Hotel

At Columbus, Mississippi, where the dead from the Battle of Shiloh were brought for burial, Ogilvie stopped for gas. He was careful to choose a small general store on the outskirts of town, with a pair of old-fashioned gas pumps illumined by a single light. He pulled the car forward as far as possible from the light, so that its front was in shadow.

He discouraged conversation by ignoring the storekeeper's "Nice night," and

"Going far?" He paid cash for the gas and a half-dozen chocolate bars, then drove on.

Nine miles to the north he crossed the Alabama state line.

A succession of small towns came and went. Vernon, Sulligent, Hamilton, Russellville, Florence, the last - so a sign recorded - noted for the manufacture of toilet seats. A few miles farther on, he crossed the border into Tennessee.

Traffic was averagely light and the Jaguar performed superbly. Driving conditions were ideal, helped by a full moon which rose soon after darkness. There was no sign of police activity of any kind.

Ogilvie was contentedly relaxed.

Fifty miles south of Nashville, at Columbia, Tennessee, he turned onto U.S.

Traffic was heavier now. Massive tractor-trailers, their headlights stabbing the night like an endless dazzling chain, thundered south toward Birmingham and northward to the industrial Midwest. Passenger cars, a few taking risks the truck drivers would not, threaded the stream. Occasionally, Ogilvie himself pulled out to pass a slow-moving vehicle, but he was careful not to exceed posted speed limits. He had no wish, by speeding or any other means, to invite attention. After a while, he observed a following car, which remained behind him, driving at approximately his own speed. Ogilvie adjusted the rear-view mirror to reduce the glare, then slowed to let the other car pass. When it failed to, unconcerned, he resumed his original speed.

A few miles farther on, he was aware of the northbound lanes of traffic slowing. Warning taillights of other vehicles were flashing on. Leaning to the left, he could see what appeared to be a group of headlights, with both northbound lanes funneling into one. The scene bore the familiar pattern of a highway accident.

Then, abruptly, rounding a curve, he saw the real reason for the delay. Two lines of Tennessee Highway Patrol cruisers, their red roof lights flashing, were positioned on both sides of the road. A flare-draped barrier was across the center lane. At the same instant, the car which had been following, switched on a police beacon of its own.

As the Jaguar slowed and stopped, State Troopers with drawn guns ran toward it.

Quaking, Ogilvie raised his hands above his head.

A husky sergeant opened the car door. "Keep your hands where they are," he ordered, "and come out slowly. You're under arrest."

17

Christine Francis mused aloud, "There! - you're doing it again. Both times, when the coffee was poured, you've held your hands around the cup. As if it gave you a kind of comfort."

Across the dinner table, Albert Wells gave his perky sparrow's smile.

"You notice more things'n most people."

He seemed frail again tonight, she thought. Some of the paleness of three days earlier had returned and occasionally, through the evening, a bronchial cough had been troublesome, though not diminishing his cheerfulness. What he needs, Christine reflected, is someone to take care of him.

They were in the St. Gregory's main dining room. Since their arrival more than an hour ago, most of the other diners had left, though a few still lingered over coffee and liqueurs. Although the hotel was full, attendance in the dining room had been thin all evening.

Max, the head waiter, came discreetly to their table.

"Will there be anything else, sir?"

Albert Wells glanced at Christine who shook her head.

"I reckon not. When you'd like to, you can bring the bill."

"Certainly, sir." Max nodded to Christine, his eyes assuring her that he had not forgotten their arrangement of this morning.

When the head waiter had gone, the little man said, "About the coffee.

Prospecting, in the north, you never waste anything if you want to stay alive, not even the beat from a cup you're holding. It's a habit you get into. I could lose the way of it, I guess, though there's things it's wise to remind yourself of once in a while."

"Because they were good times, or because life is better now?"

He considered. "Some of both, I reckon."

"You told me you were a miner," Christine said. "I didn't know about your being a prospector too."

"A lot of the time, one's the other. Especially on the Canadian Shield - that's in the Northwest Territories, Christine, near as far as Canada goes. When you're there alone, just you and the tundra - the arctic desert, they call it - you do everything from driving claim stakes to burning through the permafrost. If you don't, most times there's no one else."

"When you were prospecting, what was it for?"

"Uranium, cobalt. Mostly gold."

"Did you find any? Gold, I mean."

He nodded affirmatively. "Plenty did. Around Yellowknife, Great Slave Lake. There were discoveries there from the 1890s to a stampede in 1945.

Mostly, though, the country was too tough to mine and take it out."

Christine said, "It must have been a hard life."

The little man coughed, then took a sip of water, smiling apologetically.

"I was tougher then. Though give the Shield half a chance, it'll kill you." He looked around the pleasantly appointed dining room, lighted by crystal chandeliers. "It seems a long way from here."

"You said that mostly it was too difficult to mine the gold. It wasn't always?"

"Not always. Some were luckier 'n others, though even for them things 'd go wrong. Maybe it's part because the Shield and the Barren Lands do strange things to people. Some you think 'd be strong - and not just in body either - they turn out to be the weak ones. And some you'd trust with your life, you discover you can't. Then there's the other way around. One time I remember . . ." He stopped as the head waiter placed a salver on the table with their bill.

She urged, "Go on."

"It's kind of a long story, Christine." He turned over the bill, inspecting it.

"I'd like to hear," Christine said, and meant it. As time went on, she thought, she liked this modest little man more and more.

He looked up and there seemed to be amusement in his eyes. He glanced across the room at the head waiter, then back toward Christine. Abruptly, he took out a pencil and signed the bill.

"It was in '36," the little man began, "around the time that one of the last Yellowknife stampedes was getting started. I was prospecting near the shore of Great Slave Lake. Had a partner then. Name of Hymie Eckstein. Hymie'd come from Ohio. He'd been in the garment trade, a used-car salesman, lot of other things, I guess. He was pushy and a fast talker. But he had a way of making people like him. I guess you'd call it charm. When he got to Yellowknife he had a little money. I was broke. Hymie grubstaked the two of us."

Albert Wells took a sip of water, pensively.

"Hymie'd never seen a snowshoe, never heard of permafrost, couldn't tell schist from quartz. From the beginning, though, we got along well. And we made out.

"We'd been out a month, maybe two. On the Shield you lose all track of time. Then one day, near the mouth of the Yellowknife River, the two of us sat down to roll our cigarettes. Sitting there, the way prospectors do, I chipped away at some gossam - that's oxidized rock, Christine, and slipped a piece or two in my pocket. Later, by the lakeshore, I panned the rock. You could have shoved me over when it showed good coarse gold."

"When it really happens," Christine said, "it must seem the most exciting thing in the world."

"Maybe there are other things excite you more. If there are, they never came my way. Well, we rushed back to the place I'd chipped the rock and we covered it with moss. Two days later, we found the ground had already been staked. I guess it was the darnedest blow either of us ever had.

Turned out, a Toronto prospector 'd done the staking. He'd been out the year before, then gone back east, not knowing what he had. Under Territories law, if he didn't work the claim, his rights'd run out a year from recording."

"How long away was that?"

"We made our find in June. If things stayed the way they were, the land'd come clear the last day in September."

"Couldn't you keep quiet, and just wait?"

"We aimed at that. Except it wasn't so easy. For one thing, the find we'd made was right in line with a producing mine an' there were other prospectors, like ourselves, working the same country. For another, Hymie and me 'd run clean out of money and food."

Albert Wells beckoned a passing waiter. "I reckon I'll have more coffee after all." He asked Christine, "How about you?"

She shook her head. "No thank you. Don't stop. I want to hear the rest."

How strange, she thought, that the kind of epic adventure which people dreamed about should have happened to someone as apparently ordinary as the little man from Montreal.

"Well, Christine, I reckon the next three months were the longest any two men lived. Maybe the hardest. We existed. On fish, some bits of plants.

Near the end I was thinner'n a twig and my legs were black with scurvy.

Had this bronchitis and phlebitis too. Hymie wasn't a whole lot better, but he never complained and I got to like him more."

The coffee arrived and Christine waited.

"Finally it got to the last day of September. We'd heard through Yellowknife that when the first claim ran out, there'd be others try to move in, so we didn't take chances. We had our stakes ready. Right after midnight we rammed 'em home. I remember - it was a pitch-black night, snowing hard and blowing a gale."

His hands went around the coffee cup as they had before.

"That's about all I do remember because, after that, nature took over 'n the next clear thing I know was being in a hospital in Edmonton, near a thousand miles from where we staked. I found out after, Hymie got me out from the Shield, though I never figured how he did it. And a bush pilot flew me south. Plenty of times, including in the hospital, they gave me up for dead. I didn't die. Though when I got things sorted out, I wished I had." He stopped to drink from the coffee cup.

Christine asked, "Wasn't the claim legal?"

"The claim was fine. The trouble was Hymie." Albert Wells stroked his sparrow-beak nose reflectively. "Maybe I should take the story back a bit. While we were waiting our time out on the Shield, we'd signed two bills of sale. Each of us - on paper - turned over his half of the claim to the other."

"Why would you do that?"

"It was Hymie's idea, in case one of us didn't come through. If that happened, the survivor 'd keep the paper showing that all of the claim was his, and he'd tear up the other. Hymie said it'd save a lot of legal mess. At the time, it seemed to make sense. If we both made it through, the arrangement was, we'd scrap both papers."

Christine prompted, "So while you were in the hospital . . ."

"Hymie 'd taken both papers and registered his. By the time I was in shape to take an interest, Hymie had full title and was already mining with proper machinery and help. I found out there'd been an offer of a quarter million dollars from one of the big smelting companies for him to sell out, and there were other bidders lining up."