"Says he didn"t bring her, does he? Tell him from me that he lies. Your wife let out to me by accident that he threatened to bring her. Met.e.e.t.se and he came up on the boat together. He was with her at your house when she told her story. He"s trying to save his hide. No chance."
"Elliot isn"t a liar. When he says he didn"t bring the woman, that satisfies me. I know he didn"t do it," insisted Paget stiffly.
"Different here. Who else had any interest in bringing her except him?
n.o.body. Use your brains, Peter. He takes the first boat down the river.
He comes back on the next one. She comes back, too. They couldn"t figure I"d be at your house when they showed up there to tell the story. That"s where Mr. Elliot slipped up."
Peter was of different stuff from Selfridge. He had something to say. So he said it.
"Times have changed, Mac. You can"t shoot down this young fellow without making all kinds of trouble. First thing we"d lose the claims. The Administration would drop you like a hot potato if you did a thing like that. Sheba would never speak to you again. Your friends would know in their hearts it was murder. You can"t do it."
Macdonald"s jaw clamped. "Then let him get out. That"s my last word to him."
CHAPTER XVI
AMBUSHED
Colby Macdonald, in miner"s boots and corduroy working suit, stood beside his horse with one arm thrown carelessly across its rump. He was about to start for Seven-Mile Creek Camp with twenty-seven hundred dollars in the saddlebags to pay the men there.
Diane was talking with him. "She"s young and fine and spirited. Of course it was a great shock to her. She had been idealizing you. But I think she is beginning to understand things better. At any rate, she does not hate you any more. Give the girl time."
"You think she will--be reasonable?"
Mrs. Paget finished the pattern she was punching in the soft ground beside the board walk with the ferrule of her umbrella. Her eyes met his frankly.
"I don"t know. But I"m sure of one thing. She"ll not be reasonable, as you call it, unless you are reasonable."
"You mean--Elliot?"
"Yes. She likes him very much. Do you know that when the Indian woman came he urged Sheba not to listen to her story?"
"Sounds likely--after he had spent his good money bringing her here,"
sneered the mine-owner.
"He didn"t. Gordon is a splendid fellow. He wouldn"t lie," answered Diane hotly. "And one thing is sure--if you lay a finger on him for this, it will be fatal with Sheba. She will be through with you."
Macdonald had thought of this before. It had been coming to him from several different angles that he could not afford to gratify his desire to wipe this meddlesome young official from his path. He made a slow, sulky promise.
"All right. I"ll let him alone. Peter can tell him."
Swinging to the saddle, he spurred his horse and cantered away. With a little smile Diane watched his flat, muscular back and the arrogant set of his strong shoulders. There was not his match in the territory, she thought, but sometimes a clever woman could manage him.
His mind was full of the problem that had come into his life. He rode abstractedly, so that he was at the lower ford of the creek almost before he knew it. A bilberry thicket straggled down to the opposite bank of the stream on both sides of the road.
The horse splashed through the ford and took the little rise beyond with a rush. Just before reaching the brow of the hill, the animal stumbled and fell. As its rider went headlong, he caught a glimpse of a cord drawn taut across the path.
Macdonald, shaken by the fall, began slowly to rise. From the shadows of the bilberry bushes two stooping figures rushed at him. He threw up an arm to ward off the club aimed at his head, but succeeded only in breaking the force of the blow. As he staggered back, stunned, a bullet glanced along his forehead and ridged a furrow through the thick hair.
A second stroke of the club jarred him to the heels.
Though his mind was not clear, his body answered automatically the instinct that told him to close with his a.s.sailants. He lurched forward and gripped one, wrestling with him for the revolver. Vaguely he knew by the sharp, jagged shoots of pain that the second man was beating his head with a club. The warm blood dripped through his hair and blinded his eyes. Dazed and shaken, he yet managed to get the revolver from the man who had it. But it was his last effort. He was too far gone to use it. A blow on the forehead brought him unconscious to the ground bleeding from a dozen wounds.
On his way back from Seven-Mile Creek Camp Gordon Elliot rode down to the ford. In the dusk he was almost upon them before the robbers heard him. For a moment the two men stood gazing at him and he at the tragedy before him. One of the men moved toward his horse.
"Stop there!" ordered Gordon sharply, and he reached for his revolver.
The man--it was the miner Northrup--jumped for Elliot and the field agent fired. Another moment, and he was being dragged from the saddle.
What happened next was never clear to him. He knew that both of the bandits closed in on him and that he was fighting desperately against odds. The revolver had been knocked from his hand and he fought with bare fists just as they did. Twice he emptied his lungs in a cry for help.
They quartered over the ground, for Gordon would not let either of them get behind him. They were larger than he, heavy, muscle-bound giants of great strength, but he was far more active on his feet. He jabbed and sidestepped and retreated. More than once their heavy blows crashed home on his face. His eyes dared not wander from them for an instant, but he was working toward a definite plan. As he moved, his feet were searching for the automatic he had dropped.
One of his feet, dragging over the ground, came into contact with the steel. With a swift side kick Gordon flung the weapon a dozen feet to the left. Presently, watching his chance, he made a dive for it.
Trelawney, followed by Northrup, turned and ran. One of them caught Macdonald"s horse by the bridle. He swung to the saddle and the other man clambered on behind. There was a clatter of hoofs and they were gone.
Elliot stooped over the battered body that lay huddled at the edge of the water. The man was either dead or unconscious, he was not sure which. So badly had the face been beaten and hammered that it was not until he had washed the blood from the wounds that Gordon recognized Macdonald.
Opening the coat of the insensible man, Gordon put his hand against the heart. He could not be sure whether he felt it beating or whether the throbbing came from the pulses in his finger tips. As well as he could he bound up the wounds with handkerchiefs and stanched the bleeding.
With ice-cold water from the stream he drenched the bruised face. A faint sigh quivered through the slack, inert body.
Gordon hoisted Macdonald across the saddle and led the horse through the ford. He walked beside the animal to town, and never had two miles seemed to him so far. With one hand he steadied the helpless body that lay like a sack of flour balanced in the trough of the saddle.
Kusiak at last lay below him, and when he descended the hill to the suburbs almost the first house was the one where the Pagets lived.
Elliot threw the body across his shoulder and walked up the walk to the porch. He kicked upon the door with his foot. Sheba answered the knock, and at sight of what he carried the color faded from her face.
"Macdonald has been hurt--badly," he explained quickly.
"This way," the girl cried, and led him to her own room, hurrying in advance to throw back the bedclothes.
"Get Diane--and a doctor," ordered Gordon after he had laid the unconscious man on the white sheet.
While he and Diane undressed the mine-owner Sheba got a doctor on the telephone. The wounded man opened his eyes after a long time, but there was in them the glaze of delirium. He recognized none of them. He did not know that he was in the house of Peter Paget, that Diane and Sheba and his rival were fighting with the help of the doctor to push back the death that was crowding close upon him. All night he raved, and his delirious talk went back to the wild scenes of his earlier life.
Sometimes he swore savagely; again he made quiet deadly threats; but always his talk was crisp and clean and vigorous. Nothing foul or slimy came to the surface in those hours of unconscious babbling.
The doctor had shaken his head when he first saw the wounds. He would make no promises.
"He"s a mighty sick man. The cuts are deep, and the hammering must have jarred his brain terribly. If it was anybody but Macdonald, I wouldn"t give him a chance," he told Diane when he left in the morning to get breakfast. "But Macdonald has tremendous vitality. Of course if he lives it will be because Mr. Elliot brought him in so soon."
Gordon walked with the doctor as far as the hotel. A brown, thin, leathery man undraped himself from a chair in the lobby when Elliot opened the door. He was officially known as the chief of police of Kusiak. Incidentally he const.i.tuted the whole police force. Generally he was referred to as Gopher Jones on account of his habit of spasmodic prospecting.
"I got to put you under arrest, Mr. Elliot," he explained.
The loafers in the hotel drew closer.