David Vallory

FOR good and sufficient reasons Silas Plegg did not wish to show himself in the dance-hall opposite the Murtrie Mine ore sheds. On all accounts he would have been glad to be assured that he had thus far gone unrecognized through the ill-lighted Powder Can street. Standing before the wide-open doors of this other outreaching of Dargin’s, he could pass the shuffling dancers in review. The woman he was looking for was not among them, and neither was she at the piano.

Turning away with a sigh of relief he crossed the street, circled the ore sheds, and came upon the row of shack cottages belonging to the Murtrie company. Only one of the cottages showed a lighted window, and here, again, Plegg made careful reconnaissance before he knocked on the door. It was Judith Fallon who opened to him.

“Oh, ’tis you, is it?” she said, when the light fell upon him. “If it’s my father you’re wanting, he’ll be over at the mine. ’Tis his week to be on the night shift.”

“No, I don’t want to see your father, Judith,” he said quietly. “I came to see you. May I come in?”

The black eyes snapped and their light was unfriendly. “’Tis an honor to the likes of me. The door is open.”

Plegg accepted the scant welcome and went in. The interior of the cottage was plain almost to poverty. Since the young woman would not sit down he was forced to plunge bluntly into his errand.

“I’ve come to you, Judith, because I am David Vallory’s friend,” he began. “Have I made a mistake?”

Her attitude was still antagonistic. “You needn’t be worrying,” she snapped. “I know my place. ’Tis not I that will be running after Davie Vallory.”

“You misunderstood me completely,” he hastened to say. And then: “Won’t you please sit down?”

She moved toward the lighted window. “’Tis better that I don’t—and that you don’t,” she flung out; and Plegg was quick to take the hint. She was expecting some one else, and the some one would doubtless be Dargin, the man who had constituted himself her protector.

“I’ll take a chance, Judith—for Vallory’s sake,” he thrust in boldly. “Won’t you do the same?”

“’Tis himself would kill you if he found you here. But what is it you’ll want to be saying about Davie?”

There was neither time nor opportunity for a guarded approach to his object, and Plegg plunged again.

“Listen, Judith: Black Jack has just been told something that gives him a strangle hold on Vallory; if he uses it, it will cost Vallory his place on this job, to say the least. I’m not saying that Dargin wouldn’t be justified, from his own point of view. Vallory would clean up these Powder Can joints if he had the authority—which he hasn’t, and won’t have. But he has said he would, and Dargin knows it.”

“How would Jack be using this thing that you haven’t tied a name to?” she asked.

“By passing it on to Lushing.”

“That black-hearted devil!” she burst out. “’Tis little but the back of my hand that I’m owing him!”

Plegg saw his opening and drove the wedge promptly.

“We all know Lushing,” he said; “you probably have good reasons for hating him.”

“Reasons, it is? Do you know what he’d be doing to me? For shame I can’t tell you. But if Jack Dargin had listened to him, it’s not here that I’d be, keeping house for my father!”

“Dargin wants to marry you?” said Plegg quickly.

The woman’s hard black eyes grew suddenly tender. “’Tis not all bad he is, Mr. Plegg. Show me the man like him that would do what he’s done.”

Plegg had never faced a problem requiring swifter or more skilful handling. In the very nature of it he had to take much for granted; to assume the values of the unknown quantities where he could not demonstrate them.

“You knew Vallory before you came here, didn’t you?” he asked.

Her eyes fell. “I grew up with him—in Middleboro.”

Plegg smiled. It was easier now.

“I’m not going to ask you why you refused to talk with him the other night; we’ll let that go. I’m going to leave this thing with you, Judith. David Vallory stands to get a knife in the back. Jim Lushing will do the stabbing, but it will be Dargin who will hand him the knife. Your woman’s heart will tell you what to do, and how to do it.”

She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t—I can’t!” she shuddered. “Himself would kill me, and I’d not be blaming him—after what he’s done for me in this place. Think of what you’d be asking me to do—to put the double-cross on the one man who would be caring anything for me!”

Plegg caught his breath and took his last long leap in the dark.

“Dargin is Dargin,” he said, speaking slowly, “but—you love David Vallory, Judith. That’s all I had to say; good-night.” And he opened the door and vanished.

Having thus done his best to avert a possible tragedy—at the possible cost of another tragedy—the first assistant owned but one pressing anxiety, namely, to get out of the mining-camp speedily, and without stumbling upon some one of the late-hour stragglers who might recognize him.

Leaving the Fallon cottage, he was at first minded to climb the steep slope of Gold Hill, thus making his exit without passing again through the town street. But the night was dark, and there was no path over the hill shoulder that he could recall. Dismissing the alternative, he faced about to return as he had come; but before he had taken a dozen steps toward the street the lights of the dance-hall opposite showed him a man turning the corner at the ore sheds and coming toward him.

Though the distance was too great and the light too uncertain to enable him to identify the man, there could be little doubt that it was Dargin. Judith Fallon had shown plainly that she was expecting him. Instantly Plegg realized that there were likely to be consequences if Dargin should meet him. The Fallon house was the only one in the shack-cottage group that showed any signs of life, and Dargin would be swift to draw conclusions. But there was even a greater danger than this to be feared. Plegg had left Judith Fallon in tears, wrestling with the sharpest problem that can confront any woman, gentle or simple. If Dargin should find her thus, and before she was given time to compose herself....

Plegg’s hand flew to his hip pocket and his resolve was taken. Of the two evils he would choose that which seemed to be the lesser. Half-way down the little hill he met the master gambler and blocked his path. Dargin stopped and thrust his head forward for a better sight of the obstructionist. Then: “Oh, it’s you, is it? What the hell——”

“I was looking for you, Dargin,” Plegg said promptly, turning fugitive expectation into aggressive fact. Then he added the whole-cloth lie. “Somebody said I’d find you at John Fallon’s.”

“Well, now that you’ve found me, what of it?”

It may be imagined that never, in a life-time that had not been in any manner devoid of exciting moments, had Silas Plegg been more sorely put to it to fill a suddenly yawning gap. But at any cost time must be gained.

“It’s a personal matter, Dargin,” he explained coolly. “Word has been passed in camp that you’re out gunning for Vallory. I’d like to believe that it’s nothing but camp gossip; some of the hard-boiled eggs talking just to make a noise. How about it?”

“What business is it of yours?”

“I’m making it my business, Jack. Vallory’s my boss and my friend. He isn’t a gun-toter, and you know it. He’d stand just about as much show with you as these pick-and-shovel men do betting against your faro-game.”

“I haven’t said I was after him, have I?”

“Not to me, you haven’t. And I don’t ask you either to say it or deny it. All I want to say is this: if you go gunning for Vallory, you’ve got to include me. You understand?”

The giant grunted. “Perhaps you’d like to try it out right now?” he suggested.

“As you please,” said Plegg calmly. “I’m heeled, and I know you are. If you think you can get to it quicker than I can, the bars are down.”

This time the “killer’s” grunt lapsed into a chuckle.

“I don’t need a man for breakfast to-morrow morning,” he said. “When I do, I’ll let you know. S’pose you get out o’ the way and let me pass.”

“With pleasure,” snapped Plegg. “Only what I say, goes. If you hit Vallory, you hit me. And it will be safer if you hit me first, and you always know where to find me.”

Judith’s saving interval having thus been bought and paid for, Plegg stood aside and let Dargin have the path. But after he had left the town behind and was plodding across the basin on his way back to the headquarters camp and his long-deferred rest, he was weighing judicially the value of the expedient to which he had resorted. To which extreme of the arc would the pendulum of a woman’s emotions be carried? Would Judith Fallon be true to whatever feeling she still cherished for David Vallory? Or would she refuse to betray the man who, so far as his limitations had permitted, had stood between her and utter degradation?

“I guess it’s on the knees of the gods,” was the first assistant’s final summing-up of the matter; the conclusion reached as he was crossing the yard tracks to the isolated bunk car. “There may be some man living who can tell what a woman will do under given conditions, but the good Lord knows I’m not that man.”

And so leaving it he swung up the steps of the car and crept to his bunk, quietly, so as not to disturb his sleeping chief.