Loaded Dice

by Ellery H. Clark

For some minutes Peters puffed in silence; then took his pipe from his mouth and began.

"In the first place," he said slowly, "Jim Mason's an all fired smart man. He wa'nt born and brought up here, like I was. He used to live down Octagon way. Soon as he left school, he went to copper minin'. I've heard him tell about it fifty times. 'I began,' he says, 'at the bottom o' the mine an' the bottom o' my trade, an' I worked pretty well up to the top in both of 'em.' An' it's the truth, too. He was one o' the best surface men at the lake, an' earnin' good money; layin' it away, too, an' that's more than a lot of 'em can say. Then he gets married an' settles down, an' then damned if a while after that an epidemic o' typhoid don't hit the Octagon camp, an' Jim's wife takes it an' dies in a week. Well, that breaks him up complete. After a while he finds he can't stand it round home noways, so he takes his little girl an' moves up here to Seneca. Always he's claimin' the Onondaga lode hits here somewheres after it dips. So he fools around for a while, an' then, after a year or so, he stakes out his claim, names it the Ethel after his little girl, hires a gang o' men, an' goes to work. Four years he's fitted out for, an' blamed if they don't turn out to be four hard luck years. First he strikes tough rock, then the price o' labor goes up on him, then he gets sick himself, an' it's most a year before he's right again; it's one thing here and another there, so finally he has to let his gang go, an' by that time he's so plumb crazy over his claim that he goes on workin' her by himself, everybody but him knowin' he couldn't do nothin' that way if he lived to be as old as Methusalem. Still, he don't seem to care, an' goes right on pluggin' away alone.

"Now here's where Harrison comes in. Jack's a pretty likely young man, an' he'd got to be Jim's foreman, an' was mighty sweet on the little girl. No blame to him, either. She's as pretty as a picture, an' smart as chain lightnin', but let to run wild like a colt. Long as she gets the old man's meals, an' keeps the house cleaned up, he don't care a mite what she does the rest o' the time. I guess, though, the girl's got discontented like, an' she'd be mighty glad to have the old man strike it rich, so's she could get out o' here for good an' move off to the city somewheres. Well, when the rest o' the gang goes, Harrison says he won't leave, but he'll work along a spell with the old man, an' if they strike things rich Jim can treat him any ways he thinks is right. Course, though, it ain't the old man or the mine Jack cares about; it's Ethel he's after, an' as I say, small blame to him.

"So there you are. The old man's the legal owner, but Jack's got a kind of a say-so about the mine, too. The old man's sensible enough about everythin' else, but half crazy about the mine, an' Jack's sensible enough about everythin' else, an' the mine, too, but he's half crazy about the girl. So that's the story, an' there you are."

Frost, rising, nodded. "I guess," he said slowly, "the old man's the one I want. I can tell better after I've seen 'em, though. What's the use of waiting, Abe? Let's go along over and size 'em up."

For answer Peters rose and put on his coat, and a moment later they had left the cabin.

Meanwhile, over at Mason's, Jack Harrison had come slowly up the path, the stoop of his broad shoulders and the slight stiffness of his usually springy gait showing that there are limits beyond which the strongest muscle and sinew can not with safety be driven. Entering the kitchen and seeing no one, he stepped out on to the broad veranda which surrounded the house, and came suddenly on the girl he was seeking, seated alone and gazing idly out over the broad sweep of the darkening valley.

To find Ethel Mason in an attitude even suggesting meditation was an occurrence so rare that the young man was fairly startled. "Hullo, Ethel," he exclaimed, "anythin' gone wrong?"

The girl started to her feet. Slight of figure, slender and graceful as a deer, the brown curls clustering around her pretty face made her at first sight seem little more than a child in appearance, an impression, however, no sooner formed than at once dispelled by the soft curves of her figure, and the poise and self-reliance of her manner as she answered him.

"Yes," she cried rebelliously, "there's plenty wrong. I'm just sick and tired of the way things are going on. He doesn't give me enough a week to keep house for a dog; I haven't had a cent to spend on myself for a month; and then last night there's a dance over at the Hall, and every girl in the county can go but me, and I haven't a single thing to my name I can wear, and so I have to stay at home. Cook the meals, wash the dishes, clean the house; if that's all the life I'm ever going to have, I'd a lot rather be dead."