, clad in a great fur coat, came lightly down the stairs.

"Everything all right, Ma'am? Did the missus make you comfortable?"

"Yes, thank you." The girl nodded, smiling. Then her face sobered.

"I wonder if you could tell me--may I ask how long you have been here in Topaz Gulch?"

"Five years, Ma'am," he returned promptly. "For a boom town that didn't grow as was expected, nor yet peter out entirely, Topaz is holding her own and business ain't so bad; besides, the air is good for the missus. That's why we come in the first place."

The girl had paused at the window, gazing up the western slope.

"That is the Yellow Streak?"

"Yes'm, that's the mine. Folks thought at first that she was going to pan out another bonanza, I guess, but now she's just about profitable enough to make it worth while to keep her going. Great town, this must have been when she was first opened up."

The girl scarcely heard. She was thinking of the weary, consumptive young time-keeper who had struggled up that gray slope with daily weakening tread and of the girl who, with her baby in her arms, watched him perhaps from the door of one of those dilapidated, weather-worn shacks upon which she herself now gazed. With blurred eyes, the erstwhile Willa Murdaugh turned to her informant.

"Have there been many changes since you came?" she asked.

"Well, no," he considered. "Once in a while some hustler from the Coast lands here and runs up a concrete store, but usually he don't stay long; there ain't enough doing. The population's always s.h.i.+fting; there's been a whole new outfit up at the mine since we come, but everything seems to go on just the same, so you couldn't rightly call it much of a change. The moving-picture houses are about all that's marked any difference in things here, I guess."

"I wonder if there is anyone left in the town who was here fifteen years ago." Willa spoke with ill-concealed eagerness. "Who is the oldest inhabitant you know of?"

The proprietor looked his surprise.

"Well," he began at last, "there's Bill Ryder; he come in with the first rush, they tell me, and he still runs the Red Dog Cafe. Then there's Pete Haines, a half-witted old cuss--begging your pardon, Ma'am!--that's got enough dust cached somewhere to keep himself drunk perpetual; and the Widow Atkinson, and Big Olaf, and--and Klondike Kate."

He hesitated at the last name, and a brick-red flush suffused his stolid face, but Willa paid no heed.

"Who are they?"

"The Widow Atkinson runs the eating-house for miners at the end of the street; hard-sh.e.l.l temperance, she is, and they say Atkinson used to wait on table with her ap.r.o.n tied round him and da.s.sent even smoke indoors." He paused. "Big Olaf is a Swede who got hurt in the mine years ago and the company gives him an annuity. Kind of cracked he is, too, but harmless. You see, Ma'am, when the big boom died down gradual and the town settled into a one-horse gait, the young folks naturally pushed on to the next strike that promised a fortune, and the old ones drifted back to where they come from."

"And Klondike Kate; who is she?" Willa persisted.

Her host s.h.i.+fted from one foot to the other in an agony of embarra.s.sment.

"She--she's just a woman that stays on here because there ain't any other place for her to go, Ma'am. She does odd jobs when she can find any to do and the missus helps her out now and then, but she ain't the kind you'd want anything to do with. The missus'll tell you if you ask her."

"I understand," said Willa quickly. "Is that the Red Dog over there, where the man is sweeping sawdust out to the road?"

She had crossed to the door and opened it, and her host approached, peering over her shoulder.

"Yes'm, that's Bill Ryder himself."

"I would like to talk to him," Willa announced. "I want to ask him some questions about the early days here."

"I'll fetch him for you!" her host offered, recovering hastily from his astonishment. "You just wait here, he'll be right pleased to come----"

"No, thank you. I will go over, myself." Willa fastened her cloak with a decisive air. "He came with the first rush, you tell me? Then he should be able to remember what I want to learn."

She picked her way across the hummocks of frozen mud powdered with snow in the road, and approached the rotund, jovial-faced little man who was swinging his worn broom energetically in a cloud of sawdust.