The Spenders | Page 7

glance
at the old face. The sorrowful old eyes were fixed on things that were
not; they looked vaguely as if in search.
"Dan'l!" he said.
It was not a cry; there was nothing plaintive in it. It was only the old
man calling his son: David calling upon Absalom. Then there was a
change. He came sternly forward.
"Who killed my boy?"
"Nobody, Uncle Peter; 'twas a stroke. He was goin' over the line and
they'd laid out at Kaslo fer a day so's Dan'l J. could see about a spur the
'Lucky Cuss' people wanted--and maybe it was the climbin' brought it
on."
The old man looked his years. As he came nearer Billy Brue saw tears
tremble in his eyes and roll unnoted down his cheeks. Yet his voice was
unbroken and he was, indeed, unconscious of the tears.
"I was afraid of that. He lived too high. He et too much and he drank
too much and was too soft--was Dan'l.--too soft--"
The old voice trembled a bit and he stopped to look aside into the little
pocket he had been exploring. Billy Brue looked back down the canon,
where the swift stream brawled itself into white foam far below.

"He wouldn't use his legs; I prodded him about it constant--"
He stopped again to brace himself against the shock. Billy Brue still
looked away.
"I told him high altitudes and high livin' would do any man--" Again he
was silent.
"But all he'd ever say was that times had changed since my day, and I
wasn't to mind him." He had himself better in hand now.
"Why, I nursed that boy when he was a dear, funny little red baby with
big round eyes rollin' around to take notice; he took notice awful
quick--fur a baby. Oh, my! Oh, dear! Dan'l!"
Again he stopped.
"And it don't seem more'n yesterday that I was a-teachin' him to throw
the diamond hitch; he could throw the diamond hitch with his eyes shut
--I reckon by the time he was nine or ten. He had his faults, but they
didn't hurt him none; Dan'l J. was a man, now--" He halted once more.
"The dead millionaire," began Billy Brue, reading from the obituary in
the Skiplap Weekly Ledge, "was in his fifty-second year. Genial,
generous to a fault, quick to resent a wrong, but unfailing in his loyalty
to a friend, a man of large ideas, with a genius for large operations, he
was the type of indefatigable enterprise that has builded this Western
empire in a wilderness and given rich sustenance and luxurious homes
to millions of prosperous, happy American citizens. Peace to his ashes!
And a safe trip to his immortal soul over the one-way trail!"
"Yes, yes--it's Dan'l J. fur sure--they got my boy Dan'l that time. Is that
all it says, Billy? Any one with him?"
"Why, this here despatch is signed by young Toler--that's his
confidential man."
"Nobody else?"

The old man was peering at him sharply from under the grey protruding
brows.
"Well, if you must know, Uncle Peter, this is what the notice says that
come by wire to the Ledge office," and he read doggedly:
"The young and beautiful Mrs. Bines, who had been accompanying her
husband on his trip of inspection over the Sierra Northern, is prostrated
by the shock of his sudden death."
The old man became for the first time conscious of the tears in his eyes,
and, pulling down one of the blue woollen shirt sleeves, wiped his wet
cheeks. The slow, painful blush of age crept up across the iron strength
of his face, and passed. He looked away as he spoke.
"I knew it; I knew that. My Dan'l was like all that Frisco bunch. They
get tangled with women sooner or later. I taxed Dan'l with it. I spleened
against it and let him know it. But he was a man and his own master--if
you can rightly call a man his own master that does them things. Do
you know what-fur woman this one was, Billy?"
"Well, last time Dan'l J. was up to Skiplap, there was a swell party on
the car--kind of a coppery-lookin' blonde. Allie Ash, the brakeman on
No. 4, he tells me she used to be in Spokane, and now she'd got her
hooks on to some minin' property up in the Coeur d'Alene. Course, this
mightn't be the one."
The old man had ceased to listen. He was aroused to the need for
action.
"Get movin', Billy! We can get down to Eden to-night; we'll have the
moon fur two hours on the trail soon's the sun's gone. I can get 'em to
drive me over to Skiplap first thing to-morrow, and I can have 'em
make me