CHAPTER XVII
"G.o.d SAVE YOU KINDLY"
A nurse from the hospital had relieved Diane and Sheba at daybreak.
They slept until the middle of the afternoon, then under orders from the doctor walked out to take the air. They were to divide the night watch between them and he said that he wanted them fit for service. The fever of the patient was subsiding. He slept a good deal, and in the intervals between had been once or twice quite rational.
The thoughts of the cousins drew their steps toward the jail. Sheba looked at Diane.
"Will they let us see him, do you think?"
"Perhaps. We can try."
Gopher Jones was not proof against the brisk confidence with which Mrs.
Paget demanded admittance. He stroked his unshaven chin while he chewed his quid, then reluctantly got his keys.
The prisoner was sitting on the bed. His heart jumped with gladness when he looked up.
Diane shook hands cheerfully. "How is the criminal?"
"Better for hearing your kind voice," he answered.
His eyes strayed to the ebon-haired girl in the background. They met a troubled smile, grave and sweet.
"Awfully good of you to come to see me," he told Sheba gratefully. "How is Macdonald?"
"Better, we hope. He knew Diane this afternoon."
Mrs. Paget did most of the talking, but Gordon contributed his share.
Sheba did not say much, but it seemed to the young man that there was a new tenderness in her manner, the expression of a gentle kindness that went out to him because he needed it. The walk had whipped the color into her cheeks and she bloomed in that squalid cell like a desert rose. There was in the fluent grace of the slender, young body a nave, virginal sweetness that took him by the throat. He knew that she believed in him and the trouble rolled from his heart like a cold, heavy wave.
"We haven"t talked to Mr. Macdonald yet about the attack on him,"
Diane explained. "But he must have recognized the men. There are many footprints at the ford, showing how they moved over the ground as they fought. So he could not have been unconscious from the first blow."
"Unless they were masked he must have known them. It was light enough,"
agreed Elliot.
"Peter is still trying to get the officers to accept bail, but I don"t think he will succeed. There is a good deal of feeling in town against you."
"Because I am supposed to be an enemy to an open Alaska, I judge."
"Mainly that. Wally Selfridge has been talking a good deal. He takes it for granted that you are guilty. We"ll have to wait in patience till Mr.
Macdonald speaks and clears you. The doctor won"t let us mention the subject to him until he comes to it of his own free will."
Gopher stuck his head in at the door. "You"ll have to go, ladies. Time"s up."
When Sheba bade the prisoner good-bye it was with a phrase of the old Irish vernacular. "G.o.d save you kindly."
He knew the peasant"s answer to the wish and gave it. "And you too."
The girl left the prison with a mist in her eyes. Her cousin looked at her with a queer, ironic little smile of affection. To be in trouble was a sure pa.s.sport to the sympathy of Sheba. Now both her lovers were in a sad way. Diane wondered which of them would gain most from this new twist of fate.
Sheba turned to Mrs. Paget with an impulsive little burst of feminine ferocity. "Why do they put him in prison when they must know he didn"t do it--that he couldn"t do such a thing?"
"They don"t all know as well as you do how n.o.ble he is, my dear,"
answered Diane dryly.
"But it"s just absurd to think that he would plan the murder of a man he has broken bread with for a few hundred dollars."
Diane flashed another odd little glance in the direction of her cousin.
Probably Sheba was the one woman in Kusiak who did not know that Macdonald had served an ultimatum on Elliot to get out or fight and that their rivalry over her favor was at the bottom of the difficulty between them.
"It will work out all right," promised the older cousin.
Returning from their walk, they met Wally Selfridge coming out of the Paget house.
"Did you see Mr. Macdonald?" asked Diane.
"Yes. He"s quite rational now." There was a jaunty little strut of triumph in Wally"s c.o.c.k-sure manner.
Mrs. Paget knew he had made himself very busy securing evidence against Gordon. He was probably trying to curry favor with his chief. The little man always had been jealous of Peter. Perhaps he was attempting to rap him over the shoulder of Elliot because the Government official was a friend of Paget. Just now his insolent voice suggested a special cause for exultation.
The reason Wally was so pleased with himself was that he had dropped a hint into the ear of the wounded man not to clear Elliot of complicity in the attack upon him. The news that the special investigator had been arrested for robbery and attempted murder, flashed all over the United States, would go far to neutralize any report he might make against the validity of the Macdonald claims. If to this could be added later reports of an indictment, a trial, and possibly a conviction, it would not matter two straws what Elliot said in his official statement to the Land Office.
Since the attack upon his chief, Selfridge had moved on the presumption that Elliot had been in a conspiracy to get rid of him. He accepted the guilt of the field agent because this theory jumped with the interest of Wally and his friends. As a politician he intended to play this new development for all it was worth.
He had been shocked at the sight of Macdonald. The terrible beating and the loss of blood had sapped all the splendid, vital strength of the Scotchman. His battered head was swathed in bandages, but the white face was bruised and disfigured. The wounded man was weak as a kitten; only the steady eyes told that he was still strong and unconquered.
"I want to talk business for a minute, Miss Sedgwick. Will you please step out?" said Macdonald to his nurse.
She hesitated. "The doctor says--"
"Do as I say, please."
The nurse left them alone. Wally told the story of the evidence against Elliot in four sentences. His chief caught the point at once.
After Selfridge had gone, the wounded man lay silent thinking out his programme. Not for a moment did he doubt that he was going to live, and his brain was already busy planning for the future. By some freak of luck the cards had been stacked by destiny in his favor. He knew now that in the violence of his anger against Elliot he had made a mistake.
To have killed his rival would have been fatal to the Kamatlah coal claims, would have alienated his best friends, and would have prejudiced hopelessly his chances with Sheba. Fate had been kind to him. He had been in the wrong and it had put him in the right. By the same cut of the cards young Elliot had been thrust down from an impregnable position to one in which he was a discredited suspect. With all this evidence to show that he had conspired against Macdonald, his report to the Department would be labor lost.
Diane came into the sick-room stripping her gloves after the walk.
Macdonald smiled feebly at her and fired the first shot of his campaign to defeat the enemy.
"Has Elliot been captured yet?" he asked weakly.
The keen eyes of his hostess fastened upon him. "Captured! What do you mean? It was Gordon Elliot that brought you in and saved your life."