"Robbed?"
"Golly!"
"Maudie robbed?" They spoke all together. Everybody had jumped up.
"While we was on that stampede yesterday, somebody found my--all my----" She choked, and her eyes filled. "Boys! my nuggets, my dust, my dollars--they"re gone!"
"Where did you have "em?"
"In a little place under--in a hole." Her face twitched, and she put her hand up to hide it.
"Mean shame."
"Dirt mean."
"We"ll find him, Maudie."
"An" when we do, we"ll hang him on the cottonwood."
"Did anybody know where you kept your----"
"I didn"t think so, unless it was----No!" she screamed hysterically, and then fell into weak crying. "Can"t think who could have been such a skunk."
"But who do you suspect?" persisted the Judge.
"How do I know?" she retorted angrily. "I suspect everybody till--till I know." She clenched her hands.
That a thief should be "operating" in Minook on somebody who wasn"t dead yet, was a matter that came home to the business and the bosoms of all the men in the camp. In the midst of the babel of speculation and excitement, Maudie, still crying and talking incoherently about skunks, opened the door. The men crowded after her. n.o.body suggested it, but the entire Miners" Meeting with one accord adjourned to the scene of the crime. Only a portion could be accommodated under Maudie"s roof, but the rest crowded in front of her door or went and examined the window. Maudie"s log-cabin was a cheerful place, its one room, neatly kept, lined throughout with red and white drill, hung with marten and fox, carpeted with wolf and caribou. The single sign of disorder was that the bed was pulled out a little from its place in the angle of the wall above the patent condenser stove. Behind the oil-tank, where the patent condensation of oil into gas went on, tiers of shelves, enamelled pots and pans ranged below, dishes and gla.s.ses above. On the very top, like a frieze, gaily labelled ranks of "tinned goods." On the table under the window a pair of gold scales. A fire burned in the stove. The long-lingering sunlight poured through the "turkey-red" that she had tacked up for a half-curtain, and over this, one saw the slouch-hats and fur caps of the outside crowd.
Clutching Judge Corey by the arm, Maudie pulled him after her into the narrow s.p.a.ce behind the head-board and the wall.
"It was here--see?" She stooped down.
Some of the men pulled the bed farther out, so that they, too, could pa.s.s round and see.
"This piece o" board goes down so slick you"d never know it lifted out." She fitted it in with shaking hands, and then with her nails and a hairpin got it out. "And way in, underneath, I had this box. I always set it on a flat stone." She spoke as if this oversight were the thief"s chief crime. "See? Like that."
She fitted the cigar-box into unseen depths of s.p.a.ce and then brought it out again, wet and muddy. The ground was full of springs hereabouts, and the thaw had loosed them.
"Boys!" She stood up and held out the box. "Boys! it was full."
Eloquently she turned it upside down.
"How much do you reckon you had?" She handed the muddy box to the nearest sympathiser, sat down on the fur-covered bed, and wiped her eyes.
"Any idea?"
"I weighed it all over again after I got in from the Gold Nugget the night we went on the stampede."
As she sobbed out the list of her former possessions, Judge Corey took it down on the back of a dirty envelope. So many ounces of dust, so many in nuggets, so much in bills and coin, gold and silver. Each item was a stab.
"Yes, all that--all that!" she jumped up wildly, "and it"s gone! But we got to find it. What you hangin" round here for? Why, if you boys had any natchral s.p.u.n.k you"d have the thief strung up by now."
"We got to find him fust."
"You won"t find him standin" here."
They conferred afresh.
"It must have been somebody who knowed where you kept the stuff."
"N-no." Her red eyes wandered miserably, restlessly, to the window.
Over the red half-curtain French Charlie and b.u.t.ts looked in. They had not been to the meeting.
Maudie"s face darkened as she caught sight of the Canadian.
"Oh, yes, you can crow over me now," she shouted shrilly above the buzz of comment and suggestion. The Canadian led the way round to the door, and the two men crowded in.
"You just get out," Maudie cried in a fury. "Didn"t I turn you out o"
this and tell you never----"
"Hol" on," said French Charlie in a conciliatory tone. "This true "bout your losin"----"
"Yes, it"s true; but I ain"t askin" your sympathy!"
He stopped short and frowned.
"Course not, when you can get his." Under his slouch-hat he glowered at the Colonel.
Maudie broke into a volley of abuse. The very air smelt of brimstone.
When finally, through sheer exhaustion, she dropped on the side of the bed, the devil prompted French Charlie to respond in kind. She jumped up and turned suddenly round upon Corey, speaking in a voice quite different, low and hoa.r.s.e: "You asked me, Judge, if anybody knew where I kept my stuff. Charlie did."
The Canadian stopped in the middle of a lurid remark and stared stupidly. The buzz died away. The cabin was strangely still.
"Wasn"t you along with the rest up to Idaho Bar?" inquired the Judge in a friendly voice.
"Y-yes."
"Not when we all were! No!" Maudie"s tear-washed eyes were regaining a dangerous brightness. "I wanted him to come with me. He wouldn"t, and we quarrelled."
"We didn"t."
"You didn"t quarrel?" put in the Judge.
"We did," said Maudie, breathless.
"Not about that. It was because she wanted another feller to come, too." Again he shot an angry glance at the Kentuckian.