Shortly after the money was paid.

So now he simply stood his own ground, saw that his work was properly done, and waited until the man courted his own punishment. In the meantime, the men mistook his forbearance, his quietness, his smoothness of tones and manner for weakness, and Marley, a bully by nature, and quite incapable of understanding his employer, grew elated and triumphant.

Stephen had been back at the gulch a fortnight or more, when Talbot found late one afternoon some of his tools broken, and this, combined with other work he had to do in town, decided him to go down that afternoon and return the following day before daylight failed. He got ready, locked up his house, and called upon Stephen to say he was going.

Stephen looked quite surprised, Talbot went to town so seldom, and then began to chaff him upon his motives and intentions.

"As it happens, I'm going about some mending of spades," Talbot returned.

"Are you sure it's not the breaking of hearts?" Stephen laughed back from the fire by which he was sitting. "Well, you'll see Katrine any way. Tell her--"

"My dear fellow," interrupted Talbot, impatiently, "I'm not going to see her. I shall have as much as I can do to be back here before mid-day to-morrow," and he went out before the amazed Stephen could say another word.

"Going down town and not going to see Katrine! why, he must be mad,"

e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Stephen mentally; "wonder what his own girl's like anyway."

Then he tossed himself back on the rug and looked at a little postage-stamp photograph Katrine had given him of herself, which he had stuck on the fly-leaf of his Greek testament.

The following morning, before it was fully light, found Talbot toiling up to the west gulch on foot. He had made an early start, as he wanted to be back before the men began work, and the air hung round one and against one's cheek like a sodden blanket in the dusky dawn. It took him over three hours to make the distance, and when he reached his cabin he felt chilled through. All his muscles were stiff and numb from the long climb. He felt a longing to sit down and rest and get a little warmth kindled in his half-frozen limbs. The first thing that encountered him at the main door, which led into the block composed of his own cabin and the tunnel, was a sheet of smooth ice, only an inch deep perhaps, but glazing over the ground from where he stood to his own door. He saw at once what had happened: the waste water from the workings had been diverted from its proper outlet, and had simply run freely at its own will over the level ground. Talbot's face darkened as his eyes rested on it. It was Marley's business to see that the egress for the water was kept free and unblocked with ice, and only yesterday he had given him orders to attend to it. It was the second or third time he had returned to find the entrance to his own house almost impa.s.sable. Crossing over with difficulty the frozen stream, he looked into his cabin. There was about a foot of muddy water and ice covering the floor and floating his slippers and some pairs of socks he had left by the hearth. The fire was out, and the lower part of the stove filled with mud and water. The bed was completely soddened, the blankets and quilt dabbling in the water.

He did not go beyond the threshold. After a minute's survey he turned and walked down the tunnel leading to the shaft where he knew the men were working.

"Marley!" he called down the shaft.

"What is it?" came up from below in a surly tone.

"You have allowed the waste to run into the tunnel again, and my cabin is flooded."

"Well, clean it out then!"

"I think that is your business," answered the dry cutting tones from above. "Come up at once, and see to it."

"I'm not going to swab out your blasted, dirty old cabin," shouted Marley hoa.r.s.ely from the bottom of the shaft. "Do it yourself."

A strange look came over Talbot's quiet face. It whitened and set in the darkness. He knew his men were gathered about Marley, listening to what pa.s.sed, and this open defiance of his authority, this public insult before them, angered him excessively. He made his answer very quietly, however, only his voice was peculiarly hard, and the words seemed to drop like ice on the men standing listening below.

"I allow no one to speak to me like that here," he said. "This is the last day that you work on the claim."

"I'll work here as long as it suits me," retorted Marley, with an oath.

"You can't turn me out."

"We will see about that," returned Talbot, in the same even, frigid tone, and he turned away from the pit and walked back to his flooded cabin.

He found Denbigh had arrived there. It was close to the luncheon hour by this time, and he was doing what he could to get rid of the water. He looked up, and saw at once from the other's face there had been some unusual incident.

"What's up?" he inquired, standing still, with his mop in his hand.

"That fellow Marley is making all the trouble he can," returned Talbot.

"I have just told him he has got to get out, that's all."

Denbigh's face fell. "I think it's a bad job," he remarked after a minute. "You know what a desperate devil he is; he would kill you, I believe, if he had to give up his work."

"Well, he has been trying to boss this business for some time now,"

returned Talbot, "and I am tired of it. To-day he finished with a gross insult before a lot of the men, and it's time, I think, to show him and them who is boss here."

"Couldn't you overlook it?" replied Denbigh, tentatively, with a scared look on his thin face.

"I have no wish to," replied Talbot, coldly. "There is bound to be trouble some time. It may just as well come now as later."

Denbigh opened his mouth to make a further protest, but Talbot stopped him.

"Don't let us discuss it any further, please," he said curtly, and Denbigh closed his mouth and dropped back on his knees to his floor-mopping.

Talbot drew out his pistol, glanced over it, and buckled it round his waist.

When the room was reduced to some appearance of dry comfort again, the two men sat down to their luncheon in silence. Talbot was too excited to swallow a mouthful of the food. Although so calm outwardly, and with such absolute command over his pa.s.sion, anger was with him, like a flame at white heat, rushing through his veins.

As they sat they heard the miners tramping by the cabin door, and saw their heads pa.s.s the window as they went out to get their mid-day food.

Denbigh himself, as soon as he had finished, made an excuse and departed. He was eager to join his companions before they came back to work and hear some more delectable details of the row than he could get from Talbot. When all his men had filed out from the tunnel, Talbot went into the pa.s.sage and walked up to the heavy wooden door and shut it, barring it with a steady hand. This was the main entrance to the shaft, and at the present time the only one. The door was never, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, closed, but stood open all day for the men to pa.s.s in and out to their work. When he had fastened it he walked back, turned into his own cabin, and took up his place at the window. From here he could see the men as they came back. They began to return earlier than was their wont, knowing that trouble was in the air, and each one was anxious to be on the spot for the crisis. All through the lunch hour Talbot's words and the possibility of d.i.c.k Marley being obliged to "quit" was the sole topic of conversation.

d.i.c.k talked largely, and with a great many of the miners his oaths, and the imputations of cowardice he heaped on his employer, carried the day.

Some of the others, quieter men with keener perceptions, merely listened in silence, and shook their heads when appealed to for an opinion.

"I dunno. He's got grit," remarked one between mouthfuls of bread and bacon, in response to a sanguinary burst of d.i.c.k's.

"He's a slip," answered d.i.c.k, contemptuously.

"But a dead sure shot."

"He'd funk it," said d.i.c.k, his face paling a little. "He'd never stand up to me. He's got no fight in him. Why, he's managed that claim there now for two years and he's never so much as fired a shot over it. Now that fellow Robinson wot's got the claim a mile farther up the creek, he's the boy for me. Why, he hadn't been there two days before there was trouble, and at the end of the week we was reckoning up he had made five corpses over it."

He looked round the circle, and there was a murmur of admiring a.s.sent.

The old miner nodded his head slowly as he munched his beans.

"Yes, that's Talbot's way; he's just as smooth as b.u.t.ter as long as you know he's the boss and act accordin', but jest as soon as you begin to try and boss him, you'll know you have your hands full."

d.i.c.k took another pull at the tin whisky bottle, and tightened his belt.

As the men returned to their work they were surprised to see their employer leaning idly against his window, and still more surprised when they pa.s.sed round to the main entrance to find the great door shut.

Talbot came himself and let each man in, in turn as they came up, shutting the door afterwards. Their curiosity at this unusual state of things was great, but there was a look on the pale, stern face they encountered on the threshold that froze all open question or comment, and each man went by silently to his work. When they got down towards the shaft and out of hearing, however, their tongues were loosened again.

"'E's waiting for d.i.c.k to come back, that's what he is," volunteered one of the miners; "and somehow or other I don't feel jest dying to be in d.i.c.k's shoes when he do come."

There was no dissent openly offered to this guarded opinion. Most of the men hung about in the tunnel, and seemed unwilling to quit the scene of the coming contest.

At last, among the final batch of men, Marley came sauntering past the window. Talbot's eyes flashed as the tiger's when the brush crackles.

He walked out to the great door and flung it wide open. d.i.c.k fell back a step, and the little crowd of miners who accompanied him closed in round the two, open mouthed and eyed, to see the battle.

"You can't come in," and the sentence had an accent of inflexibility that made it seem like a drawn sword across the entrance.

"To h.e.l.l I can't!" returned d.i.c.k, a dull red flush coming over his face.