Mrs. Kipley watched her from the doorway with an anxious air.
“I hope she ain’t caught anything,” she murmured. “That was a terrible fool remark. I don’t know what there is around just now for her to catch.”
But it is characteristic of the disorder which Miss Hematite had so recently acquired that no one save the person afflicted knows it’s around till the case has taken.
The lad had slipped his fingers in his father’s, and they sat a little while in silence. So Althea and John Carrington had often sat, in that silent communion which is the bond of the finest fellowship.
Mr. Abner Kipley, entering suddenly, with Ned’s suit case in hand and a desire to expatiate on recent events oozing from every pore, viewed this singular proceeding as one further extraordinary manifestation emanating from the same remarkable cause.
“Seems you can teach an old dog new tricks,” he communed with himself. “Probably by to-morrow I’ll be holding hands myself.” He chuckled grimly to himself over the impossible thought. But the glance he gave the lad from under his shaggy eyebrows was unwillingly admiring.
Yet Mr. Kipley prided himself on his unerring attitude of judicial criticism.
The boy swung round in his chair to greet him smilingly.
“You walked over, Mr. Kipley, I assume,” he said, mischievously.
“I didn’t try to kill a horse ’n’ get my neck broke,” responded Mr. Kipley, defensively.
“You picked up thet baby nice, though,” he added, with the air of a man willing to be just.
John Carrington looked at him with an air of sudden inquiry.
“It was lucky,” said the lad, languidly; and he lounged over to the open window, as though the subject was finished.
“I’m goin’ to,” said Mr. Kipley, impatiently, to the growing insistence of John Carrington’s look.
He objected to being hurried in the narration of a story which he rejoiced was his to tell.
“When he,” he began, jerking his head in the lad’s direction, “’lected to ride the Colonel home, he threw that red-backed garmint” – no mere black-and-white could reproduce the patronage of Mr. Kipley’s tone – “’cross the saddle in front of him. ’N’ the Colonel, not being used to the fashions in Paris, bolted. They went up the road’s though they was goin’ to glory, ’n’ didn’t have but one chance to ketch the limited. ’N’ I threw his grip in the wagon ’n’ started after ’em.
“It was good ridin’,” said Mr. Kipley, approvingly, “’n’ everybody thet could turned out to see it. It was interestin’ and free.
“Thet curve by Trevanion’s cottage is a mean place,” Mr. Kipley continued, reflectively. “I’ve run the team into several things there myself, includin’ a dog fight, which c’ncluded about the time we run over the principal fighter’s tail.” He switched himself back on the main track. “Thet baby of Trevanion’s was tryin’ to ketch a hen just as the exhibition come along.”
“Well?” said John Carrington, and his voice whistled like a pistol shot.
“Down with his arm, ’n’ half out of the saddle – grab – ’n’ yank up – ’n’ ’bout face – hand the baby to a long-legged girl – ’n’ off he goes, leaving me to destroy my c’nstitution, breathin’ dust all the way home. Thet’s your son’s idea of gettin’ here,” he concluded, dryly.
John Carrington drew a breath of relief.
“If anything had happened to that baby, we should have had the devil’s own time,” he said. “Trevanion has been sullen ugly ever since his wife died – took his trouble that way – and the baby is the only thing in the world he cares for. If – well, we might have lost the best shift boss in the country.”
Young Carrington stood very still, looking out of the window. If the incident had shaken him a bit, there was at least no outward sign of it.
Mr. Kipley drew nearer to the bed.
“There’s good stuff in him,” he said, semi-confidentially, as though recent residence in a foreign land unfitted one to hear undertone, “’n’ grit. But, for the sake of Moses, get those clo’s offen him.”
Upon which advice, he retired hastily from the room.
John Carrington looked across the room at his son with a smile that was at once quizzical and affectionate.
“Yellow Dog finds you a trifle too picturesque, boy,” he said, and his tone suggested that he at any rate was satisfied. “How about you? Pretty big trial to come back?”
“I should have come, whether you sent for me or not, when I knew you were hurt,” said the boy, and there was a defiant little ring in his voice. “Where should I be, or want to be, but at home and with you?”
John Carrington’s heart beat proudly. This was the kind of son to have. He said “home” as though he meant it. He was loyal. Now he, John Carrington, had an heir to show to some people —
“I needed you,” he said, quietly. “Not on account of this confounded leg; though it’s been hard to be shut up for the first time in my life – hung up to mend, like a china plate. But it made me think I was just mortal, after all. And of your future and Elenore’s. And it’s only fair to you to let you decide how you’d rather have things.”
The look the boy gave him now was a quiet, concentrated attention.
“Without going into details about our mine, that no one but a mining man could understand,” Carrington went on, with a restful security engendered by that look, “I want to tell you the straight facts. It’s characteristic of this region that in sinking every now and then you strike a big hole filled with water – a vug, they call it. Now, we can take care of what we strike ourselves, but the Tray-Spot, which is newer and shallower, is letting us take care of theirs. Instead of pumping it up, they let the water seep through to the Star, and we lift it. It cuts off profits, and makes our mine dangerous. The two mines ought to be under the same management, anyway. Expenses could be cut almost in two. So I wrote the owner of the Tray-Spot – an Easterner – never comes out here – to ask him what he’d sell for. Richards, the superintendent, is a good deal of a scoundrel, and responsible for all the trouble. Of course mining is just a business proposition to those Easterners. They haven’t fought things out here in the early days, as some of us have. And this man had never even been on the ground. Bought the mine from Riley when he went to smash. And he’s childless. No second generation to take it up.
“That’s practically what I wrote him,” Carrington went on, doggedly, “and why it should have struck him just wrong, and turned him pig-head and ugly is beyond me. But he wrote back that if he had never been here, he wasn’t too old to come now. And that if he didn’t have a son, he had a nephew, who was a first-class business man and smart as a steel trap, whom he proposed to bring out here, and to keep on the ground. And that, as he understood from his superintendent that the one son I had was spending his time in Paris studying art, the mines would be better off with his heir than mine. And would I put a selling price on the Star? The Star, that I’ve put my lifeblood into! And that letter” – there was the rage of a wounded lion now – “was the first thing they read me after I came out from the ether to find myself tied up like – like this – ” he finished, at a loss for any adequate comparison.
“We’ve got to fight or to sell,” he finished, “and if anything happened to me, what would you children know about disposing of it? That’s what I’ve thought as I’ve lain here. Hadn’t I better leave things safe for you, if I do have to kill time for a few years myself?”
His eyes looked worn. How many times he had gone over it! How many times affection for his children had warred against his pride in the mine he had discovered, developed, managed, owned! It all seemed a part of