Read Ebook: Jack Chanty: A Story of Athabasca by Footner Hulbert Potts William Sherman Illustrator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1533 lines and 67161 words, and 31 pages

She took his assent for granted. "In the first place, about your name," she chattered; "what am I to call you? Mr. Chanty would be ridiculous, and without the Mister it's too familiar."

"You don't have to bother about a handle to my name," he said. "Call me Jack, just as you speak to Jean Paul or Charlbogin, or any of the men about camp."

"That's different," she said. "I do not call Mr. Garrod, Frank, nor Captain Vassall, Sidney. You can make believe what you choose, but I know you are my kind of person. If you are a Canadian, I'm sure we know heaps and heaps of the same people."

Jack began to find himself. "If you insist on a respectable name call me Mr. 'Awkins," he said lightly.

"Pshaw! Is that the best you can invent?" she said.

It was a long time since Jack had played conversational battledore and shuttlecock. He found he liked it rather. "'Awkins is an honorable name," he said. "There's Sir 'Awkeye 'Awkins of 'Awkwood 'All, not to speak of 'Enery 'Awkins and Liza that everybody knows about. And over on this side there's Happy Hawkins. All relatives of mine."

The girl approved him because he played the foolish game without grinning foolishly, like most men. Indeed his lip still curled. "You do not resemble the 'Awkinses I have known," she said.

It appeared from this that the little lady could flatter men as well as queen it over them. Jack was sensible that he was being flattered, and being human, he found it not unpleasant. At the same time he was determined not to satisfy her curiosity.

"Sorry," he said. "For your sake I wish I would lay claim to Montmorenci or Featherstonehaugh. But 'Awkins is my name and 'umble is my station. I don't know any of the Vere de Veres, the Cholmondeleys or the Silligers here in Canada, only the toughs."

She did not laugh. Abandoning the direct line, she asked: "What do you do up here regularly?"

"Gold?" she said with shining eyes. "Where?"

"That would be telling," said Jack, flicking his pony.

"Do you know anybody in Toronto?" she asked suddenly.

He smiled at her abrupt return to the main issue, and shook his head.

"In Montreal?"

His face changed a little. After a moment he said slyly: "I met a fellow across the mountains who was from Montreal."

"A gentleman?"

"More or less."

"What was his name?" she demanded.

"Malcolm Piers."

She looked at him with round eyes. "How exciting!" she cried.

"Exciting?" said Jack, very much taken aback.

"Why, yes," she said. "There can't be more than one by that name. It must have been Malcolm Piers the absconder."

Her last word had much the effect of a bomb explosion under Jack's horse. The animal reared violently, almost falling back on his rider. Linda was not sufficiently experienced on horseback to see that Jack's hand had spasmodically given the cruel Western bit a tremendous tug. The horse plunged and violently shook his head to free himself of the pain. When he finally came back to earth, the actions of the horse seemed sufficient to account for the sudden grimness of Jack's expression. His upper lip had disappeared, leaving only a thin, hard line.

"Goodness!" said Linda nervously. "These horses are unexpected."

"What did you call him?" asked Jack quietly.

"Absconder," she said innocently. "Malcolm Piers was the boy who stole five thousand dollars from the Bank of Canada, and was never heard of afterward. He was only twenty."

He looked at her stupidly. "Five thousand dollars!" he repeated more than once. "Why that's ridiculous!"

"Oh, no," she said eagerly. "Everybody knows the story. He disappeared, and so did the money. I heard all the particulars at the time, because my room-mate at Havergal was the sister of the girl they said he did it for. She wasn't to blame, poor thing. She proved that she had sent him about his business before it happened. She married a millionaire afterward. She's had heaps of trouble."

Jack's horse fretted and danced, and no answer was required of him.

"Fancy your meeting him," she said excitingly. "Do tell me about him. They said he was terribly good-looking. Was he?"

"Don't ask me," said Jack gruffly. "I'm no judge of a man's looks." He scarcely knew what he was saying. The terrible word rang in his head with a clangour as of blows on naked iron. "Absconder!"

"Do tell me about him," she repeated. "Criminals are so deadly interesting! When they're gentlemen. I mean. And he was so young!"

"You said everybody knows what he did," said Jack dully. "I never heard of it."

"I meant everybody in our world," she said. "It never got in the newspapers of course. Malcolm Piers's uncle was a director in the bank, and he made the shortage good. He died a year or so afterward, leaving everything to a hospital. If Malcolm Piers had only waited a little while he wouldn't have had to steal the money."

"Then he would have been a millionaire, too," said Jack, with a start of harsh laughter.

She didn't understand the allusion. She favoured him with a sharp glance. "Funny he should have told you his real name."

"Why not?" said Jack abstractedly. "He didn't consider that he had done any wrong!"

How ardently Jack wished her away so that he could think it out by himself. Little by little it was becoming clear to him, as if revealed by the baleful light of a flame. So that was why his uncle had cut him off? And Garrod had not answered his question. Garrod knew all about it. Garrod was the only person in the world who knew in advance that he had been going to clear out, never to return. Garrod was deep in debt at the time. Garrod had access to the bank's vault. This explained his strange, wild agitation at the time of their first meeting, and his actions ever since.

"What's become of him now?" Linda desired to know. She had to ask twice.

Jack heard her as from a great distance. He shrugged. "You can't keep track of men up here."

"Did he tell you his story?"

He nodded. "It was different from yours," he said grimly.

"Tell me."

"Oh, never mind her name! It was difficult for him to keep up the pace she and her friends set, but she led him on. Finally she made up her mind that an old man with money was a better gamble than a young one with prospects only, and she coolly threw him over. It broke him all up. He was fool enough to love her. Everything he had known up to that time became hateful to him. So he lit out. But he took nothing with him. Indeed, he stripped himself of every cent, sold even his clothes to pay his debts around town before he went. He came West on an emigrant car. Out here he rode for his grub, he sold goods behind a counter, he even polished glasses behind a bar, until he got his head above water."

This was a long speech for Jack, and in delivering it he was betrayed into a dangerous heat. The girl watched him with a sparkle of mischievous excitement.

"A likely story," she said, tossing her head. "I know that old Mr. McInnes had to put up the money, and that he altered his will." She smiled provokingly. "Besides, it's much more interesting to think that Malcolm Piers took the money. Don't rob me of my favourite criminal."

Jack looked at her with his handsome brows drawn close together. Her flippancy sounded incredible to him. He hated her at that moment.

A horseman dropped out of his place in the train ahead and came trotting back toward them. It was Garrod. Seeing him, a deep, ugly red suffused Jack's neck and face, and a vein on his forehead stood out. But he screwed down the clamps of his self-control. Pride would not allow him to betray the secrets of his heart to the light-headed little girl who was angling for them. They were riding around another little poplar wood.

"Look!" he said in as near his natural voice as he could contrive. "In the shade the painter's brush grows yellow. Shall I get you some of those?"

Garrod was now upon them. His harassed eye showed a new pain. He looked at Linda Trangmar with a dog's anxiety, and from her to Jack. Jack looked abroad over the prairie with his lips pursed up. His face was very red.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet