The Cross-Cut | Page 5

of being only the beginning of a bonanza! I know, because he had written me that, a month before."
"And he abandoned it?"
"He 'd forgotten what he had written when I saw him again. I did n't question him. I did n't want to--his face told me enough to guess that I would n't learn. He went home then, after giving me enough money to pay the taxes on the mine for the next twenty years, simply as his attorney and without divulging his whereabouts. I did it. Eight years or so later, I saw him in Indianapolis. He gave me more money--enough for eleven or twelve years--"
"And that was ten years ago?" Robert Fairchild's eyes were reminiscent. "I remember--I was only a kid. He sold off everything he had, except the house."
Henry Beamish walked to his safe and fumbled there a moment, to return at last with a few slips of paper.
"Here 's the answer," he said quietly, "the taxes are paid until 1922."
Robert Fairchild studied the receipts carefully--futilely. They told him nothing. The lawyer stood looking down upon him; at last he laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Boy," came quietly, "I know just about what you 're thinking. I 've spent a few hours at the same kind of a job myself, and I 've called old Henry Beamish more kinds of a fool than you can think of for not coming right out flat-footed and making Thornton tell me the whole story. But some way, when I 'd look into those eyes with the fire all dead and ashen within them, and see the lines of an old man in his young face, I--well, I guess I 'm too soft-hearted to make folks suffer. I just couldn't do it!"
"So you can tell me nothing?"
"I 'm afraid that's true--in one way. In another I 'm a fund of information. To-night you and I will go to Indianapolis and probate the will--it's simple enough; I 've had it in my safe for ten years. After that, you become the owner of the Blue Poppy mine, to do with as you choose."
"But--"
The old lawyer chuckled.
"Don't ask my advice, Boy. I have n't any. Your father told me what to do if you decided to try your luck--and silver 's at $1.29. It means a lot of money for anybody who can produce pay ore--unless what he said about the mine pinching out was true."
Again the thrill of a new thing went through Robert Fairchild's veins, something he never had felt until twelve hours before; again the urge for strange places, new scenes, the fire of the hunt after the hidden wealth of silver-seamed hills. Somewhere it lay awaiting him; nor did he even know in what form. Robert Fairchild's life had been a plodding thing of books and accounts, of high desks which as yet had failed to stoop his shoulders, of stuffy offices which had been thwarted so far in their grip at his lung power; the long walk in the morning and the tired trudge homeward at night to save petty carfare for a silent man's pettier luxuries had looked after that. But the recoil had not exerted itself against an office-cramped brain, a dusty ledger-filled life that suddenly felt itself crying out for the free, open country, without hardly knowing what the term meant. Old Beamish caught the light in the eyes, the quick contraction of the hands, and smiled.
"You don't need to tell me, Son," he said slowly. "I can see the symptoms. You 've got the fever--You 're going to work that mine. Perhaps," and he shrugged his shoulders, "it's just as well. But there are certain things to remember."
"Name them."
"Ohadi is thirty-eight miles from Denver. That's your goal. Out there, they 'll tell you how the mine caved in, and how Thornton Fairchild, who had worked it, together with his two men, Harry Harkins, a Cornishman, and 'Sissie' Larsen, a Swede, left town late one night for Cripple Creek--and that they never came back. That's the story they 'll tell you. Agree with it. Tell them that Harkins, as far as you know, went back to Cornwall, and that you have heard vaguely that Larsen later followed the mining game farther out West."
"Is it the truth?"
"How do I know? It 's good enough--people should n't ask questions. Tell nothing more than that--and be careful of your friends. There is one man to watch--if he is still alive. They call him 'Squint' Rodaine, and he may or may not still be there. I don't know--I 'm only sure of the fact that your father hated him, fought him and feared him. The mine tunnel is two miles up Kentucky Gulch and one hundred yards to the right. A surveyor can lead you to the very spot.