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Page 64
And now that they had told her ALL, they only wanted to know what
had first excited HER suspicions, and driven her to seek the well
as the object of Starbuck's machinations? THEY had noticed her
manner when she entered the house that night, and Starbuck's
evident annoyance. Had she taxed him with her suspicions, and so
discovered a clue?
It was a terrible temptation to Polly to pose as a more perfect
heroine, and one may not blame her if she did not rise entirely
superior to it. Her previous belief, that the head of the
accomplice at the opening of the garden was that of a GHOST, she
now felt was certainly in the way, as was also her conduct to
Starbuck, whom she believed to be equally frightened, and whom she
never once suspected! So she said, with a certain lofty
simplicity, that there were SOME THINGS which she really did not
care to talk about, and Larry and her father left her that night
with the firm conviction that the rascal Starbuck had tried to
tempt her to fly with him and his riches, and had been crushingly
foiled. Polly never denied this, and once, in later days, when
admiringly taxed with it by Larry, she admitted with dove-like
simplicity that she MAY have been too foolishly polite to her
father's guest for the sake of her father's hotel.
However, all this was of small account to the thrilling news of a
new discovery and working of the "old gold ledge" at Buena Vista!
As the three kept their secret from the world, the discovery was
accepted in the neighborhood as the result of careful examination
and prospecting on the part of Colonel Swinger and his partner
Larry Hawkins. And when the latter gentleman afterwards boldly
proposed to Polly Swinger, she mischievously declared that she
accepted him only that the secret might not go "out of the family."
LIBERTY JONES'S DISCOVERY
It was at best merely a rocky trail winding along a shelf of the
eastern slope of the Santa Cruz range, yet the only road between
the sea and the inland valley. The hoof-prints of a whole century
of zigzagging mules were impressed on the soil, regularly soaked by
winter rains and dried by summer suns during that period; the
occasional ruts of heavy, rude, wooden wheels--long obsolete--were
still preserved and visible. Weather-worn boulders and ledges,
lying in the unclouded glare of an August sky, radiated a quivering
heat that was intolerable, even while above them the masts of
gigantic pines rocked their tops in the cold southwestern trades
from the unseen ocean beyond. A red, burning dust lay everywhere,
as if the heat were slowly and visibly precipitating itself.
The creaking of wheels and axles, the muffled plunge of hoofs, and
the cough of a horse in the dust thus stirred presently broke the
profound woodland silence. Then a dirty white canvas-covered
emigrant wagon slowly arose with the dust along the ascent. It was
travel-stained and worn, and with its rawboned horses seemed to
have reached the last stage of its journey and fitness. The only
occupants, a man and a girl, appeared to be equally jaded and
exhausted, with the added querulousness of discontent in their
sallow and badly nourished faces. Their voices, too, were not
unlike the creaking they had been pitched to overcome, and there
was an absence of reserve and consciousness in their speech, which
told pathetically of an equal absence of society.
"It's no user talkin'! I tell ye, ye hain't got no more sense than
a coyote! I'm sick and tired of it, doggoned if I ain't! Ye ain't
no more use nor a hossfly,--and jest ez hinderin'! It was along o'
you that we lost the stock at Laramie, and ef ye'd bin at all
decent and takin', we'd hev had kempany that helped, instead of
laggin' on yere alone!"
"What did ye bring me for?" retorted the girl shrilly. "I might
hev stayed with Aunt Marty. I wasn't hankerin' to come."
"Bring ye for?" repeated her father contemptuously; "I reckoned ye
might he o' some account here, whar wimmin folks is skeerce, in the
way o' helpin',--and mebbe gettin' yer married to some likely
feller. Mighty much chance o' that, with yer yaller face and skin
and bones."
"Ye can't blame me for takin' arter you, dad," she said, with a
shrill laugh, but no other resentment of his brutality.
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