CHAPTER XIII. THE BULLET'S MESSAGE.
"Wal, those'll maybe make vallible building lots when Williams Creek has growed as big as 'Frisco, but somehow trade in building lots ain't brisk here just now."
No one answered old Rampike. Steve and Ned felt rather hurt at the levity of his remarks. It is poor fun even for a rich man to be robbed of six thousand dollars, and neither Ned nor Steve were rich men. In fact, in losing the six thousand dollars they had lost their all except the pack-train.
"It ain't no manner of good to grizzle over it," continued this philosopher, "Cruickshank has got the cinch on you to rights this time. Six thousand dollars cash, the pleasure of your company from Victoria, and your pack-train to remember you by! Ho! ho!" and although it was very annoying to Ned, and quite contrary to Rampike's nature to do so, he laughed aloud at his own grim joke.
The laugh roused Chance. He was a Yankee to the tips of his finger-nails, one of those strange beings who "bust and boom" by turns—millionaires to-day, bankrupts to-morrow, equally sanguine, happy, and go-ahead in either extreme.
"Ned," he said, his face relaxing into a somewhat wintry smile, "I guess you were right after all. Cruickshank is no Britisher, you bet."
"Glad you think so; hang him!" growled Ned.
"No Britisher could ever have planned so neat a swindle," continued Steve meditatively. "By Jove, it is a 'way up'!" and this strange young man really seemed lost in admiration at the smartness from which he himself had suffered.
"I don't see much to admire in a thief and a liar. We prefer honesty to smartness in my country, thank God!"
There was no disguising the fact that Ned Corbett was in a very ugly temper. Not being one of those who look upon the whole struggle for wealth as a game of chance and skill, in which everything is allowable except a plain transgression of the written rules of the game, he could not even simulate any admiration for a successful swindler's smartness.
Old Rampike saw his mood, and laying his hand on his shoulder gave him a friendly shake. "Never mind, sonny," he said. "It's no good calling names; and as for being stone-broke, why there isn't a man in Cariboo to-day, I reckon, who hasn't been stone-broke, aye and most of 'em mor'n once or twice."
"Oh, yes, I suppose that is so," said Ned a little wearily, but rousing himself all the same. "What can a man earn here as a digger in another fellow's claim?"
"Anything he likes to ask almost. Men who are worth anything at all as workers are scarce around these parts."
"Then we sha'n't starve, that is some consolation. By the way, I have a note here for you. This confounded business nearly made me forget it;" and so saying Corbett produced from an inner pocket the little note given him by Roberts at the Balm-of-Gilead camp.
For a few moments Rampike twisted and turned the note about, trying to decipher the faint pencil-marks in the dim light. At last he got the note right side up and began to read. Evidently he hardly understood what he read at first, for those who were watching him saw that he read the note through a second time, as if looking for some hidden meaning in every word. When he had done this a vindictive bitter oath burst from between his set teeth.
"If Cruickshank ain't dead by now, my old pal Roberts is. You may bet on that. Look ye here!" and the speaker handed Ned a flattened, blood-stained bullet which he had taken from Roberts' letter.
"Do you know what that is?" he asked.
"It looks like a revolver bullet," answered Ned.
"And so it is. That's the identical bullet as Dan Cruickshank fired at a grouse and hit a cayuse with. Pretty shooting, wasn't it?" and Rampike ground his teeth with anger.
"What the deuce do you mean?" cried Steve in blank astonishment.
"Mean—mean! Why, that if you warn't such a durned tenderfoot you'd have tumbled to the whole thing long ago! Men like Cruickshank don't leave horses unhobbled by mistake, don't hit and scare pack-horses on a stone-slide by mistake, don't get to Williams Creek a day late by mistake. Oh, curse his mistakes! If he makes one more there'll be the best pal and the sweetest singer in Cariboo lying dead up among them pines."
"Do you mean that Cruickshank did these things on purpose?" asked Corbett slowly, his face growing strangely hard as he spoke.
"Read Rob's letter," said Rampike, and gave Ned the scrap of paper on which Rob had found time to write a brief record of the journey from Douglas, ending his story in these words—"Cruickshank means Corbett mischief, so I am staying instead of the lad. What his game is with the pack-ponies I am blowed if I know, but if I don't come in with them inside of a week, do some of you fellows try and get even with the colonel for the sake of your old pal Roberts."
For several minutes after reading this note no one spoke; each man was thinking out the situation after his own fashion.
"Will you trust me with grub for a fortnight, Rampike?" asked Ned at last.
"Yes, lad, if you like; but you won't want to borrow. Men like you can earn all they want here;" and the miner looked appreciatively at the big-limbed man before him.
"I'll earn it by and by, Rampike. I'm going after Roberts first," replied Ned quietly.
"How's that?" demanded Rampike.
"I'm going after Roberts and Cruickshank. Can I have the grub?"
"If that's your style, you can have all the grub you want if I have to go hungry for a week. When will you start?"
"It will be dark in two hours," replied Ned, "and the moon comes up about midnight. I shall start as soon as the moon is up."
"Impossible, man!" cried Chance. "I could not drag myself to the top of that first bluff unless I had had twenty-four hours' solid sleep, if my life depended upon it."
"I know, old fellow, and I don't want you to; but you see a life may depend upon it."
"But you aren't going alone, Corbett. I'll not hear of that."
"We will talk about that by and by, Steve. Let us go and turn in for a little while now. I am dead tired myself." And so saying Corbett turned on his heel and followed Rampike to his hut, where the old man found room for all three of them upon the floor.
"If Steve and I go to look for Roberts can you find a job for our Chinaman until we come back? I should not like the poor beggar to starve," said Ned, pointing to where Phon lay already fast asleep. The moment he laid down his head Phon had gone to sleep, and since then not a muscle had twitched to show that he was alive. Whatever his master might choose to arrange for his benefit the Chinaman was not likely to overhear or object to.
"Oh yes, I can fix that easy enough. I'll set him to wash in my own claim. I can afford to pay him good wages as well as feed him. Men are scarce at Williams Creek."
Again for a time there was silence in the hut, Corbett and Rampike puffing away at their pipes, and Steve Chance trying hard to keep his eyes open as if he suspected mischief. At last nature got the better of him; the young Yankee's head dropped on his arm, and in another moment he was as sound asleep as Phon.
Then Ned stood up and went over to sit beside the old miner Rampike, remarking as he did so:
"Thank heaven Steve is off at last. I thought the fellow never meant to go to sleep."
"What! Do you mean to leave him behind?" asked Rampike.
"Does he look as if he could do another week's tramping?" retorted Ned, glancing at the limp, worn-out figure of his friend. "He has pluck enough to try, but he would only hinder me."
"If that's so, I'll chuck my claim and come along too."
"Nonsense, you can't afford to lose your claim; and, besides, you couldn't help me."
"Couldn't help you! How's that?" snorted Rampike indignantly.
"A man can always hunt better alone than with another fellow. One makes less noise than two in the woods."
"But you ain't going hunting?"
"Yes I am,—hunting big game too." And there was a light in Ned Corbett's eye, as he overhauled his Winchester, that looked bad for an enemy.
"You ain't afraid of—losing your way?" asked Rampike. He was going to say "You ain't afraid of Cruickshank, are you?" but a look on Corbett's face stopped that question.
"No, I'm used to the woods," Ned answered shortly; and then again for a while the two men smoked on in silence.
Presently Corbett knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and put it away carefully in his pocket.
"Do you work in the night-shift on your place?" he asked Rampike.
"Either me or my partner is there all the while."
"Shall you be there to-night?"
"I'll be going on at midnight, but I'll fix up a pack with some grub in it for you before I go."
"Thank you, I'll leave that to you, if I may. Will you call me before you go? I mean to try to get all the sleep I can before the moon is up."
"Well, lie down right now. I'll call you, you bet. You're a good sort for a Britisher—give us a shake;" and Rampike held out a hand as hard and as honest as the pick-handle to which it clung day after day.
Perhaps it was the thought of his old friend's danger which made Rampike blind and careless, or perhaps it was only his natural clumsiness. In any case he steered very badly for his own door, so badly indeed that he tripped over Chance's prostrate form, dealing him a kick that might have roused a dead man. But Steve only turned over restlessly in his sleep, like one who dreams, and then lay as still again as ever.
Ned smiled. "No danger of waking him, I think, when I want to go. Poor old Steve! the loss of the money does not seem to spoil your sleep much."
Five minutes later, when Rampike had gone out to get together the provisions which his guest needed, anyone listening to that guest's regular breathing would have been of opinion that the loss of the dollars troubled Ned Corbett as little as it troubled Steve Chance.