CHAPTER XVII
"GOD SAVE YOU KINDLY"
A nurse from the hospital had relieved Diane and Sheba at daybreak.They slept until the middle of the afternoon, then under orders from thedoctor walked out to take the air. They were to divide the night watchbetween them and he said that he wanted them fit for service. The feverof the patient was subsiding. He slept a good deal, and in the intervalsbetween had been once or twice quite rational.
The thoughts of the cousins drew their steps toward the jail. Shebalooked at Diane.
"Will they let us see him, do you think?"
"Perhaps. We can try."
Gopher Jones was not proof against the brisk confidence with which Mrs.Paget demanded admittance. He stroked his unshaven chin while he chewedhis quid, then reluctantly got his keys.
The prisoner was sitting on the bed. His heart jumped with gladness whenhe looked up.
Diane shook hands cheerfully. "How is the criminal?"
"Better for hearing your kind voice," he answered.
His eyes strayed to the ebon-haired girl in the background. They met atroubled smile, grave and sweet.
"Awfully good of you to come to see me," he told Sheba gratefully. "Howis Macdonald?"
"Better, we hope. He knew Diane this afternoon."
Mrs. Paget did most of the talking, but Gordon contributed his share.Sheba did not say much, but it seemed to the young man that there wasa new tenderness in her manner, the expression of a gentle kindnessthat went out to him because he needed it. The walk had whipped thecolor into her cheeks and she bloomed in that squalid cell like a desertrose. There was in the fluent grace of the slender, young body a naive,virginal sweetness that took him by the throat. He knew that shebelieved in him and the trouble rolled from his heart like a cold,heavy wave.
"We haven't talked to Mr. Macdonald yet about the attack on him,"Diane explained. "But he must have recognized the men. There are manyfootprints at the ford, showing how they moved over the ground as theyfought. So he could not have been unconscious from the first blow."
"Unless they were masked he must have known them. It was light enough,"agreed Elliot.
"Peter is still trying to get the officers to accept bail, but I don'tthink he will succeed. There is a good deal of feeling in town againstyou."
"Because I am supposed to be an enemy to an open Alaska, I judge."
"Mainly that. Wally Selfridge has been talking a good deal. He takes itfor granted that you are guilty. We'll have to wait in patience till Mr.Macdonald speaks and clears you. The doctor won't let us mention thesubject to him until he comes to it of his own free will."
Gopher stuck his head in at the door. "You'll have to go, ladies. Time'sup."
When Sheba bade the prisoner good-bye it was with a phrase of the oldIrish vernacular. "God save you kindly."
He knew the peasant's answer to the wish and gave it. "And you too."
The girl left the prison with a mist in her eyes. Her cousin looked ather with a queer, ironic little smile of affection. To be in trouble wasa sure passport to the sympathy of Sheba. Now both her lovers were ina sad way. Diane wondered which of them would gain most from this newtwist of fate.
Sheba turned to Mrs. Paget with an impulsive little burst of feminineferocity. "Why do they put him in prison when they must know he didn'tdo it--that he couldn't do such a thing?"
"They don't all know as well as you do how noble he is, my dear,"answered Diane dryly.
"But it's just absurd to think that he would plan the murder of a man hehas broken bread with for a few hundred dollars."
Diane flashed another odd little glance in the direction of her cousin.Probably Sheba was the one woman in Kusiak who did not know thatMacdonald had served an ultimatum on Elliot to get out or fight and thattheir rivalry over her favor was at the bottom of the difficulty betweenthem.
"It will work out all right," promised the older cousin.
Returning from their walk, they met Wally Selfridge coming out of thePaget house.
"Did you see Mr. Macdonald?" asked Diane.
"Yes. He's quite rational now." There was a jaunty little strut oftriumph in Wally's cock-sure manner.
Mrs. Paget knew he had made himself very busy securing evidence againstGordon. He was probably trying to curry favor with his chief. The littleman always had been jealous of Peter. Perhaps he was attempting to raphim over the shoulder of Elliot because the Government official was afriend of Paget. Just now his insolent voice suggested a special causefor exultation.
The reason Wally was so pleased with himself was that he had dropped ahint into the ear of the wounded man not to clear Elliot of complicityin the attack upon him. The news that the special investigator had beenarrested for robbery and attempted murder, flashed all over the UnitedStates, would go far to neutralize any report he might make againstthe validity of the Macdonald claims. If to this could be added laterreports of an indictment, a trial, and possibly a conviction, it wouldnot matter two straws what Elliot said in his official statement to theLand Office.
Since the attack upon his chief, Selfridge had moved on the presumptionthat Elliot had been in a conspiracy to get rid of him. He accepted theguilt of the field agent because this theory jumped with the interestof Wally and his friends. As a politician he intended to play this newdevelopment for all it was worth.
He had been shocked at the sight of Macdonald. The terrible beating andthe loss of blood had sapped all the splendid, vital strength of theScotchman. His battered head was swathed in bandages, but the white facewas bruised and disfigured. The wounded man was weak as a kitten; onlythe steady eyes told that he was still strong and unconquered.
"I want to talk business for a minute, Miss Sedgwick. Will you pleasestep out?" said Macdonald to his nurse.
She hesitated. "The doctor says--"
"Do as I say, please."
The nurse left them alone. Wally told the story of the evidence againstElliot in four sentences. His chief caught the point at once.
After Selfridge had gone, the wounded man lay silent thinking out hisprogramme. Not for a moment did he doubt that he was going to live, andhis brain was already busy planning for the future. By some freak ofluck the cards had been stacked by destiny in his favor. He knew nowthat in the violence of his anger against Elliot he had made a mistake.To have killed his rival would have been fatal to the Kamatlah coalclaims, would have alienated his best friends, and would have prejudicedhopelessly his chances with Sheba. Fate had been kind to him. He hadbeen in the wrong and it had put him in the right. By the same cut ofthe cards young Elliot had been thrust down from an impregnable positionto one in which he was a discredited suspect. With all this evidenceto show that he had conspired against Macdonald, his report to theDepartment would be labor lost.
Diane came into the sick-room stripping her gloves after the walk.Macdonald smiled feebly at her and fired the first shot of his campaignto defeat the enemy.
"Has Elliot been captured yet?" he asked weakly.
The keen eyes of his hostess fastened upon him. "Captured! What do youmean? It was Gordon Elliot that brought you in and saved your life."
"Brought me from where?"
"From where he found you unconscious--at the ford."
"That's his story, is it?"
Macdonald shut his eyes wearily, but his incredulous voice had suggesteda world of innuendo.
The young woman stood with her gloves crushed tight in both hands. Itwas her nature to be always a partisan. Without any reserve she was forGordon in this new fight upon him. What had Wally Selfridge been sayingto Macdonald? She longed mightily to ask the sick man some questions,but the orders of the doctor were explicit. Did the mine-owner mean tosuggest that he had identified Elliot as one of his assailants? Thething was preposterous.
And yet--that was plainly what he had meant to imply. If he told such astory, things would go hard with Gordon. In court it would clinch thecase against him by supplying the one missing link in the chain ofcircumstantial ev
idence.
Diane, in deep thought, frowned down upon the wounded man, who seemedalready to have fallen into a light sleep. She told herself that thiswas some of Wally Selfridge's deviltry. Anyhow, she would talk it overwith Peter.