Under this granite sleeps Bells Park, an engineer. Murdered in defense of his employers. Faithful when living, and faithful when dead, to the Croix d’Or and all those principles which make a worthy man.
A sudden, overwhelming sadness seemed to descend upon them. Bill turned abruptly, and stepped across toward the boiler-house. The whistle sent out a long-drawn, booming call––the alarm signal for the mine. In all the stress of the Croix d’Or it was the first time that note had ever been used save in drill. The bells of the hoist arose into a jangling clamor. They heard the wheels of the cage whirl as it shot downward, the excited exclamations of men ascending, some of them with tools in hand, the running of a man’s feet, emerging from the blacksmith’s tunnel, the shout of the smith to his helper, and the labored running of the cook and waiter across the cinders of the yard. Bill slowly returned toward them.
“We’ll have to get you to land it up there,” he said, waving his arm toward the cross high 266 above. “Give us a hand here, will you? and we’ll throw this hitch again.”
The entire force of the mine had gathered around them before he had finished speaking, and, seeing the stone, understood. Joan caught her riding skirts deftly into her hand, and, with Bill leading the way up the steep and rock-strewn ascent, they climbed the peak. The burros halted now and then to rest, straining under the heaviness of their task. The men of the Croix d’Or sometimes assisted them with willing shoulders pushing behind, and there by the mound, on which flowers were already beginning to show green and vivid, they laid out the sections of granite. Only the cook’s helper was absent. Willing hands caught the sections, which had been grooved to join, and, tier on tier, they found their places until there stood, high and austere, the granite shaft that told of one man’s loyalty.
Dick gave some final instructions as to the rearranging of the grave and the little plot that had been created around it, and they descended in a strange silence, saddened by all that had been recalled. No one spoke, save Bill, who gave orders to the men to return to their tasks, and then said, as if to himself: “I’d like mighty well to know where Lily Meredith is. We cain’t even 267 thank her. Once I wondered what she was. Now I know more than ever. She was all woman!”
And to this, Joan, putting out her hand to bid them good-by, assented.
The night shots had been fired at five o’clock––the time usually selected by mines working two shifts––supper had been eaten, and the partners were sitting in front of their quarters when Bill again referred to Mrs. Meredith. High up on the hill, where the new landmark had been, erected, at the foot of the cross, the day shift of the Croix d’Or was busied here and there in clearing away the ground around the grave of the engineer, some of the men on hands and knees casting aside small bowlders, others trimming a clearing in the surrounding brush, and still others painfully building a low wall of rock.
“The hard work of findin’ out where The Lily is,” said Bill softly, “is because she covered her trail. Nobody knows where she went. The stage driver saw her on the train, but the railway agent told him she didn’t buy no ticket. The conductor wrote me that he put her off at the junction, and that she took the train toward Spokane. That’s all! It ends there as if she’d got on the train, 268 and then it had never stopped. We cain’t even thank her.”
Dick, absorbed in thoughts of Joan, heard but little of what he said, and so agreed with a short: “No, that’s right.” And Bill subsided into silence. A man came trudging up the path leading from the roadway lower down, and in his hand held a bundle of letters.
“Got the mail,” he said. “The stage may run every other day after this, instead of twice a week, the postmaster over at the camp told me. Not much to-night. Here it is.”