Part 18

"Can't you see? I want you to hide me here till to-night. There's a full moon, an' it would be as plain goin' as by day. They told me about you up North, and I said to myself, 'If I git to Jenny Long, an' tell her about my friend at Bindon, an' my little gal, she'll take me down to Bindon in time.' My little gal would have paid her own debt if she'd ever had the chance. She didn't--she's lying up on Mazy Mountain. But one woman'll do a lot for the sake of another woman. Say, you'll do it, won't you? If I don't git there by to-morrow noon, it's no good."

She would not answer. He was asking more than he knew. Why should she be sacrificed? Was it her duty to pay the "little gal's debt," to save the man at Bindon? To-morrow was to be the great day in her own life. The one man in all the world was coming to marry her to-morrow. After four years' waiting, after a bitter quarrel in which both had been to blame, he was coming from the mining town of Selby to marry her to-morrow.

"What will happen? Why will your friend lose his life if you don't get to Bindon?"

"By noon to-morrow, by twelve o'clock noon; that's the plot; that's what they've schemed. Three days ago, I heard. I got a man free from trouble North--he was no good, but I thought he ought to have another chance, and I got him free. He told me of what was to be done at Bindon. There'd been a strike in the mine, an' my friend had took it in hand with knuckle-dusters on. He isn't the kind to fell a tree with a jack-knife. Then three of the strikers that had been turned away--they was the ringleaders--they laid a plan that'd make the devil sick. They've put a machine in the mine, an' timed it, an' it'll go off when my friend comes out of the mine at noon to-morrow."

Her face was pale now, and her eyes had a look of pain and horror. Her man--him that she was to marry--was the head of a mine also at Selby, forty miles beyond Bindon, and the horrible plot came home to her with piercing significance.

"Without a second's warning," he urged, "to go like that, the man that was so good to my little gal, an' me with a chance to save him, an' others too, p'r'aps. You won't let it be. Say, I'm pinnin' my faith to you. I'm--"

Suddenly he swayed. She caught him, held him, and lowered him gently in a chair. Presently he opened his eyes. "It's want o' food, I suppose," he said. "If you've got a bit of bread and meat--I must keep up."

She went to a cupboard, but suddenly turned toward him again. Her ears had caught a sound outside in the underbrush. He had heard also, and he half staggered to his feet.

"Quick--in here!" she said, and, opening a door, pushed him inside. "Lie down on my bed, and I'll bring you vittles as quick as I can," she added. Then she shut the door, turned to the ironing-board, and took up the iron, as the figure of a man darkened the doorway.

"Hello, Jinny, fixin' up for to-morrow?" the man said, stepping inside, with a rifle under his arm and some pigeons in his hand.

She nodded and gave him an impatient, scrutinizing glance. His face had a fatuous kind of smile.

"Been celebrating the pigeons?" she asked, dryly, jerking her head toward the two birds, which she had seen drop from her Eden skies a short time before.

"I only had one swig of whiskey, honest Injun!" he answered. "I s'pose I might have waited till to-morrow, but I was dead-beat. I got a bear over by the Ten-mile Reach, and I was tired. I ain't so young as I used to be, and, anyhow, what's the good? What's ahead of me? You're going to git married to-morrow after all these years we bin together, and you're going down to Selby from the mountains, where I won't see you, not once in a blue moon. Only that old trollop, Mother Massy, to look after me."

"Come down to Selby and live there. You'll be welcome by Jake and me."

He stood his gun in the corner and, swinging the pigeons in his hand, said: "Me live out of the mountains! Don't you know better than that? I couldn't breathe, and I wouldn't want to breathe. I've got my shack here, I got my fur business, and they're still fond of whiskey up North!" He chuckled to himself, as he thought of the illicit still farther up the mountain behind them. "I make enough to live on, and I've put a few dollars by, though I won't have so many after to-morrow, after I've given you a little pile, Jinny."

"P'r'aps there won't be any to-morrow, as you expect," she said, slowly.

The old man started. "What! you and Jake ain't quarrelled again? You ain't broke it off at the last moment, same as before? You ain't had a letter from Jake?" He looked at the white petticoat on the chair-back, and shook his head in bewilderment.

"I've had no letter," she answered. "I've had no letter from Selby for a month. It was all settled then, and there was no good writing, when he was coming to-morrow with the minister and the license. Who do you think'd be postman from Selby here? It must have cost him ten dollars to send the last letter."

"Then what's the matter? I don't understand," the old man urged, querulously. He did not want her to marry and leave him, but he wanted no more troubles; he did not relish being asked awkward questions by every mountaineer he met as to why Jenny Long didn't marry Jake Lawson.

"There's only one way that I can be married to-morrow," she said, at last, "and that's by you taking a man down the Dog Nose Rapids to Bindon to-night."

He dropped the pigeons on the floor, dumfounded. "What in--"

He stopped short, in sheer incapacity to go further. Jenny had not always been easy to understand, but she was wholly incomprehensible now.

She picked up the pigeons and was about to speak, but she glanced at the bedroom door, where her exhausted visitor had stretched himself on her bed, and beckoned her uncle to another room.

"There's a plate of vittles ready for you in there," she said. "I'll tell you as you eat."

He followed her into the little living-room adorned by the trophies of his earlier achievements with gun and rifle, and sat down at the table, where some food lay covered by a clean white cloth.

"No one'll ever look after me as you've done, Jinny," he said, as he lifted the cloth and saw the palatable dish ready for him. Then he remembered again about to-morrow and the Dog Nose Rapids.

"What's it all about, Jinny? What's that about my canoeing a man down to Bindon?"

"Eat, uncle," she said, more softly than she had yet spoken, for his words about her care of him had brought a moisture to her eyes. "I'll be back in a minute and tell you all about it."