Part 27

"'Do these things for me, friend Placide, and believe that even in the grave, I remain,

"'Very gratefully yours,

"'BRUCE GRIERSON.'"

The letter fell from Steering's hand and fluttered to the ground, while he sat with his hands hanging limply from his knees for a moment. "Grierson is dead! Grierson is dead!" he repeated. The funereal words rang through his ears like a grand Praise-God. He knew that he ought to be sorry and that he was inexpressibly glad, not because the grim old man was dead--dead, with his malevolence reaching out toward Madeira, spinning and twisting like a great cobweb snare from the grave--but because of what must now happen, because vistas of wonderful beauty were opening up through the long shadows of the Tigmores, because if the end had come to the house of Grierson, beginning had come to the house of Steering. Life, big, splendid, stretched out before him. Old Bernique had risen and was pacing the banks of the Di nervously. Steering, too, got to his feet. Going down to Bernique, he took the old man's hands in his. Neither heard a little rustle up the bluff in the leafy bushes.

"Oh, Uncle Bernique!" said Steering, and stopped because of the wild sound of his own voice. He saw that it would be dangerous for him to try to talk with his mind in that high tremulous whirl. The old man clung to him, silent, too, for a teeming moment.

"Now God above, why not Crit Madeira tell you that tr-r-ue way of things?" shouted Bernique at last fiercely. "Why not?"

The two men looked into each other's eyes, Steering bearing up the old man, who clutched him feverishly. When the Frenchman began to talk again his teeth were chattering. "Why not? Hein? Because he t'ief. But God above! We got those proof! Dead for mont's. And Madeira know it! The Teegmores are yours for mont's, Mistaire Steering! And Madeira know it! We put that fine man where he belong. We jail him! He t'ief! We r-r-uin him, as he would r-r-uin you!"

"Ruin him!" Bruce said the words over measuredly. "We can do it easily. Everything he has has gone into the company that is getting its chief encouragement out of the Tigmores. It will be easy to ruin him."

"Yes, God above, it will be easy! We r-r-ruin him. We do that thing quick and glad." Bernique slid his lean hands up Steering's arms and held to him.

"Wait! Wait!" The Frenchman's convulsive anger received a sudden check by the sound of Steering's voice. He clung more tightly to Steering's arms as he looked into Steering's face, then shrank back helplessly.

"My God!" said the old man, "I forgot!"

"Yes," answered Steering, no hesitation in his voice. "Yes, you forgot her. We must not do that, you know."

After a while they sat down and talked it over at length from beginning to end, and then back again, from end to beginning. Up in the Tigmores Crit Madeira's drills beat and bore at the heart of the earth, deeper, deeper; by the Redbud shack, the two men, on the ground, bore into Madeira's trickery, deeper, deeper. By the light of that torch from the Rockies, they followed the twisting trail all the way from inception to finish. The tortuous, underhand curve of it now and then looked like the self-deceptive work of lunatic cunning. As they talked about it, they talked too earnestly for the little whisking movements in the growth up the bluff to reach their ears.

"At least," cried old Bernique at last, "at least the Teegmores are yours! At last! At last!"

At last! At last! Steering's eyes were travelling the long tumbling Tigmore line. "If they are," he said in that musing way he had developed within the last quarter of an hour, "if I take the Tigmores now, Uncle Bernique, I'll pull Madeira's house about him. That company of his is not so secure that it could stand a blow at its head. If I take the Tigmores,--Uncle Bernique, listen a minute," he was pleading, "she has been used to much all her life. I can't take her father's fortune away from him. Don't you see that? I can't do anything. You understand?" he was commanding. Bernique jumped to his feet.

"God above, you mean----" The thought snapped in the old man's brain, the words stuck in his throat.

"I mean that we must leave things as they are. I can't ruin her father. That's all I mean!"

Bernique doubled up both fists. "I'll see him damn' before he shall keep those Teegmores! I can r-ruin him!" But Bruce caught the old man's arm in a grip that hurt. When Bernique spoke again it was to say breathlessly, "You take the Teegmores, Mistaire Steering, and protect Madeira's fortune. You can do that easy."

"I know. It looks easy. But think back a little. Madeira is sure to fight. Grierson's death occurred months ago under an assumed name. To prove that he died we must prove when he died, where he died and who he was. To prove all that is to let the light in upon dark places. I hardly see how the light can be let in, Uncle Bernique, without cutting Madeira out sharp and keen as a rascal. Madeira would never allow,--at this juncture, he couldn't allow us to establish my claim to the Tigmores on my word and yours. He has done unwise, crazy things already. He would fight us. I know it, you know it. We could win. But where would our victory leave him, Uncle Bernique? Ah, you see?"

The old man was shaking from head to foot. He clung close to Steering. "Oh, my God!" he moaned, "I will not let this thing be."

"Yes, you will let it be! It is my affair even more than it is yours. You will do as I say about it, Uncle Bernique. Here and now, you shall swear this oath with me: I by my love for Sally Madeira, you by your love for Piney's young mother, that never, so help us God, shall one or the other of us carry word of these matters to anyone, least of all to Crittenton Madeira or his daughter Salome!"

The old man's breath came gustily, his cheeks flamed, the hectic burned like fire in his shrivelled cheeks. He loosed his clinging hold and tried to shake Bruce off.

"Swear," Bruce decreed again, his powerful grip on the old man, his eyes half shut, "I by my love for Sally Madeira, you by your love for Piney's young mother! Swear!" He held up his own right hand, and Bernique said brokenly:

"God above, I swear!" The old man was crying. Neither heard the swish in the bluff growth, neither saw the brave light in the two eyes that peered through the bushes.

"Why now, everything is all right," cried Bruce. "Are you going on into Canaan to-night, or shall you sleep here with me? I think that I shall take the skiff now and go up toward Madeira Place, then drift back down-stream, a sort of good-bye journey. What will you do meantime?"

Old Bernique hardly knew. He was sore, bewildered. He thought he might spend the night on the hills, then again he might come back to the shack for the night. He wanted to go into Choke Gulch first thing.

Bruce pushed away in the skiff through the swollen Di. Bernique got his horse and started off, climbing the yellow road up the bluff slowly, heading toward Choke Gulch. As he neared the top, he lifted his head and saw Piney and the pony outlined on the bald summit of the bluff. The boy made a trumpet of his hands and shouted to Bernique.

"Hurry! For God's sake! So I cand talk to you!" Piney's was a reckless and impassioned young figure, cut out against the sky sharply, on a pony that danced like a dervish.