The Popular Magazine/Volume 58/Number 4/The Implacable Friend/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
A MINERS’ MEETING
Slim Jim Collins guided the infuriated gang toward the other end of the flat. It was easy to do this seemingly without intention. With Redbank and Hennessy, he merely walked a little ahead of the others in the direction of the tent of Miss O'Brien and Miss Anderson, where most of the members of the Midas mining company messed. In the kitchen portion of the structure, back of the canvas partition, Miss Pearl O'Brien sat peeling potatoes.
“See here, boys,” said Collins, when the door of the tent house closed, “there's no use all talking at once. Let's see how this thing stands.”
For reasons which he did not care to disclose, he had avoided any appearance of leadership at the hearing in the commissioner's office. But he was logically their leader, and, for days during the prospecting of the shafts, he had worked in the quiet ways that best bring about actual leadership—a word of advice here, a wise suggestion there, a sympathetic fraternizing with all. And now he knew that he was their leader, especially if he deferred sufficiently to Galen Tholmes, “Chop-house” Miller, Tom Baker, and one or two others whose interests were large and whose influence, like his own, was considerable. His words brought the instant attention of nearly every one; whereupon he asked:
“What did you think of that farce?”
“Farce is right,” sneered One-word Watkins; and Redbank, quite in character, added:
“Somebody oughter have stayed outside and listened to what he said to 'em after we left. You all noticed they hung back!”
“I'd hang 'em back!” hissed Jimmy Head.
“What did ye expect? He and the gal is old friends of Waring,” reminded Othmer. “Old friends of Ticely, too, I'll bet my lead dog!”
“Figgers he's going to be the young feller's father-in-law, perhaps,” suggested Collins.
“It's all the justice you ever get from a tinhorn lawyer, nowadays, in Alaska,” declared Hennessy bitterly. “A miners' meeting for me every time!”
“A miners' meeting's the only thing to settle this business,” agreed Othmer enthusiastically, and there were cries of “You bet!” and “That's the stuff!”
Tholmes held up his hand to be heard. “I've known the judge a long time, and I hope he'll arrest 'em or something.”
“Ticely's the marshal, you chump,” interjected big Colwell disrespectfully. “Some game!”
“Manners is just weak, that's all,” continued Tholmes—but a hiss of derision expressed general dissent. “Maybe it's partly the girl and Waring. I don't know, and I don't care. What I do know is, these fellows have got our money and our outfits. I'm in about half the stock of the hardware store, between them and the company here. And that means I'm all in—I don't mind saying.”
“Same here,” muttered several others.
“Half the money he got from us he sent out,” asserted Collins. “Salted it down, I suppose.”
“He'll never live to spend it,” declared Colwell grimly, his great hands working.
“Miners meeting! Miners meeting! Come on!” cried several impatiently. “Call 'em to order, Slim Jim.”
“Supper time,” reminded Watkins, the soul of deliberateness as well as of brevity.
“Throw him out—to hell with supper!” yelled Othmer.
“All right, gentlemen,” assented Collins, who was entirely satisfied with the way things were trending. He moved from their midst and sat on the table's edge. “Now just to start the ball a-rollin', let's see if we agree about what's happened. We've been suckers, all right, but that don't get us anywhere, and it don't make them fellows any less crooks. Question is if any of you gentlemen believe for one minute that Fred Ticely and Bruce Waring didn't deliberately”
“Don't know about Waring,” interrupted Chop-house Miller with cautious fairness.
Collins laughed. “Still waters run deep, as they say. Those quiet mugs are always the worst.”
“Every time!” fervently agreed Watkins.
“Naturally they'd have the smoothest talker of the two attend to the Nome end of the game. Now, did any of you fellows believe that explanation about the telegram and the little book?”
“Little book!” yelled Redbank. “Gawd, that was a good one!”
“He didn't even try to explain that except to say it wasn't a fake. Wasn't a fake! Say, I'll give any man my outfit, if he can raise twenty-five cents on that bed rock, let alone four hundred and sixty dollars!”
Collins' friend, Hennessy, had edged forward.
“Gentlemen,” he said oratorically, “it's the slickest job ever worked in Alaska; a dirty, contemptible, cold-blooded, framed-up swindle, and there's men and women on this flat that's put every cent they got in the world up here. And I ask you gentlemen, I ask you: 'Will we stand for it?'”
“Stand for it nothing!”
“Tie 'em up tight and float 'em down to Nome”
“And have 'em turned loose next day, like Manners says! They done their work too cute!”
“Handle 'em here!”
“Handle 'em here, you bet!”
“That's the stuff!” yelled several.
Just then, above the babel, rose the voice of the doorkeeper outside: “Here's Judge Manners.”
Miss O'Brien caught those words, and dropped her knife, though she had peeled very few potatoes since the miners' meeting began. Joan Manners must be alone in her cabin, and it would be safe to
She left the tent house, by the kitchen door, and walked across the flat to the hillside whose stump-dotted slope she ascended at a leisurely pace. Then she made her way along the hillside and, unobserved, descended again to the flat and entered the commissioner's office. Crossing the wide floor, she knocked at the door of the recorder's room, and a voice said: “Come.”
Joan Manners sat with a book before her and a pen in her hand. It was an idle pen—as idle as Miss O'Brien's knife had been. The two girls stared at each other.
“Can I speak with you a minute?” asked Pearl O'Brien. “I ain't got much time.” Joan noted the suppressed excitement of her manner.
“Certainly, Miss O'Brien.”
She came quickly to the table and stood over Joan, trembling.
“There's a miners' meeting, down at our place. You've heard of them, maybe?”
“I've seen them,” said Joan concisely. “I'm an old sour dough.”
“Then you know they generally mean business!”
Joan caught her breath. Her eyes glowed.
“I ain't supposed to be up here tellin' you this, but—you and your father and Ticely and Waring had better beat it!”
“Thank you!” said Joan icily. Then she relaxed a little. “What are they going to do?” Her voice quivered slightly.
“I can't tell you. Some talked about taking them to Nome, but the most wouldn't stand for that. They was yellin' something about 'Handlin' them here,' when I heard some one say that your dad had come. I left just then—by the back way—so I don't know what they said. But—they think the judge is in on the swindle, so, of course, they won't tell him nothin'! As soon as he comes back, you can put him wise, and the whole four of you had just better paddle down that river. You can send your native down the creek with that fast canoe Ticely's got, and along about midnight the rest of you can go over the hill without being noticed, and work around and drop down to the river and take to the canoe in the morning.”
“Why should I go?” demanded Joan, her blood mounting angrily to her face.
“Because you—because your father wouldn't be safe.”
Joan rose and grasped her arm.
“No! You are anxious for me to go.”
The girl gave Joan a quick, bold glance: “I know how it is with you and Waring!”
“You know nothing of the kind,” denied Joan sternly. “Tell me!” She tightened her grasp on Miss O'Brien's arm and looked her down!
“Jim—Slim Jim! He's after you!”
“After me!”
“Ves, after you. I know him. He's never forgotten, and never forgiven”
Joan released her hold upon the other's arm. But she did not take her eyes off her face till Miss O'Brien dropped her head upon her hands and wept silently.
“I'm sorry,” whispered Joan. “You don't need to be afraid of me.” Even to say it was a humiliation, but she did not care for that in the presence of this woe.
“Will you g-go?” came through Miss O'Brien's wet fingers.
“No!” said Joan. “Of course not.” She found her cap. “But—I'm much obliged to you, Miss O'Brien. I think you meant us kindness, too. I'll try to think so. I will think so!”
“Oh, Miss Manners, please don't ever” She raised her tearful face—a visage of alarm. “Don't ever mention that I came to you and told you”
“I never will!” promised Joan. Still holding her cap, she waited for the girl's departure. Then she left the cabin herself.
Manners had left it only half an hour before. After the hearing, he had waited in his office, hoping for a return of the men of his own company. When they did not return, he grew restive, knowing full well that mischief was afoot, and, though somewhat against his dignity, he set out to find them in the interest of peace.
A listening group outside of the mess tent identified it as the place of meeting of the indignation meeting. As he walked toward the door, the angry cries for immediate justice that came through the canvas walls apprised him of the alarming trend of the sentiment of the men within. Not without some difficulty, he gained admittance. With his appearance an angry hush succeeded the noisy demonstration,
“Now, look here, men,” said Manners earnestly, “I'm out and injured as much as any of you, proportionately to my means, and I guess I'm just as mad. But we've got to remember we haven't been any too straight ourselves.”
“How do you make that out?” demanded Con Redbank.
“He was shadowed around town; traps were set for him; his messages were stolen from the government telegraph office; his room was burglarized, and his private papers searched and copied. Just because Ticely got away with it—beat us at our own game, as you might say”
“Are you his lawyer?' shouted Baker belligerently.
“You certainly act like it,” sneered Collins.
“I'm not, and you know it. I'm simply trying to make you fellows see both sides of the case in the interest of law and order. Even if he was all black and we were all white, it would be murder if you hang that man!”
“That man!” Collins shot back. “You'd just get Ticely, would you?”
“I don't see that Waring had anything to do with it.”
“Oh, no, he's a nice, quiet, good-lookin' boy!”
The meaning of that last phrase, subtle, perhaps, to the less discerning of the others, was plain enough to Manners, who had often admired the picture Bruce and Joan made as they walked or talked together. There was a glint—none too amiable—in the judge's eye, as he answered:
“Look here, Collins, it would become you better if you'd stick right to this question of fraud, and let no personal likes or dislikes influence you in this thing.”
“Just what I was going to advise you to do,” Collins struck back, and comprehension of the retort was voiced in the derisive laughter that followed.
Manners tried to resume his argument, but the men were in no mood for it. Cries of “Put him out!” “You're their lawyer!” “How much of the swag did you get?” drowned his voice; and when, pale with anger and chagrin, he ceased speaking, the leaders began whispering together. That was enough for Manners, who angrily withdrew, aware that in another minute he would probably be ordered out.
“All right,” he said, turning at the door, “I'll wash my hands of the whole affair.”
“Use soap!” advised One-word Watkins sententiously, and sneering guffaws followed Manners from the shack.
His first thought was to warn Ticely and Waring, angry though he was at both of them. But he had not gone a hundred yards up the creek before he perceived he was followed, so he turned gradually toward his office and went to bed.