CHAPTER III

THE DEPARTURE OF JOE LING

FOR a moment, Beatrice paused on the landing to consider who it might be who knocked at the door.

"Was it Christina?" she wondered; "or had some of those shouting men-"

She was startled by a sound within the house the noise of a door opening and closing softly. She had turned on the light above her head and could see, in the shaft of brightness which it dropped through the window, that some one had slipped out from the side entrance just below. The stealthy figure of Joe Ling, the cook, with a pole balanced over his shoulder, and at each end of it a heavy basket, was slipping away into the dark with that short-stepping trot of a hurried Chinaman. He had brought those same baskets, containing his varied possessions, to their house three days before. was plain that he not only considered his term of employment with them at an end, but that he was about to shake the dust of Ely from his silent, Chinese-slippered feet.

It

"And we ought to go, too," Beatrice pondered, staring fascinated at this ominous portent; "but how?"

She called softly before she dared draw the bolt of the front door, and was inexpressibly relieved to hear the sound of a woman's voice. On the threshold stood Christina Jensen, and with her was Sam, Dan O'Leary's helper at the livery-stable.

"This boy here seemed like to wake the dead with his knocking," the woman said, "but we could n't be sure we were heard above all this noise." There was no need for explanations, with that red flare lighting the whole village. "Things have broken loose quicker than we thought; the men have set fire to one of the warehouses and have

"We will go at once," Beatrice agreed. She turned back to the living-room to gather up such essential possessions as could be put together for hasty packing. In the midst of her wild preparations, however, Aunt Anna, with Nancy, came slowly down the stair, looking very white and frightened.

"What are you doing?" she questioned; and from the combined explanations of Christina, Sam, and her nieces, she seemed somehow to divine what had happened.

"You may take the girls to the station," she said to Sam. "They can travel back alone, but I am not going."

"But you must!" cried Nancy. "You won't be safe. You can never get well in a tumult like this."

Aunt Anna hesitated. She was growing whiter every moment.

"I did not come here to get well," she said at last. "I came for something very different. And I am not going back."

She swayed and caught at the railing, too ill to argue further. Nancy flung her arms about her while she still strove to speak. She sent Beatrice a desperate, imploring glance when no words would come.

"You must make her go," Christina insisted. "Sam can lift her on the train. She will thank you in the end."

Beatrice shook her head.

"I don't understand why she wants to stay," she said, "but stay she shall. There is only one other thing to do. We will go to the cabin up on the mountain. Sam, can

you get the keys from Dan O'Leary's house? The place has been used lately and it is safe from this fire, at least. Nancy, get Aunt Anna's things and I will pack up the rest. We can't start too soon."

Half an hour later the rickety old carriage was groaning and lurching up the mountain road. Very little was said as they climbed steadily up and up through the dark. Beatrice, looking back, could see the red flames still leaping madly, could hear, though faintly, the shouts of the men as they ran here and there to bring fresh fuel to the fire. She turned at last to Sam, beside whom she sat in the front seat, and fell to asking questions.

"Will the strike last long, do you think?" she began.

Sam chuckled. "It's not a strike-that's just where the pinch is. While they were holding their meeting and arguing about how soon they should quit, there comes word from the company that the work is shut down until further notice. The men had all just been paid, but something has gone wrong with the money end of the business, people say, and there's nothing to go on with. Anyway, there's no strike; the men higher up beat them to it, and the Bohunks are in a fine rage. Christina is right, the city of Ely, just now, is no place for ladies."

"And this Thorvik was the man who wanted the strike?" Beatrice asked.

"Yes, ma'am. Dan O'Leary used to be the one the men looked up to he is foreman of one of the ditching gangs. Dan owns the livery-stable and one of the stores, so being a property-holder makes him more careful than the rest. He's hot-headed enough, but things were n't so bad until this fellow out of Russia came to town. He's an ugly customer and there's no knowing what he won't stir up."

Beatrice's mind was going back over the help Christina had given them and the odd circumstances of that first meeting. had one more question to ask.

She

"Did you know Christina Jensen's son Olaf, who went away a year ago?"

"Sure I did!" responded Sam, with enthusiasm; "he was the best friend I ever had. I'm wishing," he added with a sigh, "that things were so he could come home again."

"But why can't he?"

"There's Thorvik, that he hates; and besides, Olaf got into a- -a little trouble down in the construction camp before he went away." Sam began somewhat cautiously,

but warmed to his narrative as he went on. "We were both working with the ditching gang, out along the river. We liked Dan O'Leary, but we did n't much fancy the Bohunks that we had to work with. Olaf was always telling them that they would do anything for money and nothing without it, and he was about right. I had gone to town this day, but Dan told me afterward what happened. It was a hot, clear morning, and Olaf suddenly straightened up and pointed over to a high rock beyond the river, Mason's Bluff, a place well known to be dangerous. There seemed to be a man hanging by a rope half-way down the face of the cliff; not able, so it looked like, to get up or down. The laborers did n't take much interest; said any one was a fool to tackle such a climb, and they would n't, one of them, budge an inch to go and help him. Then Olaf said, just kind of casual, ‘it must be that scientist fellow that was in the camp yesterday. Do you remember that rich tenderfoot that went around spending money and tapping rocks?' Every man dropped his tools at that, for if there is a chance for a reward, these fellows are on the job at once. They all went scurrying down to the river, getting across any way they could, and running like rabbits through the brush, each one bound to be first on the spot."

"And did they save him?" Nancy, who was listening from behind, leaned over to put the breathless question.

"The first ones were within a hundred yards when the man fell."

The two girls gasped, but Sam went on with a dry chuckle: "They went nearer to pick him up and found he was a dummy man, stuffed with straw. Then they remembered how Olaf had been laughing at them for wanting money for whatever they did, and they came back in a pretty ugly temper, but Olaf was gone. Probably he meant to go anyway, and wanted to have a last fling."

Sam drew up his horses, for they had come into the shadow of the pines and had reached the gate. In the stillness, following the uproar below, they could hear the weird yapping of a coyote somewhere in the hills.

CHAPTER IV NEIGHBORS

"Do you remember," said Nancy, as she and Beatrice viewed each other across a wilderness of overflowing trunks, half-unpacked boxes of bedding, baskets of china, and