fifth instalment
Speed merely nodded when tolc
of the failure of his quest.
"What happened at Steiner’s?’
Maithland asked.
It seemed that Frenchy and the
Jew1 had formed a partnership, tc
start a hauling business from Skag
. way with the horses and boat foi
captital.
With a glance at the clouds
Speed suggested that it was going
to rain, and he would do a "sketch
round” for some blankets while his
partner was drying out.
For an hour or so after he had
gone, Maithland sat pondering over
the fire. From this abstraction he
was roused by a slight crunching
sound in the gravel, and glanced
up almost absently at the shape of
a horse, limned in fiery lines against
the dark. An upward glow from
the fire lighted a wouan’s face
which he seemed to remember,
Then a low, musical laugh gave
body to the vision.
He stood up, still half-dreaming,
as she pulled her horse under the
shadow of the wharf. Her dark
eyes masked with a vagrant humor
some caprice he could not fathom.
When she seated herself on a fallen
wharf timber, leaving a space be
side her in wordless invitation, he
obeyed, without knowing that he
did so.
"Meet Lady Luck,” she said, and
to his complete stupefaction, turn
ed his head toward her and kissed
him lightly on the mouth. "You
have a funny, serious, wondering
look I like,” she explained. "Of
tracing something that keeps drift
ing away. Luck’s been passing you,
too, so I’ve decided to give you a
break—if you want it. Do you?”
she murmured, with a melting fall
in her voice that drained his blood.
Her lips hovered close to his; her
hair almost brushed his face with a
tingling lure that took his breath.
Appalled at what he had almost
done, he held her crushed fingers
between his hands till he could win
iback some degree of sense. "I
think it would be safer,” he plead
ed, "to be unlucky.”
She looked at him with an oddly
shadowed, reflective smile, as if the
scruple intrigued her, or he had
brushed some chord of memory.
"Suppose I were to offer you and
your partner an outfit, a job and a
big stake in the Yukon, would you
trust your luck?”
"Whether I would or not,” he
he said, “my partner wouldn’t.”
"He doesn’t know what the stake
is,” Rose countered. "You’re going
North to look for gold. I can put
it in your way in one throw.
There’s a fool in camp who’s due to
lose a gold mine—one that isn’t his
to lose. I can’t tell you any more
just now, except that the game is
I worth the risk. You”re. running
some risks anyway as drifters in a
camp where you’ve made an enemy
of the range boss.”
He could jmake little of that,
except to wonder if Fallon was in
volved in the mysterious gold secret
she spoke of. And, while their
| hands were tangled, she drew a ring
from one of hers and slipped it mis
chievously on the tip of his little
finger.
I At the moment a thud on the
wharf above them froze them both.
A dark figure loomed with a bulky
menace in the dusk. Maithland
thought of Fallon, but a flare from
! the fire revealed an apparition
much more distrubing to him just
ithen. Speed’s apparent size was
due to a roll of blankets on his
shoulder.
The outlaw came down the sand
and dropped his burden near the
fire, still regarding the girl. After
a moment he walked over to the
hdrse and held the stirrup for her,
with a gesture that was polite but
implacable.
She waited before mounting, re
turning his stare with a look of in
terest., “Lady,” hie said, pointing
north, "up there is All-Alaska and
of the Yukon Territory. If that
ain’t a big enough huntin’ range
for you and me and ray pardner to
keep untangled in, it’s too damned
bad. But when I ask you to get the
Hell out of our camp, I mean stay
out.”
Her laugh was a ripple of spon
taneous music. She mounted easily,
and looking back at Maithland,
touched her fingers to her lips. The
j horse’s hooves ground softly in the
sand, and she vanished.
Speed threw a fresh log on the
fire, and after kicking it into flame,
he drew from his pocket a new bag
of urham, rolled a cigarette and
lit it with a brand from the fire.
"Seems like this man Garnet likes
to gamble,” he observed at last.
"What he don’t know about callin’
a pair of deuces gives us the pon
chos and smokes.”
Maithland scarcely heard him.
He half-opened his hand to look at
Rose’s ring, and shut it again
quickly, as if he were holding a
witch’s bond.
it was not till they turned in
that Speed alluded to the subject
that troubled him. "From where I
set,” the Westerner observed mus
ingly, "which is lookin’ at the sky
—this man Fallon listens like four
good aces to beat, if not five. His
havin’ traces of catamount and
curly wolf in his pedigree, I don’t
question. But he’s got somethin’
else that makes a bunch of hard
rock, hardmouth miners answer his
jerk line. A quick hand, a cool
head, and enough ornery guts to
swing a twenty-four horse span of
Nevada mules through the gates of
Hell, if him and Satan had a feud.
Offhand, I’d reckon that crossin’
that man in any game was a kind
of hair-line play.
"What’s his sequence with the
woman I don’t just get. Maybe
none, you think. But it looks to
me like a young bpck, say from
Boston, would kind of regret havin’
his grave dug for him this side of
the summit, through not supectin’
when gertin’ curious about a wo
man means flirtin’ with the
muzzles of a pair of forty-fours.
Which is the bore of the guns that
start talkin’ when you ramble into
Fallon’s private game, and make
it three-handed.”
* * *
Maithland wakened shivering in
half-darkness. The gulf was smudg
ed in a fine rain that steamed dis
mally over the riffled sands left
bare by the ebb tide. Speed’s blank
ets were rolled up, and a pile of
driftwood lay ready for their break
fast fire. Annoyed at himself for
having slept while his partner was
hunting a job, Ed washed in a tide
pool, and went up to look for him.
He learned that Steiner had of
fered to sell Garnet his pintos. Gar
net promptly closed with him at
the price of four hundred dollar
for the team, and engaged the two
partners to haul for him at the
wages Speed had first named.
This swift adjustment had all the
effect of a miracle to Maithland,
but the Westerner accepted it as a
simple caprice of the goddess who
presides over mining camps. Nor
was Steiner visibly troubled by the
change in his plans.
"Gold is where you find it, ain’t
it? If they put it in my hands, I
don’t need a shovel, do I? Let the
saps dig for it.”
"Reckon that in’t so foolish
neither,” Speed concurred.
» » »
The pack train had been tugging,
cursing, halting and sliding for
hours in a disjointed snake-line up
the graveled river canyon, through
a drizzling rain that soaked the
lashings and shoulder straps, cut
flesh to the raw, changed gravel to
mud, and with the churn of hun
dreds of hooves among the slippery
wrack of cotton-woods, made foot
ing almost impossible.
By the order of the trail, prospec
tors moved their outfits in relays,
Indian file, traveling as far uptrail
as they could between midnight and
one in the afternoon, there to cache
their packs and return, during the
remaining hours, for other loads.
Garnet’s outfit was an odd one,
unencumbered by mining tools or
instruments, or by any special
equipment that might give a clue
to his purpose in the North. It was
rather like the outfit a rich man
might have chosen for a long cam
ping tour, though this was not a
journey which anyone would be
likely to undertake for pleasure or
health. Two games rifles and rods,
hoWevqr, showed that he hoped
for some diversion by the way.
At last a ring of axes, pans and
voices floated up from a mountain
hollow through the rain. The trad
dipped down toward a camp,
which was pleasantly announced
by the aroma of coffee and of
wet pine burning.
Tethering the horses under some
dripping boughs, where the nee
dies spread a carpet free from mud,
Speed unmade the packs. “Belly
up to the bar for some close
harmony, cow hands,” he sank out
cheerily. "We’ve hit the camp of
Liarsville.” ----“^S
Garnet stood bowed under his
load and asked in a spent voice
how far they had come.
Speed swallowed his chuckles.
The distance was said to be five
miles. "Maybe,” he added as an
encouragement, "they call it
'Liarsville’ in mem’ry of whoever
said it was five miles.”
Garnet showed so little interest
in continuing his travels after
lunch that they left him in camp
to rest, and brought up another
load on the night trail from Skag
way, for the moral effect of get
ting the outfit well started.
Garnet was in his blankets when
they returned. "I’m going to
sleep till noon, boys,” he said, next
morning. "If you feel so energetic,
have a look at the trail above here.
I’ve been hearing some bad rumors
about it.”
His misgivings did not weigh on
their minds at first | They set out
on this excursion in the light
hearted mood conferred by a scrub
bing, a shave, a good breakfast and
morning sunlight. (
Avoiding the camp, they crossed
a river bridge, and from there, by
a steep and broken track which
the pack animals of earlier comers
had scarred out, climbed into some
mountain ravines that began to
reek with a mephitic odor of death.
The shambles became more ghastly
as they climbed.
In the dips of the so-called
"trail,” a series of quagmires had
been enlarged to small mud lakes
by the wear ^f successive hooves
around the rim. The swollen car
cassess of dead horses lay floating
or half-beddeci in muckegs and
sloughs. On sheer mountain sides
the trail dwindled in places to a
cattle track, and its hazards to
burdened horses and men were
grimly proved by the relics that
lay scattered in the canyon
troughs.
Some travelers who appeared to
have lost their horses, were strug
gling to hand-haul their packs
through a wallow not more than a
mile above Liarsville. It was all
the progress they had been able to
make since morning. Others, in
creditably plastered with mud, and
bearing the wan stamp of defeat in
their faces, were backtrailing to
ward camp. These were trail ve
terans who took ordinary hardship
with a smile.
Plainly, one look at it would be
enough for Garnet.
i H1VJ ilkUUW —-—
dismal prospect, they were joined
by a man whom they recognized
through disguising mud smears as
the oldtime prospector, Brent.
"Pretty, ain’t it,” Brent com
mented, spitting tobacco juice into
the slough.
"It would look a heap better,”
said Speed, thoughtfully, if the
'camp got together and graded a
trail. A few days’ work would
corduroy these muskegs.”
"Just what I told ’em,” Brent
nodded.
"Who’s against It?”
"Fallon’s outfit. He claims we
can’t reach Bennett before the
freeze-up if we stop to make a
trail. It’s tough on the boys who’re
short of horses. The way he sees it,
it’s their hard luck. A stampede is
a stampede, says the trail boss.”
"Fallon’s got guts but I don’t
seem to like ’em, someway,” said
Speed.
(Continued Next Week)
Lives of great men all remind us
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An Important Call
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A telephone subscriber who was out of a job came to
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Southern
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INCORPORATED
CRESS GRANGE "
Cress Grange held its regular
meeting Friday night March 8 with
an average attendance. Prof Brown
was unable to be present to hold his
weekly lesson for us which was a
disappointment but we hope he will
be able to be present hereafter.
Patters n and Cress school boys
had their first game of baseball at
Cress School house one evening last
week resulting in a score of 9 to 6
in favor of Cress.
Mr. J. W. Safriet had a lot of
fruit trees planted in his orchard
last week.
Dick Miller had work started on
his filling station just North of the
Farm Life School on the Highway.
Monday we hope that many of his
friends will patronize him when he
gets it opened up.
J. R. Cress had the misfortune
I to lose a mule Monday.
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Petrea and
Mrs. J. R. Cress went to Charlotte
Monday to see Mr. Petreas Mother,
Mrs. G. A. Ketchie who is in a
: hospital there where she under went
an operation last week. She was
| getting along' fine at that time.
We had the heaviest rain of the
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farming operation for quite awhile.
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