"If you please, sir, I--"
"You talk back to me? Cut it and light it!"
The boy cut and lit.
"Ger-reat Scott! a one-minute fuse! I wish you were in--"
In his rage he s.n.a.t.c.hed the ladder out of the shaft and ran. The boy was aghast.
"Oh, my G.o.d! Help. Help! Oh, save me!" he implored. "Oh, what can I do!
What can I do!"
He backed against the wall as tightly as he could; the sputtering fuse frightened the voice out of him; his breath stood still; he stood gazing and impotent; in two seconds, three seconds, four he would be flying toward the sky torn to fragments. Then he had an inspiration. He sprang at the fuse, severed the inch of it that was left above ground, and was saved.
He sank down limp and half lifeless with fright, his strength all gone; but he muttered with a deep joy,
"He has learnt me! I knew there was a way, if I would wait."
After a matter of five minutes Buckner stole to the shaft, looking worried and uneasy, and peered down into it. He took in the situation; he saw what had happened. He lowered the ladder, and the boy dragged himself weakly up it. He was very white. His appearance added something to Buckner"s uncomfortable state, and he said, with a show of regret and sympathy which sat upon him awkwardly from lack of practice:
"It was an accident, you know. Don"t say anything about it to anybody; I was excited, and didn"t notice what I was doing. You"re not looking well; you"ve worked enough for to-day; go down to my cabin and eat what you want, and rest. It"s just an accident, you know, on account of my being excited."
"It scared me," said the lad, as he started away; "but I learnt something, so I don"t mind it."
"d.a.m.ned easy to please!" muttered Buckner, following him with his eye.
"I wonder if he"ll tell? Mightn"t he?... I wish it had killed him."
The boy took no advantage of his holiday in the matter of resting; he employed it in work, eager and feverish and happy work. A thick growth of chaparral extended down the mountainside clear to Flint"s cabin; the most of Fetlock"s labor was done in the dark intricacies of that stubborn growth; the rest of it was done in his own shanty. At last all was complete, and he said,
"If he"s got any suspicions that I"m going to tell on him, he won"t keep them long, to-morrow. He will see that I am the same milksop as I always was--all day and the next. And the day after to-morrow night there "ll be an end of him; n.o.body will ever guess who finished him up nor how it was done. He dropped me the idea his own self, and that"s odd."
V
The next day came and went.
It is now almost midnight, and in five minutes the new morning will begin. The scene is in the tavern billiard-room. Rough men in rough clothing, slouch-hats, breeches stuffed into boot-tops, some with vests, none with coats, are grouped about the boiler-iron stove, which has ruddy cheeks and is distributing a grateful warmth; the billiard-b.a.l.l.s are clacking; there is no other sound--that is, within; the wind is fitfully moaning without. The men look bored; also expectant. A hulking broad-shouldered miner, of middle age, with grizzled whiskers, and an unfriendly eye set in an unsociable face, rises, slips a coil of fuse upon his arm, gathers up some other personal properties, and departs without word or greeting to anybody. It is Flint Buckner. As the door closes behind him a buzz of talk breaks out.
"The regularest man that ever was," said Jake Parker, the blacksmith; "you can tell when it"s twelve just by him leaving, without looking at your Waterbury."
"And it"s the only virtue he"s got, as fur as I know," said Peter Hawes, miner.
"He"s just a blight on this society," said Wells-Fargo"s man, Ferguson.
"If I was running this shop I"d make him say something, some time or other, or vamos the ranch." This with a suggestive glance at the barkeeper, who did not choose to see it, since the man under discussion was a good customer, and went home pretty well set up, every night, with refreshments furnished from the bar.
"Say," said Ham Sandwich, miner, "does any of you boys ever recollect of him asking you to take a drink?"
"Him? Flint Buckner? Oh, Laura!"
This sarcastic rejoinder came in a spontaneous general outburst in one form of words or another from the crowd. After a brief silence, Pat Riley, miner, said,
"He"s the 15-puzzle, that cuss. And his boy"s another one. I can"t make them out."
"Nor anybody else," said Ham Sandwich; "and if they are 15-puzzles how are you going to rank up that other one? When it comes to A 1 right-down solid mysteriousness, he lays over both of them. Easy--don"t he?"
"You bet!"
Everybody said it. Every man but one. He was the new-comer--Peterson. He ordered the drinks all round, and asked who No. 3 might be. All answered at once, "Archy Stillman!"
"Is he a mystery?" asked Peterson.
"Is he a mystery? Is Archy Stillman a mystery?" said Wells-Fargo"s man, Ferguson. "Why, the fourth dimension"s foolishness to him."
For Ferguson was learned.
Peterson wanted to hear all about him; everybody wanted to tell him; everybody began. But Billy Stevens, the barkeeper, called the house to order, and said one at a time was best. He distributed the drinks, and appointed Ferguson to lead. Ferguson said,
"Well, he"s a boy. And that is just about all we know about him. You can pump him till you are tired; it ain"t any use; you won"t get anything.
At least about his intentions, or line of business, or where he"s from, and such things as that. And as for getting at the nature and get-up of his main big chief mystery, why, he"ll just change the subject, that"s all. You can guess till you"re black in the face--it"s your privilege--but suppose you do, where do you arrive at? Nowhere, as near as I can make out."
"What is his big chief one?"
"Sight, maybe. Hearing, maybe. Instinct, maybe. Magic, maybe. Take your choice--grownups, twenty-five; children and servants, half price. Now I"ll tell you what he can do. You can start here, and just disappear; you can go and hide wherever you want to, I don"t care where it is, nor how far--and he"ll go straight and put his finger on you."
"You don"t mean it!"
"I just do, though. Weather"s nothing to him--elemental conditions is nothing to him--he don"t even take notice of them."
"Oh, come! Dark? Rain? Snow? Hey?"
"It"s all the same to him. He don"t give a d.a.m.n."
"Oh, say--including fog, per"aps?"
"Fog! he"s got an eye "t can plunk through it like a bullet."
"Now, boys, honor bright, what"s he giving me?"
"It"s a fact!" they all shouted. "Go on, Wells-Fargo."
"Well, sir, you can leave him here, chatting with the boys, and you can slip out and go to any cabin in this camp and open a book--yes, sir, a dozen of them--and take the page in your memory, and he"ll start out and go straight to that cabin and open every one of them books at the right page, and call it off, and never make a mistake."
"He must be the devil!"
"More than one has thought it. Now I"ll tell you a perfectly wonderful thing that he done. The other night he--"
There was a sudden great murmur of sounds outside, the door flew open, and an excited crowd burst in, with the camp"s one white woman in the lead and crying,