HUGH RIDES TO AN APPOINTMENT
Bald Knob hummed with activities. The Ground Hog was taking out quantities of rich ore. On Vicky’s claim the leasers had struck a vein which might or might not develop into a paying proposition. A dozen other shafts were going down and from the side of the hill a tunnel was progressing at a right angle toward the Ground Hog drift.
The fame of the new discovery had spread over the state and from all directions prospectors were stampeding to the diggings. A steady stream of wagons wound up and down the hill. They brought to the camp flour, bacon, whisky, coal oil, dynamite, canned goods, clothing, lumber, chickens, honey, hay, and the thousand other staples needed by the young camp. Stores at Piodie set up branch establishments in tents and flimsy shacks. Other merchants came in from Eureka and Virginia. Freight outfits moved bag and baggage to Bald Knob, wagons loaded to the side boards with supplies. Gamblers and women of loose reputation joined the rush, keen to help reap the harvest always ripe in a young live mining camp.
The most important and the busiest man in the new camp was Hugh McClintock. He was a third owner of the Ground Hog and he had claims of his own in addition. He managed the teaming and contracting business of himself and his brother, now with temporary headquarters at Budd & Byers corral. Moreover, he was looked on as unofficial father of the camp. To him came drifters out of work, men who proposed the incorporation of a town in the saddle of the dromedary-backed hill, solicitors for contributions to an emergency hospital, and scores of others who had troubles or difficulties they wanted to unload.
On the afternoon of a sunny day came to him also a barefoot Negro boy with a note. The note read:
Are you awf’lly busy, Hugh? I want to see you. Meet me at the schoolhouse at five-thirty to-day. Be sure and come. It is very important.
Vicky Lowell.
If Vicky said it was important for him to meet her, he knew she was not overstressing it. That young woman was impulsive and sometimes imperious, but it was not in her character to call a busy man from his work without a valid reason. It was her custom to stay at the schoolhouse and prepare the lessons for next day so that she might have the evenings free to read or to go out with friends. Twice he had gone out to the schoolhouse and walked home with her in order to talk over some difficulty that had arisen in regard to the leasing of her claim. But he had gone of his own volition and not at her request.
There were moments during the afternoon, while he was talking over business matters with the people who poured into his office, when his pulses quickened delightfully, when he was aware of an undertug of excitement coursing through his blood. Was it possible that Vicky sent for him because—because she cared for him?
He rejected this, too, as out of character, as a kind of treason to her. She was proud and held her self-respect in high esteem. Even if she cared for him she would let him travel the whole road to her. Her lover must come out into the open and ask for all he hoped to gain.
There had been hours of late when Hugh’s heart had been lifted with hope, hours when their spirits had met in the mountain tops and they had rejoiced in the exploration of each other’s minds. The mentality of girls was a terra incognita to him. He had lived among men from his youth. Never before had he met a soul so radiant, so quick with life, so noble in texture, as hers, he told himself. The glamour of her personality coloured all his thoughts of her. The lift of her throat as she would turn the beautifully poised little head, the dark flash of her eyes so mobile in expression, the soft glow of colour in her clear complexion, even the intellectual quality of her immature thinking, went to his head like strong wine.
He was in love, with all the clean strength of his nature—and he rejoiced in his love and let it flood his life. It permeated all his actions and thoughts, quickened his vitality. Because he had gone so far in life sufficient to himself the experience was wonderful and amazing to him. His imagination halted at the threshold of his house of dreams. He dared not let it take free rein. He would tell himself humbly that this golden girl was not for him, and next moment he was planning how he might see her soon and what he would say to her.
He was detained a few moments by a business detail that had to be settled with a foreman, and after that a committee of citizens met in his office to decide about the organization of a fire department for the camp. He was on edge to be gone, but he could not very well walk out from a meeting he himself had called. When at last he got away he knew that he was nearly fifteen minutes late for his appointment with Vicky.
Knowing that he would be rushed for time, he had ordered a saddle horse to be in waiting outside the office. He cantered down the road, pretending not to hear the shout of an old prospector who wanted to discuss a lease with him. To-morrow would do well enough for Tim Murphy, anyhow. The important business of his life just now was to get to Miss Vicky Lowell as soon as his horse could cover the intervening miles.
He travelled fast. It was only a few minutes later when he rode down Turkey Creek Avenue at a gallop. He did not stop the horse in town, but passed through it to the suburb at the farther edge of which the school had been built.
Carelessly, without any special interest, he saw a man entering the cut two hundred yards in front of him. He glanced at his watch. The time was 5:49. He would be more than twenty minutes late for his appointment with Vicky.
Hugh rode into the cut. Halfway through it he pulled up his horse abruptly. The crack of a rifle had stopped him automatically. He swung from the saddle and eased the revolver in its scabbard. The sound of another shot echoed in the cut. A scream shrilled through the dusk.
He tied the horse to a sapling with a slip knot and stepped forward. He guessed that murder had been done. The shriek that still rang in his brain had come from a man in mortal agony. Warily as a panther he moved, for he knew the murderer had a rifle, and against a rifle at a hundred yards a forty-five is as effective as a popgun.
Hugh edged round the corner of the bend beyond the cut. Instantly caution vanished. In the gathering gloom a woman was flying down the road toward him. She flung herself down to gather up in her arms a figure lying sprawled across the path. McClintock broke into a run. Even in the growing darkness he had recognized that light and lissom form.
“Vicky!” he cried as he reached her.
A face bloodless to the lips looked up pitifully at him. In the eyes he read amazement, incredulity, doubt. Then, quite without warning, the girl quietly toppled over in a dead faint.