approaching footsteps than he began again to polish the pine boards which barricaded him from the small world of Bison.
Such misplaced industry won a smile from the younger man.
“Gee whizz, Mac, it makes me hot to see you work!” he cried. “Anyhow, if you’ve been whirling that duster ever since I blew in you must be tired, so you can quit now, and fix me a bimetallic.”
With a curious alacrity, the stout MacGonigal threw the duster aside, and reached for a bottle of whisky, an egg, a siphon of soda, and some powdered sugar. Colorado is full of local color, even to the naming of its drinks. In a bimetallic the whole egg is used, and variants of the concoction are a gold fizz and a silver fizz, wherein the yoke and the white figure respectively.
“Whar you been, Derry?” inquired the storekeeper, whose massive energy was now concentrated on the proper whisking of the egg.
“Haven’t you heard? Marten sent me to erect the pump on a placer mine he bought near Sacramento. It’s a mighty good proposition, too, and I’ve done pretty well to get through in four months.”
“Guess I was told about the mine; but I plumb forgot. Marten was here a bit sence, an’ he said nothin’.” Power laughed cheerfully. “He’ll be surprised to see me, and that’s a fact. He counted on the job using up the best part of the summer, right into the fall; but I made those Chicago mechanics open up the throttle, and here I am, having left everything in full swing.”
“Didn’t you write?”
“Yes, to Denver. I don’t mind telling you, Mac, that I would have been better pleased if the boss was there now. I came slick through, meaning to make Denver tomorrow. Where is he – at the mill?”
“He was thar this mornin’.”
Power was frankly puzzled by MacGonigal’s excess of reticence. He knew the man so well that he wondered what sinister revelation lay behind this twice-repeated refusal to give a direct reply to his questions. By this time the appetizing drink was ready, and he swallowed it with the gusto of one who had found the sun hot and the trail dusty, though he had ridden only three miles from the railroad station in the valley, where he was supplied with a lame horse by the blunder of a negro attendant at the hotel.
It was his way to solve a difficulty by taking the shortest possible cut; but, being quite in the dark as to the cause of his friend’s perceptible shirking of some unknown trouble, he decided to adopt what logicians term a process of exhaustion.
“All well at Dolores?” he asked, looking straight into the storekeeper’s prominent eyes.
“Bully!” came the unblinking answer.
Ah! The worry, whatsoever it might be, evidently did not concern John Darien Power in any overwhelming degree.
“Then what have you got on your chest, Mac?” he said, while voice and manner softened from an unmistakably stiffening.
MacGonigal seemed to regard this personal inquiry anent his well-being as affording a safe means of escape from a dilemma. “I’m scairt about you, Derry,” he said at once, and there was no doubting the sincerity of the words.
“About me?”
“Yep. Guess you’d better hike back to Sacramento.”
“But why?”
“Marten ’ud like it.”
“Man, I’ve written to tell him I was on the way to Denver!”
“Then git a move on, an’ go thar.”
Power smiled, though not with his wonted geniality, for he was minded to be sarcastic. “Sorry if I should offend the boss by turning up in Bison,” he drawled; “but if I can’t hold this job down I’ll monkey around till I find another. If you should happen to see Marten this afternoon, tell him I’m at the ranch, and will show up in Main Street tomorrow P.M.”
He was actually turning on his heel when MacGonigal cried:
“Say, Derry, air you heeled?”
Power swung round again, astonishment writ large on his face. “Why, no,” he said. “I’m not likely to be carrying a gold brick to Dolores. Who’s going to hold me up?”
“Bar jokin’, I wish you’d vamoose. Dang me, come back tomorrer, ef you must!”
There! MacGonigal had said it! In a land where swearing is a science this Scoto-Hibernico-American had earned an enviable repute for the mildness of his expletives, and his “dang me!” was as noteworthy in Bison as its European equivalent in the mouth of a British archbishop. Power was immensely surprised by his bulky friend’s emphatic earnestness, and cudgeled his brains to suggest a reasonable explanation. Suddenly it occurred to him a second time that Bison was singularly empty of inhabitants that day. MacGonigal’s query with regard to a weapon was also significant, and he remembered that when he left the district there was pending a grave dispute between ranchers and squatters as to the inclosing of certain grazing lands on the way to the East and its markets.
“Are the boys wire-cutting today?” he asked, in the accents of real concern; for any such expedition would probably bring about a struggle which might not end till one or both of the opposing parties ran short of ammunition.
“Nit,” growled the other. “Why argy? You jest take my say-so, Derry, an’ skate.”
“Is the boss mixed up in this?”
“Yep.”
“Well, he can take care of himself as well as anyone I know. So long, Mac. See you later.”
“Ah, come off, Derry. You’ve got to have it; but don’t say I didn’t try to help. The crowd are up at Dolores. Marten’s gittin’ married, an’ that’s all there is to it. Now I guess you’ll feel mad with me for not tellin’ you sooner.”
Power’s face blanched under its healthy tan of sun and air; but his voice was markedly clear and controlled when he spoke, which, however, he did not do until some seconds after MacGonigal had made what was, for him, quite an oration.
“Why should Marten go to Dolores to get married?” he said at last.
The storekeeper humped his heavy shoulders, and conjured the cigar across his mouth again. He did not flinch under the sudden fire which blazed in Power’s eyes; nevertheless, he remained silent.
“Mac,” went on the younger man, still uttering each word deliberately, “do you mean that Marten is marrying Nancy Willard?”
“Yep.”
“And you’ve kept me here all this time! God in Heaven, Man, find me a horse!”
“It’s too late, Derry. They was wed three hours sence.”
“Too late for what? Get me a horse!”
“There’s not a nag left in Bison. An’ it’ll do you no sort of good ter shoot Marten.”
“Mac, you’re no fool. He sent me to Sacramento to have me out of the way, and you’ve seen through it right along.”
“Maybe. But old man Willard was dead broke. This dry spell put him slick under the harrow. Nancy married Marten ter save her father.”
“That’s a lie! They made her believe it, perhaps; but Willard could have won through as others have done. That scheming devil Marten got me side-tracked on purpose. He planned it, just as David put Uriah in the forefront of the battle. But, by God, he’s not a king, any more than I’m a Hittite! Nancy Willard is not for him, nor ever will be. Give me – but I know you won’t, and it doesn’t matter, anyway, because I’d rather tear him with my hands.”
An overpowering sense of wrong and outrage had Power in its grip now, and his naturally sallow skin had assumed an ivory whiteness that was dreadful to see. So rigid was his self-control that he gave no other sign of the passion that was convulsing him. Turning toward the door, he thrust his right hand to the side of the leather belt he wore; but withdrew it instantly, for he was a law-abiding citizen, and had obeyed in letter and spirit the recently enacted