Stacy instantly remembered Barker"s absurd belief in it and his reasons.
He smiled and said carelessly, "Are you quite sure it"s a swindle?"
There was a dead silence at the coolness of the man who had been most outspoken against it.
"But," said a voice hesitatingly, "you know it goes nowhere and to no purpose."
"But that does not prevent it, now that it"s a fact, from going anywhere and to some purpose," said Stacy, turning away. He pa.s.sed into the reading-room quietly, but in an instant turned and quickly descended by another staircase into the hall, hurriedly put on his overcoat, and slipping out was a moment later re-entering the hotel. Here he hastily summoned Barker, who came down, flushed and excited. Laying his hand on Barker"s arm in his old dominant way, he said:--
"Don"t delay a single hour, but get a written agreement for that Ditch property."
Barker smiled. "But I have. Got it this afternoon."
"Then you know?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Stacy in surprise.
"I only know," said Barker, coloring, "that you said I could back out of it if it wasn"t signed, and that"s what Kitty said, too. And I thought it looked awfully mean for me to hold a man to that kind of a bargain.
And so--you won"t be mad, old fellow, will you?--I thought I"d put it beyond any question of my own good faith by having it in black and white." He stopped, laughing and blushing, but still earnest and sincere. "You don"t think me a fool, do you?" he said pathetically.
Stacy smiled grimly. "I think, Barker boy, that if you go to the Branch you"ll have no difficulty in paying for the Ditch property. Good-night."
In a few moments he was back at the club again before any one knew he had even left the building. As he again re-entered the smoking-room he found the members still in eager discussion about the new railroad. One was saying, "If they could get an extension, and carry the road through Heavy Tree Hill to Boomville they"d be all right."
"I quite agree with you," said Stacy.
CHAPTER III.
The swaying, creaking, Boomville coach had at last reached the level ridge, and sank forward upon its springs with a sigh of relief and the slow precipitation of the red dust which had hung in clouds around it. The whole coach, inside and out, was covered with this impalpable powder; it had poured into the windows that gaped widely in the insufferable heat; it lay thick upon the novel read by the pa.s.senger who had for the third or fourth time during the ascent made a gutter of the half-opened book and blown the dust away in a single puff, like the smoke from a pistol. It lay in folds and creases over the yellow silk duster of the handsome woman on the back seat, and when she endeavored to shake it off enveloped her in a reddish nimbus. It grimed the handkerchiefs of others, and left sanguinary streaks on their mopped foreheads. But as the coach had slowly climbed the summit the sun was also sinking behind the Black Spur Range, and with its ultimate disappearance a delicious coolness spread itself like a wave across the ridge. The pa.s.sengers drew a long breath, the reader closed his book, the lady lifted the edge of her veil and delicately wiped her forehead, over which a few damp tendrils of hair were clinging. Even a distinguished-looking man who had sat as impenetrable and remote as a statue in one of the front seats moved and turned his abstracted face to the window. His deeply tanned cheek and clearly cut features harmonized with the red dust that lay in the curves of his brown linen dust-cloak, and completed his resemblance to a bronze figure. Yet it was Demorest, changed only in coloring. Now, as five years ago, his abstraction had a certain quality which the most familiar stranger shrank from disturbing.
But in the general relaxation of relief the novel-reader addressed him.
"Well, we ain"t far from Boomville now, and it"s all down-grade the rest of the way. I reckon you"ll be as glad to get a "wash up" and a "shake"
as the rest of us."
"I am afraid I won"t have so early an opportunity," said Demorest, with a faint, grave smile, "for I get off at the cross-road to Heavy Tree Hill."
"Heavy Tree Hill!" repeated the other in surprise. "You ain"t goin" to Heavy Tree Hill? Why, you might have gone there direct by railroad, and have been there four hours ago. You know there"s a branch from the Divide Railroad goes there straight to the hotel at Hymettus."
"Where?" said Demorest, with a puzzled smile.
"Hymettus. That"s the fancy name they"ve given to the watering-place on the slope. But I reckon you"re a stranger here?"
"For five years," said Demorest. "I fancy I"ve heard of the railroad, although I prefer to go to Heavy Tree this way. But I never heard of a watering-place there before."
"Why, it"s the biggest boom of the year. Folks that are tired of the fogs of "Frisco and the heat of Sacramento all go there. It"s four thousand feet up, with a hotel like Saratoga, dancing, and a band plays every night. And it all sprang out of the Divide Railroad and a crank named George Barker, who bought up some old Ditch property and ran a branch line along its levels, and made a junction with the Divide. You can come all the way from "Frisco or Sacramento by rail. It"s a mighty big thing!"
"Yet," said Demorest, with some animation, "you call the man who originated this success a crank. I should say he was a genius."
The other pa.s.senger shook his head. "All sheer n.i.g.g.e.r luck. He bought the Ditch plant afore there was a ghost of a chance for the Divide Railroad, just out o" pure d----d foolishness. He expected so little from it that he hadn"t even got the agreement done in writin", and hadn"t paid for it, when the Divide Railroad pa.s.sed the legislature, as it never oughter done! For, you see, the blamedest cur"ous thing about the whole affair was that this "straw" road of a Divide, all pure wildcat, was only gotten up to frighten the Pacific Railroad sharps into buying it up. And the road that n.o.body ever calculated would ever have a rail of it laid was pushed on as soon as folks knew that the Ditch plant had been bought up, for they thought there was a big thing behind it.
Even the hotel was, at first, simply a kind of genteel alms-house that this yer Barker had built for broken-down miners!"
"Nevertheless," continued Demorest, smiling, "you admit that it is a great success?"
"Yes," said the other, a little irritated by some complacency in Demorest"s smile, "but the success isn"t HIS"N. Fools has ideas, and wise men profit by them, for that hotel now has Jim Stacy"s bank behind it, and is even a kind of country branch of the Brook House in "Frisco.
Barker"s out of it, I reckon. Anyhow, HE couldn"t run a hotel, for all that his wife--she that"s one of the big "Frisco swells now--used to help serve in her father"s. No, sir, it"s just a fool"s luck, gettin"
the first taste and leavin" the rest to others."
"I"m not sure that it"s the worst kind of luck," returned Demorest, with persistent gravity; "and I suppose he"s satisfied with it." But so heterodox an opinion only irritated his antagonist the more, especially as he noticed that the handsome woman in the back seat appeared to be interested in the conversation, and even sympathetic with Demorest. The man was in the main a good-natured fellow and loyal to his friends; but this did not preclude any virulent criticism of others, and for a moment he hated this bronze-faced stranger, and even saw blemishes in the handsome woman"s beauty. "That may be YOUR idea of an Eastern man,"
he said bluntly, "but I kin tell ye that Californy ain"t run on those lines. No, sir." Nevertheless, his curiosity got the better of his ill humor, and as the coach at last pulled up at the cross-road for Demorest to descend he smiled affably at his departing companion.
"You allowed just now that you"d bin five years away. Whar mout ye have bin?"
"In Europe," said Demorest pleasantly.
"I reckoned ez much," returned his interrogator, smiling significantly at the other pa.s.sengers. "But in what place?"
"Oh, many," said Demorest, smiling also.
"But what place war ye last livin" at?"
"Well," said Demorest, descending the steps, but lingering for a moment with his hand on the door of the coach, "oddly enough, now you remind me of it--at Hymettus!"
He closed the door, and the coach rolled on. The pa.s.senger reddened, glanced indignantly after the departing figure of Demorest and suspiciously at the others. The lady was looking from the window with a faint smile on her face.
"He might hev given me a civil answer," muttered the pa.s.senger, and resumed his novel.
When the coach drew up before Carter"s Hotel the lady got down, and the curiosity of her susceptible companions was gratified to the extent of learning from the register that her name was Horncastle.
She was shown to a private sitting-room, which chanced to be the one which had belonged to Mrs. Barker in the days of her maidenhood, and was the sacred, impenetrable bower to which she retired when her daily duties of waiting upon her father"s guests were over. But the breath of custom had pa.s.sed through it since then, and but little remained of its former maiden glories, except a few schoolgirl crayon drawings on the wall and an unrecognizable portrait of herself in oil, done by a wandering artist and still preserved as a receipt for his unpaid bill. Of these facts Mrs. Horncastle knew nothing; she was evidently preoccupied, and after she had removed her outer duster and entered the room, she glanced at the clock on the mantel-shelf and threw herself with an air of resigned abstraction in an armchair in the corner. Her traveling-dress, although unostentatious, was tasteful and well-fitting; a slight pallor from her fatiguing journey, and, perhaps, from some absorbing thought, made her beauty still more striking. She gave even an air of elegance to the faded, worn adornments of the room, which it is to be feared it never possessed in Miss Kitty"s occupancy. Again she glanced at the clock. There was a tap at the door.
"Come in."
The door opened to a Chinese servant bearing a piece of torn paper with a name written on it in lieu of a card.
Mrs. Horncastle took it, glanced at the name, and handed the paper back.
"There must be some mistake," she said, "it do not know Mr. Steptoe."
"No, but you know ME all the same," said a voice from the doorway as a man entered, coolly took the Chinese servant by the elbows and thrust him into the pa.s.sage, closing the door upon him. "Steptoe and Horncastle are the same man, only I prefer to call myself Steptoe HERE. And I see YOU"RE down on the register as "Horncastle." Well, it"s plucky of you, and it"s not a bad name to keep; you might be thankful that I have always left it to you. And if I call myself Steptoe here it"s a good blind against any of your swell friends knowing you met your HUSBAND here."
In the half-scornful, half-resigned look she had given him when he entered there was no doubt that she recognized him as the man she had come to see. He had changed little in the five years that had elapsed since he entered the three partners" cabin at Heavy Tree Hill. His short hair and beard still clung to his head like curled moss or the crisp flocculence of Astrakhan. He was dressed more pretentiously, but still gave the same idea of vulgar strength. She listened to him without emotion, but said, with even a deepening of scorn in her manner:--
"What new shame is this?"
"Nothing NEW," he replied. "Only five years ago I was livin" over on the Bar at Heavy Tree Hill under the name of Steptoe, and folks here might recognize me. I was here when your particular friend, Jim Stacy, who only knew me as Steptoe, and doesn"t know me as Horncastle, your HUSBAND,--for all he"s bound up my property for you,--made his big strike with his two partners. I was in his cabin that very night, and drank his whiskey. Oh, I"m all right there! I left everything all right behind me--only it"s just as well he doesn"t know I"m Horncastle. And as the boy happened to be there with me"--He stopped, and looked at her significantly.
The expression of her face changed. Eagerness, anxiety, and even fear came into it in turn, but always mingling with some scorn that dominated her. "The boy!" she said in a voice that had changed too; "well, what about him? You promised to tell me all,--all!"