"Now your talkin' and not yelpin'," said Steptoe, with slow insolence. "D----d if I didn't begin to think you kalkilated I was goin' to employ you as lawyers! Nothing is to prevent him from gettin' up HIS gang, and we hope he'll do it, for you see it puts us both on the same level before the law, for we're both BREAKIN' IT. And we kalkilate that we're as good as any roughs they can pick up at Heavy Tree."
"I reckon!" "Ye can count us in!" said half a dozen voices eagerly.
"But what's the job goin' to pay us?" persisted a Sydney man. "An' arter we've beat off this other gang, are we going to scrub along on grub wages until we're yanked out by process-sarvers three months later? If that's the ticket I'm not in it. I aren't no b--y quartz miner."
"We ain't going to do no more MINING there than the bank," said Steptoe fiercely. "And the bank ain't going to wait no three months for the end of the lawsuit. They'll float the stock of that mine for a couple of millions, and get out of it with a million before a month. And they'll have to buy us off to do that. What they'll pay will depend upon the lead; but we don't move off those claims for less than five thousand dollars, which will be two hundred and fifty dollars to each man. But," said Steptoe in a lower but perfectly distinct voice, "if there should be a row,--and they BEGIN it,--and in the scuffle Tom Marshall, their only witness, should happen to get in the way of a revolver or have his head caved in, there might be some difficulty in their holdin' ANY OF THE MINE against honest, hardworking miners in possession. You hear me?"
There was a breathless silence for the moment, and a slight movement of the men in their chairs, but never in fear or protest.
Every one had heard the speaker distinctly, and every man distinctly understood him. Some of them were criminals, one or two had already the stain of blood on their hands; but even the most timid, who at other times might have shrunk from suggested assassination, saw in the speaker's words only the fair removal of a natural enemy.
"All right, boys. I'm ready to wade in at once. Why ain't we on the road now? We might have been but for foolin' our time away on that man Van Loo."
"Van Loo!" repeated Hall eagerly,--"Van Loo! Was he here?"
"Yes," said Steptoe shortly, administering a kick under the table to Hall, as he had no wish to revive the previous irritability of his comrades. "He's gone, but," turning to the others, "you'd have had to wait for Mr. Hall's arrival, anyhow. And now you've got your order you can start. Go in two parties by different roads, and meet on the other side of the hotel at Hymettus. I'll be there before you. Pick up some shovels and drills as you go; remember you're honest miners, but don't forget your shootin'-irons for all that. Now scatter."
It was well that they did, vacating the room more cheerfully and sympathetically than they had entered it, or Hall's manifest disturbance over Van Loo's visit would have been noticed. When the last man had disappeared Hall turned quickly to Steptoe. "Well, what did he say? Where has he gone?"
"Don't know," said Steptoe, with uneasy curtness. "He was running away with a woman--well, Mrs. Barker, if you want to know," he added, with rising anger, "the wife of one of those cursed partners. Jack Hamlin was here, and was jockeying to stop him, and interfered. But what the devil has that job to do with our job?"
He was losing his temper; everything seemed to turn upon this infernal Van Loo!
"He wasn't running away with Mrs. Barker," gasped Hall,--"it was with her MONEY! and the fear of being connected with the Wheat Trust swindle which he organized, and with our money which I lent him for the same purpose. And he knows all about that job, for I wanted to get him to go into it with us. Your name and mine ain't any too sweet-smelling for the bank, and we ought to have a middleman who knows business to arrange with them. The bank daren't object to him, for they've employed him in even shadier transactions than this when THEY didn't wish to appear. I knew he was in difficulties along with Mrs. Barker's speculations, but I never thought him up to this. And," he added, with sudden desperation, "YOU trusted him, too."
In an instant Steptoe caught the frightened man by the shoulders and was bearing him down on the table. "Are you a traitor, a liar, or a besotted fool?" he said hoarsely. "Speak. WHEN and WHERE did I trust him?"
"You said in your note--I was--to--help him," gasped Hall.
"My note," repeated Steptoe, releasing Hall with astonished eyes.
"Yes," said Hall, tremblingly searching in his vest pocket. "I brought it with me. It isn't much of a note, but there's your signature plain enough."
He handed Steptoe a torn piece of paper folded in a three-cornered shape. Steptoe opened it. He instantly recognized the paper on which he had written his name and sent up to his wife at the Boomville Hotel. But, added to it, in apparently the same hand, in smaller characters, were the words, "Help Van Loo all you can."
The blood rushed into his face. But he quickly collected himself, and said hurriedly, "All right, I had forgotten it. Let the d----d sneak go. We've got what's a thousand times better in this claim at Marshall's, and it's well that he isn't in it to scoop the lion's share. Only we must not waste time getting there now. You go there first, and at once, and set those rascals to work. I'll follow you before Marshall comes up. Get; I'll settle up here."
His face darkened once more as Hall hurried away, leaving him alone. He drew out the piece of paper from his pocket and stared at it again. Yes; it was the one he had sent to his wife. How did Van Loo get hold of it? Was he at the hotel that night? Had he picked it up in the hall or passage when the servant dropped it?
When Hall handed him the paper and he first recognized it a fiendish thought, followed by a spasm of more fiendish rage, had sent the blood to his face. But his crude common sense quickly dismissed that suggestion of his wife's complicity with Van Loo.