The Golden Woman Part 13

"Can't say what it is--from here."

The other sat down on an adjacent rock.

"Get right ahead. I'll wait."

Buck hurried away, and for some moments the Padre watched his slim figure, as, scrambling, stumbling, clinging, he made his way to where the real climb was to begin. Nor was it until he saw the tall figure halt under an overhanging rock, which seemed to jut right out over his head, and look up for the course he must take in the final climb, that Buck's actual danger came home to the onlooker. He was very little more given to realizing personal danger than Buck himself, but now a sudden apprehension for the climber gripped him sharply.

He stirred uneasily as he saw the strong hands reach up and clutch the jutting facets. He even opened his mouth to offer a warning as he saw the heavily-booted feet mount to their first foothold. But he refrained. He realized it might be disconcerting. A few breathless moments pa.s.sed as Buck mounted foot by foot. Then came the thing the Padre dreaded. The youngster's hold broke, and a rock hurtled by him from under his hand and very nearly dislodged him altogether.

In an instant the Padre was on his feet with the useless intention of going to his aid, but, even as he stood up, his own feet shot from under him, and he fell back heavily upon the rock from which he had just risen.

With an impatient exclamation he looked down to discover the cause of his mishap. There it lay, a loose stone of yellowish hue. He stooped to remove it, and, in a moment, his irritation was forgotten. In a moment everything else was forgotten. Buck was forgotten. The peril of the hill. The cliff itself. For the moment he was lifted out of himself. Years had pa.s.sed away, his years of life in those hills. And something of the romantic dreams of his early youth thrilled him once again.

He stood up bearing the cause of his mishap clasped in his two hands and stared down at it. Then, after a long while, he looked up at the climbing man. He stood there quite still, watching his movements with unseeing eyes. His interest was gone. The danger had somehow become nothing now. There was no longer any thought of the active figure moving up the face of the hill with cat-like clinging hands and feet.

There was no longer thought for his success or failure.

Buck reached his goal. He examined the auriferous facet with close scrutiny and satisfaction. Then he began the descent, and in two minutes he stood once more beside the Padre.

"It's high-grade quartz," he cried jubilantly as he came up.

The Padre nodded, his mind on other things.

"I'd say the luck's changed," Buck went on, full of his own discovery and not noticing the other's abstraction. He was enjoying the thought of the news he had to convey to the starving camp. "I'd say there's gold in plenty hereabouts and the washout----"

The Padre suddenly thrust out his two hands which were still grasping the cause of his discomfiture. He thrust them out so that Buck could not possibly mistake the movement.

"There surely is--right here," he said slowly.

Buck gasped. Then, with s.h.i.+ning eyes, he took what the other was holding into his own two hands.

"Gold!" he cried as he looked down upon the dull yellow ma.s.s.

"And sixty ounces if there's a pennyweight," added the Padre exultantly. "You see I--I fell over it," he explained, his quiet eyes twinkling.

CHAPTER IX

GATHERING FOR THE FEAST

Two hours later saw an extraordinary change at the foot of Devil's Hill. The wonder of the "washout" had pa.s.sed. Its awe was no longer upon the human mind. The men of the camp regarded it with no more thought than if the destruction had been caused by mere blasting operations. They were not interested in the power causing the wreck, but only in their own motives, their own greedy longings, their own l.u.s.t for the banquet of gold outspread before their ravening eyes.

The Padre watched these people his news had brought to the hill with tolerant, kindly eye. He saw them scattered like a small swarm of bees in the immensity of the ruin wrought by the storm. They had for the time forgotten him, they had forgotten everything in the wild moment of long-pent pa.s.sions unloosed--the danger which overhung them, their past trials, their half-starved bodies, their recent sufferings. These things were thrust behind them, they were of the past. Their present was an insatiable hunger for finds such as had been thrust before their yearning eyes less than an hour ago.

He stood by and viewed the spectacle with a mind undisturbed, with a gentle philosophy inspired by an experience which he alone could appreciate. It was a wonderful sight. The effort, the haste, the almost insane intentness of these people seeking the yellow metal, the discovery of which was the whole bounds of their horizon. He felt that it was good to see them. Good that these untamed pa.s.sions should be allowed full sway. He felt that such as these were the advance guard of all human enterprise. Theirs was the effort, theirs the hards.h.i.+p, the risk; and after them would come the trained mind, perhaps the less honest mind, the mind which must harness the result of their haphazard efforts to the process of civilization's evolution.

He even fancied he saw something of the influence of this day's work upon the future of that mountain world.

But there was regret too in his thought. It was regret at the impossibility of these pioneers ever enjoying the full fruits of their labors. They would enjoy them in their own way, at the moment, but such enjoyment was not adequate reward for their daring, their sacrifice, their hardihood. Well enough he knew that they were but the toilers in a weed-grown vineyard, and that it would fall to the lot of the skilled husbandman to be the man who reaped the harvest.

It was a picture that would remain long enough in his memory. The flaying picks rising and falling amongst the looser debris, the grinding sc.r.a.pe of the shovel, turning again and again the heavy red gravel. The shouts of hoa.r.s.e voices hailing each other in jubilant tones, voices thrilling with a note of hope such as they had not known for weeks. He saw the hard muscles of sunburnt arms standing out rope-like with the terrific labor they were engaged in. And in the background of it all he saw the grim spectacle of the blackened hill, frowning down like some evil monster, watching the vermin life eating into a sore it was powerless to protect.

It was wonderful, the transformation of these things. And yet it was far less strange than his witness of the spectacle of the beaten, hopeless men he had helped so long up in the camp. He was glad.

He was glad, too, that even Buck had been caught in the fever of the moment. He saw him with the rest, with borrowed tools, working with a vigor and enthusiasm quite unsurpa.s.sed by the most ardent of the professional gold-seekers. Yet he knew how little the man was tainted with the disease of these others. He had no understanding whatever of the meaning of wealth. And the greed of gold had left him quite untouched. His was the virile, healthy enthusiasm for a quest for something which was hidden there in the wonderful auriferous soil, a quest that the heart of any live man is ever powerless to resist.

With him it would last till sundown, maybe, and after that the fever would pa.s.s from his veins. Then the claims of the life that had always been his would rea.s.sert themselves.

After a while the Padre's thoughts drifted to the pressing considerations of the future. Several times he had heard the shouts of men who had turned a nugget up in the gravel. And at each such cry he had seen the rush of others, and the feverish manner in which they took possession of the spot where the lucky individual was working and hustled him out. It was in these rushes that he saw the danger lying ahead.

Hitherto these men had been accustomed to the slow process of was.h.i.+ng "pay-dirt." It was not only slow, but unemotional. It had not the power to stir the senses to a pitch of excitement like this veritable Tom Tiddler's ground, pitchforked into their very laps by one of Nature's freakish impulses.

With this thought came something very like regret at the apparent richness of the find. Something must be done, and done without delay, to regulate the situation. The place must be arranged in claims, and definite regulations must be laid down and enforced by a council of the majority. He felt instinctively that this would be the only way to avert a state of anarchy too appalling to contemplate. It would be an easy matter now, but a hopeless task to attempt later on. Yes, a big trouble lay in those rushes, which seemed harmless enough at present.

And he knew that his must be the work of straightening out the threatened tangle.

But for the moment the fever must be allowed to run riot. It must work itself out with the physical effort of hard muscles. In the calm of rest after labor counsel might be offered and listened to. But not until then.

So that memorable day wore on to its close. The luck had come not in the petty find such as these men had looked for, but in proportions of prodigal generosity such as Nature sometimes loves to bestow upon those whom she has. .h.i.t the hardest. She had called to her aid those strange powers of which she is mistress and hurled them headlong to do her bidding. She had bestowed her august consent, and lo, the earth was opened, and its wealth poured out at the very feet of those who had so long and so vainly sought it.

CHAPTER X

SOLVING THE RIDDLE

The new owner of the Padre's farm had quite recovered from the effects of her disastrous journey. Youth and a sound const.i.tution, and the overwhelming ministrations of Mrs. Ransford had done all that was needed to restore her.

She was sitting in an old, much-repaired rocking-chair, in what was obviously the farm's "best" bedroom. Her trunks, faithfully recovered from the wreck of the cart by the only too willing Buck, stood open on the floor amidst a chaotic setting of their contents, while the old farm-wife herself stood over them, much in the att.i.tude of a faithful and determined watch-dog.

The girl looked on indifferent to the confusion and to the damage being perpetrated before her very eyes. She was lost in thoughts of her own which had nothing to do with such fripperies as lawns, and silks, and _suedes_, or any other such feminine excitements. She was struggling with recollection, and endeavoring to conjure it. There was a blank in her life, a blank of some hours, which, try as she would, she could not fill in. It was a blank, as far as she could make out, which terminated in her arrival at the farm _borne in the arms of some strange man_.

Well might such a thought shut out considerations like the almost certain destruction of a mere wardrobe at the hands of her ignorant but well-meaning helper. It would have been exciting, too, but for her memory of the latter stages of her journey. They were still painful.

There was still uncertainty as to what had happened to the teamster and the horses.

At last, however, she abandoned further attempt to solve the riddle unaided, and decided to question her housekeeper.

"Was it the same man who brought those trunks--I mean the same man who--brought me here?" she demanded sharply.

"It surely was," replied Mrs. Ransford, desisting for a moment from her efforts to bestow a pile of dainty shoes into a night-dress case of elaborate drawn thread work. "An' a nice mess he's got things in.

Jest look at 'em all tossed about, same as you might toss slap-jacks, as the sayin' is. It's a mercy of heaven, an' no thanks to him, you've got a rag fit to wear. It surely ain't fer me to say it, but it's real lucky I'm here to put things right for you. Drat them shoes! I don't guess I'll ever git 'em all into this bag, miss--ma'm--I mean miss, mum."

Something of the tragedy of her wardrobe became evident to the girl and she went to the rescue.

"I'm sorry, but they don't go in there," she said, feeling that an apology was due for her interference in such well-intended efforts.

"That's--you see, that's my sleeping-suit case," she added gently.