Hotel

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."

"Was there nothing at all you could do?"

The little man shook his head. "I figured I was licked before I started.

All the same, soon's I could get out of that hospital, I borrowed enough money to get back up north."

Albert Wells stopped and waved a greeting across the dining room.

Christine looked up to see Peter McDermott approaching their table. She had wondered if Peter would remember her suggestion about joining them after dinner. The sight of him brought a delightful quickening of her senses. Then, immediately, she sensed that he was despondent.

The little man welcomed Peter warmly and a waiter hurried forward with an extra chair.

Peter sank into it gratefully. "I'm afraid I left it a little late.

There've been a few things happening." It was, he reflected to himself, a monument of understatement.

Hoping there would be an opportunity to talk privately with Peter afterward, Christine said, "Mr. Wells has been telling me a wonderful story. I must hear the end."

Peter sipped his coffee which the waiter had brought. "Go ahead, Mr. Wells. It'll be like coming into a movie part way through. I'll catch the beginning later."

The little man smiled, looking down at his gnarled and toughened hands.

"There isn't a whole lot more, though most of what there is has kind of a twist. I went north and found Hymie in Yellowknife, in what passes for a hotel. I called him every foul name I could lay my tongue to. All the while he had a great wide grin, which made me madder, till I was ready to kill him there 'n then. I wouldn't have, though. He knew me well enough for that."

Christine said, "He must have been a hateful man."

"I figured so. Except, when I'd quieted down some, Hymie told me to come with him. We went to a lawyer and there were papers, ready drawn, handing me back my half share, fair 'n square - in fact fairer, 'cos Hymie 'd taken nothing for himself for all the work he'd done those months I'd been away."

Bewildered, Christine shook her head. "I don't understand. Why did he ..."

"Hymie explained. Said he knew from the beginning there'd be a lot of legal things, papers to sign, especially if we didn't sell, and hung on to work the claim instead, which he knew I wanted to do. There were bank loans for the machinery, wages, all the rest. With me in hospital, and most of the time not knowing up from down, he couldn't have done any of it - not with my name on the property. So Hymie used my bill of sale and went ahead. He always intended to hand my share back. Only thing was, he wasn't much of a one for writing and never let me know. Right from the beginning, though, he'd fixed things up legally. If he'd died, I'd have got his share as well as mine."

Peter McDermott and Christine were staring across the table.

"Later on," Albert Wells said, "I did the same with my half - made a will so it'd go to Hymie. We had the same arrangement - about that one mine - till the day Hymie died, which was five years ago. I reckon he taught me something: When you believe in somebody, don't be in a rush to change your mind."

Peter McDermott said, "And the mine?"

"Well, we kept right on refusing offers to buy us out, and it turned out we were right in the end. Hymie ran it a good many years. It still goes on - one of the best producers in the north. Now 'n then I go back to take a look, for old times' sake."

Speechless, her mouth agape, Christine stared at the little man. "You ... you ... own a gold mine."

Albert Wells nodded cheerfully. "That's right. There's a few other things now, besides."

"If you'll pardon my curiosity," Peter McDermott said, "other things such as what?"

"I'm not sure of all of it." The little man shifted diffidently in his chair. "There's a couple of newspapers, some ships, an insurance company, buildings, other bits 'n pieces. I bought a food chain last year. I like new things. It keeps me interested."

"Yes," Peter said, "I should imagine it would."

Albert Wells smiled mischievously. "Matter of fact, there's something I was going to tell you tomorrow, but I may as well do it now. I just bought this hotel."