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Ridgway of Montana: A story of to-day, in which the hero is also the villain

by William MacLeod Raine · English · Gutenberg #2285 · 362,564 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Ridgway of Montana: A story of to-day, in which the hero is also the villain

Author: William MacLeod Raine


        
Release date: August 1, 2000 [eBook #2285]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2022

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2285

Credits: Mary Starr


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIDGWAY OF MONTANA: A STORY OF TO-DAY, IN WHICH THE HERO IS ALSO THE VILLAIN ***





[Illustration]




Ridgway of Montana


A story of to-day,
in which the hero is also the villain

by William Macleod Raine




To JEAN
AND THAT KINGDOM

“Where you and I through this world’s weather
Work, and give praise and thanks together.”




CONTENTS

 CHAPTER I. Two Men and a Woman
 CHAPTER II. The Freebooter
 CHAPTER III. One to One
 CHAPTER IV. Fort Salvation
 CHAPTER V. Enter Simon Harley
 CHAPTER VI. On the Snow-trail
 CHAPTER VII. Back from Arcadia
 CHAPTER VIII. The Honorable Thomas B. Pelton
 CHAPTER IX. An Evening Call
 CHAPTER X. Harley Makes a Proposition
 CHAPTER XI. Virginia Intervenes
 CHAPTER XII. Aline Makes a Discovery
 CHAPTER XIII. First Blood
 CHAPTER XIV. A Conspiracy
 CHAPTER XV. Laska Opens a Door
 CHAPTER XVI. An Explosion in the Taurus
 CHAPTER XVII. The Election
 CHAPTER XVIII. Further Developments
 CHAPTER XIX. One Million Dollars
 CHAPTER XX. A Little Lunch at Alphonse’s
 CHAPTER XXI. Harley Scores
 CHAPTER XXII. “Not Guilty”—“Guilty”
 CHAPTER XXIII. Aline Turns a Corner
 CHAPTER XXIV. A Good Samaritan
 CHAPTER XXV. Friendly Enemies
 CHAPTER XXVI. Breaks One and Makes Another Engagement




CHAPTER I.
TWO MEN AND A WOMAN


“Mr. Ridgway, ma’am.”

The young woman who was giving the last touches to the very effective
picture framed in her long looking-glass nodded almost imperceptibly.

She had come to the parting of the ways, and she knew it, with a shrewd
suspicion as to which she would choose. She had asked for a week to
decide, and her heart-searching had told her nothing new. It was
characteristic of Virginia Balfour that she did not attempt to deceive
herself. If she married Waring Ridgway it would be for what she
considered good and sufficient reasons, but love would not be one of
them. He was going to be a great man, for one thing, and probably a
very rich one, which counted, though it would not be a determining
factor. This she could find only in the man himself, in the masterful
force that made him what he was. The sandstings of life did not disturb
his confidence in his victorious star, nor did he let fine-spun moral
obligations hamper his predatory career. He had a genius for success in
whatever he undertook, pushing his way to his end with a shrewd, direct
energy that never faltered. She sometimes wondered whether she, too,
like the men he used as tools, was merely a pawn in his game, and her
consent an empty formality conceded to convention. Perhaps he would
marry her even if she did not want to, she told herself, with the
sudden illuminating smile that was one of her chief charms.

But Ridgway’s wary eyes, appraising her mood as she came forward to
meet him, read none of this doubt in her frank greeting. Anything more
sure and exquisite than the cultivation Virginia Balfour breathed he
would have been hard put to it to conceive. That her gown and its
accessories seemed to him merely the extension of a dainty personality
was the highest compliment he could pay her charm, and an entirely
unconscious one.

“Have I kept you waiting?” she smiled, giving him her hand.

His answering smile, quite cool and unperturbed, gave the lie to his
words. “For a year, though the almanac called it a week.”

“You must have suffered,” she told him ironically, with a glance at the
clear color in his good-looking face.

“Repressed emotion,” he explained. “May I hope that my suffering has
reached a period?”

They had been sauntering toward a little conservatory at the end of the
large room, but she deflected and brought up at a table on which lay
some books. One of these she picked up and looked at incuriously for a
moment before sweeping them aside. She rested her hands on the table
behind her and leaned back against it, her eyes meeting his fairly.

“You’re still of the same mind, are you?” she demanded.

“Oh! very much.”

She lifted herself to the table, crossing her feet and dangling them
irresponsibly. “We might as well be comfy while we talk;” and she
indicated, by a nod, a chair.

“Thanks. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll take it standing.”

She did not seem in any hurry to begin, and Ridgway gave evidence of no
desire to hasten her. But presently he said, with a little laugh that
seemed to offer her inclusion in the joke:

“I’m on the anxious seat, you know—waiting to find out whether I’m to
be the happiest man alive.”

“You know as much about it as I do.” She echoed his laugh ruefully.
“I’m still as much at sea as I was last week. I couldn’t tell then, and
I can’t now.”

“No news is good news, they say.”

“I don’t want to marry you a bit, but you’re a great catch, as you are
very well aware.”

“I suppose I am rather a catch,” he agreed, the shadow of a smile at
the corners of his mouth.

“It isn’t only your money; though, of course, that’s a temptation,” she
admitted audaciously.

“I’m glad it’s not only my money.” He could laugh with her about it
because he was shrewd enough to understand that it was not at all his
wealth. Her cool frankness might have frightened away another man. It
merely served to interest Ridgway. For, with all his strength, he was a
vain man, always ready to talk of himself. He spent a good deal of his
spare time interpreting himself to attractive and attracted young
women.

Her gaze fastened on the tip of her suede toe, apparently studying it
attentively. “It would be a gratification to my vanity to parade you as
the captive of my bow and spear. You’re such a magnificent specimen,
such a berserk in broadcloth. Still. I shan’t marry you if I can help
it—but, then, I’m not sure that I can help it. Of course, I disapprove
of you entirely, but you’re rather fascinating, you know.” Her eye
traveled slowly up to his, appraising the masterful lines of his square
figure, the dominant strength of his close-shut mouth and resolute
eyes. “Perhaps ‘fascinating’ isn’t just the word, but I can’t help
being interested in you, whether I like you or not. I suppose you
always get what you want very badly?” she flung out by way of question.

“That’s what I’m trying to discover”—he smiled.

“There are things to be considered both ways,” she said, taking him
into her confidence. “You trample on others. How do I know you wouldn’t
tread on me?”

“That would be one of the risks you would take,” he agreed
impersonally.

“I shouldn’t like that at all. If I married you it would be because as
your wife I should have so many opportunities. I should expect to do
exactly as I please. I shouldn’t want you to interfere with me, though
I should want to be able to influence you.”

“Nothing could be fairer than that,” was his amiably ironical comment.

“You see, I don’t know you—not really—and they say all sorts of things
about you.”

“They don’t say I am a quitter, do they?”

She leaned forward, chin in hand and elbow on knee. It was a part of
the accent of her distinction that as a rebel she was both demure and
daring. “I wonder if I might ask you some questions—the intimate kind
that people think but don’t say—at least, they don’t say them to you.”

“It would be a pleasure to me to be put on the witness-stand. I should
probably pick up some interesting side-lights about myself.”

“Very well.” Her eyes danced with excitement. “You’re what they call a
buccaneer of business, aren’t you?”

Here were certainly diverting pastimes. “I believe I have been called
that; but, then, I’ve had the hardest names in the dictionary thrown at
me so often that I can’t be sure.”

“I suppose you are perfectly unscrupulous in a business way—stop at
nothing to gain your point?”

He took her impudence smilingly.

“‘Unscrupulous’ isn’t the word I use when I explain myself to myself,
but as an unflattered description, such as one my enemies might use to
describe me, I dare say it is fairly accurate.”

“I wonder why. Do you dispense with a conscience entirely?”

“Well, you see, Miss Balfour, if I nursed a New England conscience I
could stand up to the attacks of the Consolidated about as long as a
dove to a hawk. I meet fire with fire to avoid being wiped off the map
of the mining world. I play the game. I can’t afford to keep a button
on my foil when my opponent doesn’t.”

She nodded an admission of his point. “And yet there are rules of the
game to be observed, aren’t there? The Consolidated people claim you
steal their ore, I believe.” Her slanted eyes studied the effect of her
daring.

He laughed grimly. “Do they? I claim they steal mine. It’s rather
difficult to have an exact regard for mine and thine before the courts
decide which is which.”

“And meanwhile, in order to forestall an adverse decision, you are
working extra shifts to get all the ore out of the disputed veins.”

“Precisely, just as they are,” he admitted dryly. “Then the side that
loses will not be so disappointed, since the value of the veins will be
less. Besides, stealing ore openly doesn’t count. It is really a moral
obligation in a fight like this,” he explained.

“A moral obligation?”

“Exactly. You can’t hit a trust over the head with the decalogue.
Modern business is war. Somebody is bound to get hurt. If I win out it
will be because I put up a better fight than the Consolidated, and
cripple it enough to make it let me alone. I’m looking out for myself,
and I don’t pretend to be any better than my neighbors. When you get
down to bed-rock honesty, I’ve never seen it in business. We’re all of
us as honest as we think we can afford to be. I haven’t noticed that
there is any premium on it in Mesa. Might makes right. I’ll win if I’m
strong enough; I’ll fail if I’m not. That’s the law of life. I didn’t
make this strenuous little world, and I’m not responsible for it. If I
play I have to take the rules the way they are, not the way I should
like them to be. I’m not squeamish, and I’m not a hypocrite. Simon
Harley isn’t squeamish, either, but he happens to be a hypocrite. So
there you have the difference between us.”

The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company set forth his creed
jauntily, without the least consciousness of need for apology for the
fact that it happened to be divorced from morality. Its frank disregard
of ethical considerations startled Miss Balfour without shocking her.
She liked his candor, even though it condemned him. It was really very
nice of him to take her impudence so well. He certainly wasn’t a prig,
anyway.

“And morality,” she suggested tentatively.

“—hasn’t a thing to do with success, the parsons to the contrary
notwithstanding. The battle is to the strong.”

“Then the Consolidated will beat you finally.”

He smiled. “They would if I’d let them; but brains and resource and
finesse all count for power. Granted that they have a hundred dollars
to my one. Still, I have elements of strength they can’t even estimate.
David beat Goliath, you know, even though he didn’t do it with a big
stick.”

“So you think morality is for old women?”

“And young women,” he amended, smiling.

“And every man is to be a law unto himself?”

“Not quite. Some men aren’t big enough to be. Let them stick to the
conventional code. For me, if I make my own laws I don’t break them.”

“And you’re sure that you’re on the road to true success?” she asked
lightly.

“Now, you have heaven in the back of your mind.”

“Not exactly,” she laughed. “But I didn’t expect you to understand.”

“Then I won’t disappoint you,” he said cheerfully.

She came back to the concrete.

“I should like to know whether it is true that you own the courts of
Yuba County and have the decisions of the judges written at your
lawyer’s offices in cases between you and the Consolidated.”

“If I do,” he answered easily, “I am doing just what the Consolidated
would do in case they had been so fortunate as to have won the last
election and seated their judicial candidates. One expects a friendly
leaning from the men one put in office.”

“Isn’t the judiciary supposed to be the final, incorruptible bulwark of
the nation?” she pretended to want to know.

“I believe it is supposed to be.”

“Isn’t it rather—loading the dice, to interfere with the courts?”

“I find the dice already loaded. I merely substitute others of my own.”

“You don’t seem a bit ashamed of yourself.”

“I’m ashamed of the Consolidated”—he smiled.

“That’s a comfortable position to be able to take.” She fixed him for a
moment with her charming frown of interrogation. “You won’t mind my
asking these questions? I’m trying to decide whether you are too much
of a pirate for me. Perhaps when I’ve made up my mind you won’t want
me,” she added.

“Oh, I’ll want you!” Then coolly: “Shall we wait till you make up your
mind before announcing the engagement?”

“Don’t be too sure,” she flashed at him.

“I’m horribly unsure.”

“Of course, you’re laughing at me, just as you would”—she tilted a
sudden sideways glance at him—“if I asked you WHY you wanted to marry
me.”

“Oh, if you take me that way——”

She interrupted airily. “I’m trying to make up my mind whether to take
you at all.”

“You certainly have a direct way of getting at things.”

He studied appreciatively her piquant, tilted face; the long, graceful
lines of her slender, perfect figure. “I take it you don’t want the
sentimental reason for my wishing to marry you, though I find that
amply justified. But if you want another, you must still look to
yourself for it. My business leads me to appreciate values correctly.
When I desire you to sit at the head of my table, to order my house, my
judgment justifies itself. I have a fancy always for the best. When I
can’t gratify it I do without.”

“Thank you.” She made him a gay little mock curtsy “I had heard you
were no carpet-knight, Mr. Ridgway. But rumor is a lying jade, for I am
being told—am I not?—that in case I don’t take pity on you, the lone
future of a celibate stretches drear before you.”

“Oh, certainly.”

Having come to the end of that passage, she tried another. “A young man
told me yesterday you were a fighter. He said he guessed you would
stand the acid. What did he mean?”

Ridgway was an egoist from head to heel. He could voice his own praises
by the hour when necessary, but now he side-stepped her little trap to
make him praise himself at second-hand.

“Better ask him.”

“ARE you a fighter, then?”

Had he known her and her whimsies less well, he might have taken her
audacity for innocence.

“One couldn’t lie down, you know.”

“Of course, you always fight fair,” she mocked.

“When a fellow’s attacked by a gang of thugs he doesn’t pray for
boxing-gloves. He lets fly with a coupling-pin if that’s what comes
handy.”

Her eyes, glinting sparks of mischief, marveled at him with mock
reverence, but she knew in her heart that her mockery was a fraud. She
did admire him; admired him even while she disapproved the magnificent
lawlessness of him.

For Waring Ridgway looked every inch the indomitable fighter he was. He
stood six feet to the line, straight and strong, carrying just
sufficient bulk to temper his restless energy without impairing its
power. Nor did the face offer any shock of disappointment to the
promise given by the splendid figure. Salient-jawed and forceful, set
with cool, flinty, blue-gray eyes, no place for weakness could be found
there. One might have read a moral callousness, a colorblindness in
points of rectitude, but when the last word had been said, its
masterful capability, remained the outstanding impression.

“Am I out of the witness-box?” he presently asked, still leaning
against the mantel from which he had been watching her impersonally as
an intellectual entertainment.

“I think so.”

“And the verdict?”

“You know what it ought to be,” she accused.

“Fortunately, kisses go by favor, not by, merit.”

“You don’t even make a pretense of deserving.”

“Give me credit for being an honest rogue, at least.”

“But a rogue?” she insisted lightly.

“Oh, a question of definitions. I could make a very good case for
myself as an honest man.”

“If you thought it worth while?”

“If I didn’t happen to want to be square with you”—he smiled.

“You’re so fond of me, I suppose, that you couldn’t bear to have me
think too well of you.”

“You know how fond of you I am.”

“Yes, it is a pity about you,” she scoffed.

“Believe me, yes,” he replied cheerfully.

She drummed with her pink finger-tips on her chin, studying him
meditatively. To do him justice, she had to admit that he did not even
pretend much. He wanted her because she was a step up in the social
ladder, and, in his opinion, the most attractive girl he knew. That he
was not in love with her relieved the situation, as Miss Balfour
admitted to herself in impersonal moods. But there were times when she
could have wished he were. She felt it to be really due her attractions
that his pulses should quicken for her, and in the interests of
experience she would have liked to see how he would make love if he
really meant it from the heart and not the will.

“It’s really an awful bother,” she sighed.

“Referring to the little problem of your future?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t make up your mind whether I come in?”

“No.” She looked up brightly, with an effect of impulsiveness. “I don’t
suppose you want to give me another week?”

“A reprieve! But why? You’re going to marry me.”

“I suppose so.” She laughed. “I wish I could have my cake, and eat it,
too.”

“It would be a moral iniquity to encourage such a system of ethics.”

“So you won’t give me a week?” she sighed. “All sorts of things might
have happened in that week. I shall always believe that the fairy
prince would have come for me.”

“Believe that he HAS come,” he claimed.

“Oh, I didn’t mean a prince of pirates, though there is a triumph in
having tamed a pirate chief to prosaic matrimony. In one way it will be
a pity, too. You won’t be half so picturesque. You remember how
Stevenson puts it: ‘that marriage takes from a man the capacity for
great things, whether good or bad.’”

“I can stand a good deal of taming.”

“Domesticating a pirate ought to be an interesting process,” she
conceded, her rare smile flashing. “It should prove a cure for ENNUI,
but then I’m never a victim of that malady.”

“Am I being told that I am to be the happiest pirate alive?”

“I expect you are.”

His big hand gripped hers till it tingled. She caught his eye on a
roving quest to the door.

“We don’t have to do that,” she announced hurriedly, with an
embarrassed flush.

“I don’t do it because I have to,” he retorted, kissing her on the
lips.

She fell back, protesting. “Under the circumstances—”

The butler, with a card on a tray, interrupted silently. She glanced at
the card, devoutly grateful his impassive majesty’s entrance had not
been a moment earlier.

“Show him in here.”

“The fairy prince, five minutes too late?” asked Ridgway, when the man
had gone.

For answer she handed him the card, yet he thought the pink that
flushed her cheek was something more pronounced than usual. But he was
willing to admit there might be a choice of reasons for that.

“Lyndon Hobart” was the name he read.

“I think the Consolidated is going to have its innings. I should like
to stay, of course, but I fear I must plead a subsequent engagement and
leave the field to the enemy.”

Pronouncing “Mr. Hobart” without emphasis, the butler vanished. The
newcomer came forward with the quiet assurance of the born aristocrat.
He was a slender, well-knit man, dressed fastidiously, with clear-cut,
classical features; cool, keen eyes, and a gentle, you-be-damned manner
to his inferiors. Beside him Ridgway bulked too large, too florid. His
ease seemed a little obvious, his prosperity overemphasized. Even his
voice, strong and reliant, lacked the tone of gentle blood that Hobart
had inherited with his nice taste.

When Miss Balfour said: “I think you know each other,” the manager of
the Consolidated bowed with stiff formality, but his rival laughed
genially and said: “Oh, yes, I know Mr. Hobart.” The geniality was
genuine enough, but through it ran a note of contempt. Hobart read in
it a veiled taunt. To him it seemed to say:

“Yes, I have met him, and beaten him at every turn of the road, though
he has been backed by a power with resources a hundred times as great
as mine.”

In his parting excuses to Miss Balfour, Ridgway’s audacity crystallized
in words that Hobart could only regard as a shameless challenge. “I
regret that an appointment with Judge Purcell necessitates my leaving
such good company,” he said urbanely.

Purcell was the judge before whom was pending a suit between the
Consolidated and the Mesa Ore-producing Company, to determine the
ownership of the Never Say Die Mine; and it was current report that
Ridgway owned him as absolutely as he did the automobile waiting for
him now at the door.

If Ridgway expected his opponent to pay his flippant gibe the honor of
repartee, he was disappointed. To be sure, Hobart, admirably erect in
his slender grace, was moved to a slight, disdainful smile, but it
evidenced scarcely the appreciation that anybody less impervious to
criticism than Ridgway would have cared to see.




CHAPTER II.
THE FREEBOOTER


When next Virginia Balfour saw Waring Ridgway she was driving her trap
down one of the hit-or-miss streets of Mesa, where derricks,
shaft-houses, and gray slag-dumps shoulder ornate mansions conglomerate
of many unharmonious details of architecture. To Miss Balfour these
composites and their owners would have been joys unalloyed except for
the microbe of society ambition that was infecting the latter, and
transforming them from simple, robust, self-reliant Westerners into a
class of servile, nondescript newly rich, that resembled their
unfettered selves as much as tame bears do the grizzlies of their own
Rockies. As she had once complained smilingly to Hobart, she had not
come to the West to study ragged edges of the social fringe. She might
have done that in New York.

Virginia was still a block or two from the court-house on the hill,
when it emptied into the street a concourse of excited men. That this
was an occasion of some sort it was easy to guess, and of what sort she
began to have an inkling, when Ridgway came out, the center of a circle
of congratulating admirers. She was obliged to admit that he accepted
their applause without in the least losing his head. Indeed, he took it
as imperturbably as did Hobart, against whom a wave of the enthusiasm
seemed to be directed in the form of a jeer, when he passed down the
steps with Mott, one of the Consolidated lawyers. Miss Balfour timed
her approach to meet Hobart at a right angle.

“What is it all about?” she asked, after he had reached her side.

“Judge Purcell has just decided the Never Say Die case in favor of Mr.
Ridgway and against the Consolidated.”

“Is that a great victory for him?”

“Yes, it’s a victory, though, of course, we appeal,” admitted Hobart.
“But we can’t say we didn’t expect it,” he added cheerfully.

“Mayn’t I give you a lift if you are going down-town?” she said
quickly, for Ridgway, having detached himself from the group, was
working toward her, and she felt an instinctive sympathy for the man
who had lost. Furthermore, she had something she wanted to tell him
before he heard it on the tongue of rumor.

“Since you are so kind;” and he climbed to the place beside her.

“Congratulate me, Miss Balfour,” demanded Ridgway, as he shook hands
with her, nodding coolly at her companion. “I’m a million dollars
richer than I was an hour ago. I have met the enemy and he is mine.”

Virginia, resenting the bad taste of his jeer at the man who sat beside
her, misunderstood him promptly. “Did you say you had met the enemy and
won his mine?”

He laughed. “You’re a good one!”

“Thank you very much for this unsolicited testimonial,” she said
gravely. “In the meantime, to avoid a congestion of traffic, we’ll be
moving, if you will kindly give me back my front left wheel.”

He did not lift his foot from the spoke on which it rested. “My
congratulations,” he reminded her.

“I wish you all the joy in your victory that you deserve, and I hope
the supreme court will reaffirm the decision of Judge Purcell, if it is
a just one,” was the form in which she acceded to his demand.

She flicked her whip, and Ridgway fell back, laughing. “You’ve been
subsidized by the Consolidated,” he shouted after her.

Hobart watched silently the businesslike directness with which the girl
handled the ribbons. She looked every inch the thoroughbred in her
well-made covert coat and dainty driving gauntlets. The grace of the
alert, slender figure, the perfect poise of the beautiful little tawny
head, proclaimed her distinction no less certainly than the fine
modeling of the mobile face. It was a distinction that stirred the
pulse of his emotion and disarmed his keen, critical sense. Ridgway
could study her with an amused, detached interest, but Hobart’s
admiration had traveled past that point. He found it as impossible to
define her charm as to evade it. Her inheritance of blood and her
environment should have made her a finished product of civilization,
but her salty breeziness, her nerve, vivid as a flame at times,
disturbed delightfully the poise that held her when in repose.

When Virginia spoke, it was to ask abruptly: “Is it really his mine?”

“Judge Purcell says so.”

“But do YOU think so—down in the bottom of your heart?”

“Wouldn’t I naturally be prejudiced?”

“I suppose you would. Everybody in Mesa seems to have taken sides
either with Mr. Ridgway or the Consolidated. Still, you have an option.
Is he what his friends proclaim him—the generous-hearted independent
fighting against trust domination? Or is he merely an audacious
ore-thief, as his enemies say? The truth must be somewhere.”

“It seems to lie mostly in point of view here the angle of observation
being determined by interest,” he answered.

“And from your angle of observation?”

“He is the most unusual man I ever saw, the most resourceful and the
most competent. He never knows when he is beaten. I suppose that’s the
reason he never is beaten finally. We have driven him to the wall a
score of times. My experience with him is that he’s most dangerous when
one thinks he must be about hammered out. He always hits back then in
the most daring and unexpected way.”

“With a coupling-pin,” she suggested with a little reminiscent laugh.

“Metaphorically speaking. He reaches for the first effective weapon to
his hand.”

“You haven’t quite answered my question yet,” she reminded him. “Is he
what his friends or what his enemies think him?”

“If you ask me I can only say that I’m one of his enemies.”

“But a fair-minded man,” she replied quickly.

“Thank you. Then I’ll say that perhaps he is neither just what his
friends or his foes think him. One must make allowances for his
training and temperament, and for that quality of bigness in him.
‘Mediocre men go soberly on the highroads, but saints and scoundrels
meet in the jails,’” he smilingly quoted.

“He would make a queer sort of saint,” she laughed.

“A typical twentieth century one of a money-mad age.”

She liked it in him that he would not use the opportunity she had made
to sneer at his adversary, none the less because she knew that Ridgway
might not have been so scrupulous in his place. That Lyndon Hobart’s
fastidious instincts for fair play had stood in the way of his success
in the fight to down Ridgway she had repeatedly heard. Of late, rumors
had persisted in reporting dissatisfaction with his management of the
Consolidated at the great financial center on Broadway which controlled
the big copper company. Simon Harley, the dominating factor in the
octopus whose tentacles reached out in every direction to monopolize
the avenues of wealth, demanded of his subordinates results. Methods
were no concern of his, and failure could not be explained to him. He
wanted Ridgway crushed, and the pulse of the copper production
regulated lay the Consolidated. Instead, he had seen Ridgway rise
steadily to power and wealth despite his efforts to wipe him off the
slate. Hobart was perfectly aware that his head was likely to fall when
Harley heard of Purcell’s decision in regard to the Never Say Die.

“He certainly is an amazing man,” Virginia mused, her fiancee in mind.
“It would be interesting to discover what he can’t do—along utilitarian
lines, I mean. Is he as good a miner underground as he is in the
courts?” she flung out.

“He is the shrewdest investor I know. Time and again he has leased or
bought apparently worthless claims, and made them pay inside of a few
weeks. Take the Taurus as a case in point. He struck rich ore in a
fortnight. Other men had done development work for years and found
nothing.”

“I’m naturally interested in knowing all about him, because I have just
become engaged to him,” explained Miss Virginia, as calmly as if her
pulse were not fluttering a hundred to the minute.

Virginia was essentially a sportsman. She did not flinch from the guns
when the firing was heavy. It had been remarked of her even as a child
that she liked to get unpleasant things over with as soon as possible,
rather than postpone them. Once, _aetat_ eight, she had marched in to
her mother like a stoic and announced: “I’ve come to be whipped,
momsie, ’cause I broke that horrid little Nellie Vaile’s doll. I did it
on purpose, ’cause I was mad at her. I’m glad I broke it, so there!”

Hobart paled slightly beneath his outdoors Western tan, but his eyes
met hers very steadily and fairly. “I wish you happiness, Miss Balfour,
from the bottom of my heart.”

She nodded a brisk “Thank you,” and directed her attention again to the
horses.

“Take him by and large, Mr. Ridgway is the most capable, energetic, and
far-sighted business man I have ever known. He has a bigger grasp of
things than almost any financier in the country. I think you’ll find he
will go far,” he said, choosing his words with care to say as much for
Waring Ridgway as he honestly could.

“I have always thought so,” agreed Virginia.

She had reason for thinking so in that young man’s remarkable career.
When Waring Ridgway had first come to Mesa he had been a draftsman for
the Consolidated at five dollars a day. He was just out of Cornell, and
his assets consisted mainly of a supreme confidence in himself and an
imposing presence. He was a born leader, and he flung himself into the
raw, turbid life of the mining town with a readiness that had not a
little to do with his subsequent success.

That success began to take tangible form almost from the first. A
small, independent smelter that had for long been working at a loss was
about to fall into the hands of the Consolidated when Ridgway bought it
on promises to pay, made good by raising money on a flying trip he took
to the East. His father died about this time and left him fifty
thousand dollars, with which he bought the Taurus, a mine in which
several adventurous spirits had dropped small fortunes. He acquired
other properties; a lease here, an interest there. It began to be
observed that he bought always with judgment. He seemed to have the
touch of Midas. Where other men had lost money he made it.

When the officers of the Consolidated woke up to the menace of his
presence, one of their lawyers called on him. The agent of the
Consolidated smiled at his luxurious offices, which looked more like a
woman’s boudoir than the business place of a Western miner. But that
was merely part of Ridgway’s vanity, and did not in the least interfere
with his predatory instincts. Many people who walked into that parlor
to do business played fly to his spider.

The lawyer had been ready to patronize the upstart who had ventured so
boldly into the territory of the great trust, but one glance at the
clear-cut resolute face of the young man changed his mind.

“I’ve come to make you an offer for your smelter, Mr. Ridgway,” he
began. “We’ll take it off your hands at the price it cost you.”

“Not for sale, Mr. Bartel.”

“Very well. We’ll give you ten thousand more than you paid for it.”

“You misunderstand me. It is not for sale.”

“Oh, come! You bought it to sell to us. What can you do with it?”

“Run it,” suggested Ridgway.

“Without ore?”

“You forget that I own a few properties, and have leases on others.
When the Taurus begins producing, I’ll have enough to keep the smelter
going.”

“When the Taurus begins producing?”—Bartel smiled skeptically. “Didn’t
Johnson and Leroy drop fortunes on that expectation?”

“I’ll bet five thousand dollars we make a strike within two weeks.”

“Chimerical!” pronounced the graybeard as he rose to go, with an air of
finality. “Better sell the smelter while you have the chance.”

“Think not,” disagreed Ridgway.

At the door the lawyer turned. “Oh, there’s another matter! It had
slipped my mind.” He spoke with rather elaborate carelessness. “It
seems that there is a little triangle—about ten and four feet
across—wedged in between the Mary K, the Diamond King, and the Marcus
Daly. For some reason we accidentally omitted to file on it. Our chief
engineer finds that you have taken it up, Mr. Ridgway. It is really of
no value, but it is in the heart of our properties, and so it ought to
belong to us. Of course, it is of no use to you. There isn’t any
possible room to sink a shaft. We’ll take it from you if you like, and
even pay you a nominal price. For what will you sell?”

Ridgway lit a cigar before he answered: “One million dollars.”

“What?” screamed Bartel.

“Not a cent less. I call it the Trust Buster. Before I’m through,
you’ll find it is worth that to me.”

The lawyer reported him demented to the Consolidated officials, who
declared war on him from that day.

They found the young adventurer more than prepared for them. If he had
a Napoleonic sense of big vital factors, he had no less a genius for
detail. He had already picked up an intimate knowledge of the hundreds
of veins and crossveins that traverse the Mesa copper-fields, and he
had delved patiently into the tangled history of the litigation that
the defective mining laws in pioneer days had made possible. When the
Consolidated attempted to harass him by legal process, he countered by
instituting a score of suits against the company within the week. These
had to do with wills, insanity cases, extra lateral rights, mine
titles, and land and water rights. Wherever Ridgway saw room for an
entering wedge to dispute the title of the Consolidated, he drove a new
suit home. To say the least, the trust found it annoying to be enjoined
from working its mines, to be cited for contempt before judges employed
in the interests of its opponent, to be served with restraining orders
when clearly within its rights. But when these adverse legal decisions
began to affect vital issues, the Consolidated looked for reasons why
Ridgway should control the courts. It found them in politics.

For Ridgway was already dominating the politics of Yuba County,
displaying an amazing acumen and a surprising ability as a
stumpspeaker. He posed as a friend of the people, an enemy of the
trust. He declared an eight-hour day for his own miners, and called
upon the Consolidated to do the same. Hobart refused, acting on orders
from Broadway, and fifteen thousand Consolidated miners went to the
polls and reelected Ridgway’s corrupt judges, in spite of the fight the
Consolidated was making against them.

Meanwhile, Ridgway’s colossal audacity made the Consolidated’s copper
pay for the litigation with which he was harassing it. In following his
ore-veins, or what he claimed to be his veins, he crossed boldly into
the territory of the enemy. By the law of extra lateral rights, a man
is entitled to mine within the lines of other property than his own,
provided he is following the dip of a vein which has its apex in his
claim. Ridgway’s experts were prepared to swear that all the best veins
in the field apexed in his property. Pending decisions of the courts,
they assumed it, tunneling through granite till they tapped the veins
of the Consolidated mines, meanwhile enjoining that company from
working the very ore of which Ridgway was robbing it.

Many times the great trust back of the Consolidated had him close to
ruin, but Ridgway’s alert brain and supreme audacity carried him
through. From their mines or from his own he always succeeded in
extracting enough ore to meet his obligations when they fell due. His
powerful enemy, as Hobart had told Miss Balfour, found him most
dangerous when it seemed to have him with his back to the wall. Then
unexpectedly would fall some crushing blow that put the financial kings
of Broadway on the defensive long enough for him to slip out of the
corner into which they had driven him. Greatly daring, he had the
successful cavalryman’s instinct of risking much to gain much. A
gambler, his enemies characterized him fitly enough. But it was also
true, as Mesa phrased it, that he gambled “with the lid off,” playing
for large stakes, neither asking nor giving quarter.

At the end of five years of desperate fighting, the freebooter was more
strongly entrenched than he had been at any previous time. The
railroads, pledged to give rebates to the Consolidated, had been forced
by Ridgway, under menace of adverse legislation from the men he
controlled at the State-house, to give him secretly a still better rate
than the trust. He owned the county courts, he was supported by the
people, and had become a political dictator, and the financial outlook
for him grew brighter every day.

Such were the conditions when Judge Purcell handed down his Never Say
Die decision. Within an hour Hobart was reading a telegram in cipher
from the Broadway headquarters. It announced the immediate departure
for Mesa of the great leader of the octopus. Simon Harley, the Napoleon
of finance, was coming out to attend personally to the destruction of
the buccaneer who had dared to fire on the trust flag.

Before night some one of his corps of spies in the employ of the enemy
carried the news to Waring Ridgway. He smiled grimly, his bluegray eyes
hardening to the temper of steel. Here at last was a foeman worthy of
his metal; one as lawless, unscrupulous, daring, and far-seeing as
himself, with a hundred times his resources.




CHAPTER III.
ONE TO ONE


The solitary rider stood for a moment in silhouette against the somber
sky-line, his keen eyes searching the lowering clouds.

“Getting its back up for a blizzard,” he muttered to himself, as he
touched his pony with the spur.

Dark, heavy billows banked in the west, piling over each other as they
drove forward. Already the advance-guard had swept the sunlight from
the earth, except for a flutter of it that still protested near the
horizon. Scattering snowflakes were flying, and even in a few minutes
the temperature had fallen many degrees.

The rider knew the signs of old. He recognized the sudden stealthy
approach that transformed a sun-drenched, friendly plain into an
unknown arctic waste. Not for nothing had he been last year one of a
search-party to find the bodies of three miners frozen to death not
fifty yards from their own cabin. He understood perfectly what it meant
to be caught away from shelter when the driven white pall wiped out
distance and direction; made long familiar landmarks strange, and
numbed the will to a helpless surrender. The knowledge of it was spur
enough to make him ride fast while he still retained the sense of
direction.

But silently, steadily, the storm increased, and he was forced to
slacken his pace. As the blinding snow grew thick, the sound of the
wind deadened, unable to penetrate the dense white wall through which
he forced his way. The world narrowed to a space whose boundaries he
could touch with his extended hands. In this white mystery that wrapped
him, nothing was left but stinging snow, bitter cold, and the silence
of the dead.

So he thought one moment, and the next was almost flung by his swerving
horse into a vehicle that blocked the road. Its blurred outlines
presently resolved themselves into an automobile, crouched in the
bottom of which was an inert huddle of humanity.

He shouted, forgetting that no voice could carry through the muffled
scream of the storm. When he got no answer, he guided his horse close
to the machine and reached down to snatch away the rug already heavy
with snow. To his surprise, it was a girl’s despairing face that looked
up at him. She tried to rise, but fell back, her muscles too numb to
serve.

“Don’t leave me,” she implored, stretching her, arms toward him.

He reached out and lifted her to his horse. “Are you alone?”

“Yes. He went for help when the machine broke down—before the storm,”
she sobbed. He had to put his ear to her mouth to catch the words.

“Come, keep up your heart.” There was that in his voice pealed like a
trumpet-call to her courage.

“I’m freezing to death,” she moaned.

She was exhausted and benumbed, her lips blue, her flesh gray. It was
plain to him that she had reached the limit of endurance, that she was
ready to sink into the last torpor. He ripped open his overcoat and
shook the snow from it, then gathered her close so that she might get
the warmth of his body. The rugs from the automobile he wrapped round
them both.

“Courage!” he cried. “There’s a miner’s cabin near. Don’t give up,
child.”

But his own courage was of the heart and will, not of the head. He had
small hope of reaching the hut at the entrance of Dead Man’s Gulch or,
if he could struggle so far, of finding it in the white swirl that
clutched at them. Near and far are words not coined for a blizzard. He
might stagger past with safety only a dozen feet from him. He might lie
down and die at the very threshold of the door. Or he might wander in
an opposite direction and miss the cabin by a mile.

Yet it was not in the man to give up. He must stagger on till he could
no longer stand. He must fight so long as life was in him. He must
crawl forward, though his forlorn hope had vanished. And he did. When
the worn-out horse slipped down and could not be coaxed to its feet
again, he picked up the bundle of rugs and plowed forward blindly, soul
and body racked, but teeth still set fast with the primal instinct
never to give up. The intense cold of the air, thick with gray sifted
ice, searched the warmth from his body and sapped his vitality. His
numbed legs doubled under him like springs. He was down and up again a
dozen times, but always the call of life drove him on, dragging his
helpless burden with him.

That he did find the safety of the cabin in the end was due to no
wisdom on his part. He had followed unconsciously the dip of the ground
that led him into the little draw where it had been built, and by sheer
luck stumbled against it. His strength was gone, but the door gave to
his weight, and he buckled across the threshold like a man helpless
with drink. He dropped to the floor, ready to sink into a stupor, but
he shook sleep from him and dragged himself to his feet. Presently his
numb fingers found a match, a newspaper, and some wood. As soon as he
had control over his hands, he fell to chafing hers. He slipped off her
dainty shoes, pathetically inadequate for such an experience, and
rubbed her feet back to feeling. She had been torpid, but when the
blood began to circulate, she cried out in agony at the pain.

Every inch of her bore the hall-mark of wealth. The ermine-lined
motoring-cloak, the broadcloth cut on simple lines of elegance, the
quality of her lingerie and of the hosiery which incased the
wonderfully small feet, all told of a padded existence from which the
cares of life had been excluded. The satin flesh he massaged, to renew
the flow of the dammed blood, was soft and tender like a babe’s. Quite
surely she was an exotic, the last woman in the world fitted for the
hardships of this frontier country. She had none of the deep-breasted
vitality of those of her sex who have fought with grim nature and won.
His experience told him that a very little longer in the storm would
have snuffed out the wick of her life.

But he knew, too, that the danger was past. Faint tints of pink were
beginning to warm the cheeks that had been so deathly pallid. Already
crimson lips were offering a vivid contrast to the still, almost
colorless face.

For she was biting the little lips to try and keep back the cries of
pain that returning life wrung from her. Big tears coursed down her
cheeks, and broken sobs caught her breath. She was helpless as an
infant before the searching pain that wracked her.

“I can’t stand it—I can’t stand it,” she moaned, and in her distress
stretched out her little hand for relief as a baby might to its mother.

The childlike appeal of the flinching violet eyes in the tortured face
moved him strangely. He was accounted a hard man, not without reason.
His eyes were those of a gambler, cold and vigilant. It was said that
he could follow an undeviating course without relenting at the ruin and
misery wrought upon others by his operations. But the helpless
loveliness of this exquisitely dainty child-woman, the sense of
intimacy bred of a common peril endured, of the strangeness of their
environment and of her utter dependence upon him, carried the man out
of himself and away from conventions.

He stooped and gathered her into his arms, walking the floor with her
and cheering her as if she had indeed been the child they both for the
moment conceived her.

“You don’t know how it hurts,” she pleaded between sobs, looking up
into the strong face so close to hers.

“I know it must, dear. But soon it will be better. Every twinge is one
less, and shows that you are getting well. Be brave for just a few
minutes more now.”

She smiled wanly through her tears. “But I’m not brave. I’m a little
coward—and it does pain so.”

“I know—I know. It is dreadful. But just a few minutes now.”

“You’re good to me,” she said presently, simply as a little girl might
have said it.

To neither of them did it seem strange that she should be there in his
arms, her fair head against his shoulder, nor that she should cling
convulsively to him when the fierce pain tingled unbearably. She had
reached out for the nearest help, and he gave of his strength and
courage abundantly.

Presently the prickling of the flowing blood grew less sharp. She began
to grow drowsy with warmth after the fatigue and pain. The big eyes
shut, fluttered open, smiled at him, and again closed. She had fallen
asleep from sheer exhaustion.

He looked down with an odd queer feeling at the small aristocratic face
relaxed upon his ann. The long lashes had drooped to the cheeks and
shuttered the eyes that had met his with such confident appeal, but
they did not hide the dark rings underneath, born of the hardships she
had endured. As he walked the floor with her, he lived once more the
terrible struggle through which they had passed. He saw Death
stretching out icy hands for her, and as his arms unconsciously
tightened about the soft rounded body, his square jaw set and the
fighting spark leaped to his eyes.

“No, by Heaven,” he gave back aloud his defiance.

Troubled dreams pursued her in her sleep. She clung close to him, her
arm creeping round his neck for safety. He was a man not given to fine
scruples, but all the best in him responded to her unconscious trust.

It was so she found herself when she awakened, stiff from her cramped
position. She slipped at once to the floor and sat there drying her
lace skirts, the sweet piquancy of her childish face set out by the
leaping fire-glow that lit and shadowed her delicate coloring. Outside
in the gray darkness raged the death from which he had snatched her by
a miracle. Beyond—a million miles away—the world whose claim had
loosened on them was going through its routine of lies and love, of
hypocrisies and heroisms. But here were just they two, flung back to
the primordial type by the fierce battle for existence that had
encompassed them—Adam and Eve in the garden, one to one, all else
forgot, all other ties and obligations for the moment obliterated. Had
they not struggled, heart beating against heart, with the breath of
death icing them, and come out alive? Was their world not contracted to
a space ten feet by twelve, shut in from every other planet by an
illimitable stretch of storm?

“Where should I have been if you had not found me?” she murmured, her
haunting eyes fixed on the flames.

“But I should have found you—no matter where you had been, I should
have found you.”

The words seemed to leap from him of themselves. He was sure he had not
meant to speak them, to voice so soon the claim that seemed to him so
natural and reasonable.

She considered his words and found delight in acquiescing at once. The
unconscious demand for life, for love, of her starved soul had never
been gratified. But he had come to her through that fearful valley of
death, because he must, because it had always been meant he should.

Her lustrous eyes, big with faith, looked up and met his.

The far, wise voices of the world were storm-deadened. They cried no
warning to these drifting hearts. How should they know in that moment
when their souls reached toward each other that the wisdom of the ages
had decreed their yearning futile?




CHAPTER IV.
FORT SALVATION


She must have fallen asleep there, for when she opened her eyes it was
day. Underneath her was a lot of bedding he had found in the cabin, and
tucked about her were the automobile rugs. For a moment her brain,
still sodden with sleep, struggled helplessly with her surroundings.
She looked at the smoky rafters without understanding, and her eyes
searched the cabin wonderingly for her maid. When she remembered, her
first thought was to look for the man. That he had gone, she saw with
instinctive terror.

But not without leaving a message. She found his penciled note,
weighted for security by a dollar, at the edge of the hearth.

“Gone on a foraging expedition. Back in an hour, Little Partner,” was
all it said. The other man also had promised to be back in an hour, and
he had not come, but the strong chirography of the note, recalling the
resolute strength of this man’s face, brought content to her eyes. He
had said he would come back. She rested secure in that pledge.

She went to the window and looked out over the great white wastes that
rose tier on tier to the dull sky-line. She shuddered at the arctic
desolation of the vast snow-fields. The mountains were sheeted with
silence and purity. It seemed to the untaught child-woman that she was
face to face with the Almighty.

Once during the night she had partially awakened to hear the roaring
wind as it buffeted snow-clouds across the range. It had come tearing
along the divide with the black storm in its vanguard, and she had
heard fearfully the shrieks and screams of the battle as it raged up
and down the gulches and sifted into them the deep drifts.

Half-asleep as she was, she had been afraid and had cried out with
terror at this strange wakening; and he had been beside her in an
instant.

“It’s all right, partner. There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he had said
cheerfully, taking her little hand in his big warm one.

Her fears had slipped away at once. Nestling down into her rug, she had
smiled sleepily at him and fallen asleep with her cheek on her hand,
her other hand still in his.

While she had been asleep the snow-tides had filled the gulch, had
risen level with the top of the lower pane of the window. Nothing broke
the smoothness of its flow save the one track he had made in breaking a
way out. That he should have tried to find his way through such an
untracked desolation amazed her. He could never do it. No puny human
atom could fight successfully against the barriers nature had dropped
so sullenly to fence them. They were set off from the world by a
quarantine of God. There was something awful to her in the knowledge.
It emphasized their impotence. Yet, this man had set himself to fight
the inevitable.

With a little shudder she turned from the window to the cheerless room.
The floor was dirty; unwashed dishes were piled upon the table. Here
and there were scattered muddy boots and overalls, just as their owner,
the prospector, had left them before he had gone to the nearest town to
restock his exhausted supply of provisions. Disorder and dirt filled
the rough cabin, or so it seemed to her fastidious eye.

The inspiration of the housewife seized her. She would surprise him on
his return by opening the door to him upon a house swept and garnished.
She would show him that she could be of some use even in such a
primitive topsy-turvy world as this into which Fate had thrust her
willy-nilly.

First, she carried red live coals on a shovel from the fireplace to the
cook-stove, and piled kindling upon them till it lighted. It was a new
experience to her. She knew nothing of housework; had never lit a fire
in her life, except once when she had been one of a camping party. The
smoke choked her before she had the lids back in their places, but
despite her awkwardness, the girl went about her unaccustomed tasks
with a light heart. It was for her new-found hero that she played at
housekeeping. For his commendation she filled the tea-kettle, enveloped
herself in a cloud of dust as she wielded the stub of a broom she
discovered, and washed the greasy dishes after the water was hot. A
childish pleasure suffused her. All her life her least whims had been
ministered to; she was reveling in a first attempt at service. As she
moved to and fro with an improvised dust-rag, sunshine filled her
being. From her lips the joy notes fell in song, shaken from her throat
for sheer happiness. This surely was life, that life from which she had
so carefully been hedged all the years of her young existence.

As he came down the trail he had broken, with a pack on his back, the
man heard her birdlike carol in the clear frosty air. He emptied his
chest in a deep shout, and she was instantly at the window, waving him
a welcome with her dust-rag.

“I thought you were never coming,” she cried from the open door as he
came up the path.

Her eyes were starry in their eagerness. Every sensitive feature was
alert with interest, so that the man thought he had never seen so
mobile and attractive a face.

“Did it seem long?” he asked.

“Oh, weeks and weeks! You must be frozen to an icicle. Come in and get
warm.”

“I’m as warm as toast,” he assured her.

He was glowing with exercise and the sting of the cold, for he had
tramped two miles through drifts from three to five feet deep, battling
with them every step of the way, and carrying with him on the return
trip a box of provisions.

“With all that snow on you and the pack on your back, it’s like Santa
Claus,” she cried, clapping her hands.

“Before we’re through with the adventure we may think that box a sure
enough gift from Santa,” he replied.

After he had put it down, he took off his overcoat on the threshold and
shook the snow from it. Then, with much feet stamping and scattering of
snow, he came in. She fluttered about him, dragging a chair up to the
fire for him, and taking his hat and gloves. It amused and pleased him
that she should be so solicitous, and he surrendered himself to her
ministrations.

His quick eye noticed the swept floor and the evanishment of disorder.
“Hello! What’s this clean through a fall house-cleaning? I’m not the
only member of the firm that has been working. Dishes washed, floor
swept, bed made, kitchen fire lit. You’ve certainly been going some,
unless the fairies helped you. Aren’t you afraid of blistering these
little hands?” he asked gaily, taking one of them in his and touching
the soft palm gently with the tip of his finger.

“I should preserve those blisters in alcohol to show that I’ve really
been of some use,” she answered, happy in his approval.

“Sho! People are made for different uses. Some are fit only to shovel
and dig. Others are here simply to decorate the world. Hard world. Hard
work is for those who can’t give society anything else, but beauty is
its own excuse for being,” he told her breezily.

“Now that’s the first compliment you have given me,” she pouted
prettily. “I can get them in plenty back in the drawing-rooms where I
am supposed to belong. We’re to be real comrades here, and compliments
are barred.”

“I wasn’t complimenting you,” he maintained. “I was merely stating a
principle of art.”

“Then you mustn’t make your principles of art personal, sir. But since
you have, I’m going to refute the application of your principle and
show how useful I’ve been. Now, sir, do you know what provisions we
have outside of those you have just brought?”

He knew exactly, since he had investigated during the night. That they
might possibly have to endure a siege of some weeks, he was quite well
aware, and his first thought, after she had gone to sleep before the
fire, had been to make inventory of such provisions as the prospector
had left in his cabin. A knuckle of ham, part of a sack of flour, some
navy beans, and some tea siftings at the bottom of a tin can; these
constituted the contents of the larder which the miner had gone to
replenish. But though the man knew he assumed ignorance, for he saw
that she was bubbling over with the desire to show her forethought.

“Tell me,” he begged of her, and after she had done so, he marveled
aloud over her wisdom in thinking of it.

“Now tell me about your trip,” she commanded, setting herself tailor
fashion on the rug to listen.

“There isn’t much to tell,” he smiled “I should like to make an
adventure of it, but I can’t. I just went and came back.”

“Oh, you just went and came back, did you?” she scoffed. “That won’t do
at all. I want to know all about it. Did you find the machine all
right?”

“I found it where we left it, buried in four feet of snow. You needn’t
be afraid that anybody will run away with it for a day or two. The
pantry was cached pretty deep itself, but I dug it out.”

Her shy glance admired the sturdy lines of his powerful frame. “I am
afraid it must have been a terrible task to get there through the
blizzard.”

“Oh, the blizzard is past. You never saw a finer, more bracing morning.
It’s a day for the gods,” he laughed boyishly.

She could have conceived no Olympian more heroic than he, and certainly
none with so compelling a vitality. “Such a warm, kind light in them!”
she thought of the eyes others had found hard and calculating.

It was lucky that the lunch the automobilists had brought from
Avalanche was ample and as yet untouched. The hotel waiter, who had
attended to the packing of it, had fortunately been used to reckon with
outdoor Montana appetites instead of cloyed New York ones. They
unpacked the little hamper with much gaiety. Everything was frozen
solid, and the wine had cracked its bottle.

“Shipped right through on our private refrigerator-car. That
cold-storage chicken looks the finest that ever happened. What’s this
rolled up in tissue-paper? Deviled eggs and ham sandwiches AND caviar,
not to speak of claret frappe. I’m certainly grateful to the gentleman
finished in ebony who helped to provision us for this siege. He’ll
never know what a tip he missed by not being here to collect.”

“Here’s jelly, too, and cake,” she said, exploring with him.

“Not to mention peaches and pears. Oh, this is luck of a special brand!
I was expecting to put up at Starvation Camp. Now we may name it Point
Plenty.”

“Or Fort Salvation,” she suggested shyly. “Because you brought me here
to save my life.”

She was such a child, in spite of her charming grown-up airs, that he
played make-believe with a zest that surprised himself when he came to
think of it. She elected him captain of Fort Salvation, with full power
of life and death over the garrison, and he appointed her second in
command. His first general order was to put the garrison on two meals a
day.

She clapped her little hands, eyes sparkling with excitement. “Are we
really snow-bound? Must we go on half-rations?”

“It is the part of wisdom, lieutenant,” he answered, smiling at her
enthusiasm. “We don’t know how long this siege is going to last. If it
should set in to snow, we may be here several days before the
relief-party reaches us.” But, though he spoke cheerfully, he was aware
of sinister possibilities in the situation. “Several weeks” would have
been nearer his real guess.

They ate breakfast at the shelf-table nailed in place underneath the
western window. They made a picnic of it, and her spirits skipped upon
the hilltops. For the first time she ate from tin plates, drank from a
tin cup, and used a tin spoon the worse for rust. What mattered it to
her that the teapot was grimy and the fryingpan black with soot! It was
all part of the wonderful new vista that had suddenly opened before her
gaze. She had awakened into life and already she was dimly realizing
that many and varied experiences lay waiting for her in that untrodden
path beyond her cloistered world.

A reconnaissance in the shed behind the house showed him no plethora of
firewood. But here was ax, shovel, and saw, and he asked no more. First
he shoveled out a path along the eaves of the house where she might
walk in sentry fashion to take the deep breaths of clear sharp air he
insisted upon. He made it wide enough so that her skirt would not sweep
against the snow-bank, and trod down the trench till the footing was
hard and solid. Then with ax and saw he climbed the hillside back of
the house and set himself to get as much fuel as he could. The sky was
still heavy with unshed snow, and he knew that with the coming of night
the storm would be renewed.

Came noon, mid-afternoon, the early dusk of a mountain winter, and
found him still hewing and sawing, still piling load after load in the
shed. Now and again she came out and watched him, laughing at the
figure he made as he would come plunging through the snow with his
armful of fuel.

She did not know, as he did, the vital necessity of filling the lean-to
before winter fell upon them in earnest and buried them deep with his
frozen blanket, and she was a little piqued that he should spend the
whole day away from her in such unsocial fashion.

“Let me help,” she begged so often that he trod down a path, made boots
for her out of torn gunny-sacks which he tied round her legs, and let
her drag wood to the house on a pine branch which served for a sled.
She wore her gauntlets to protect her tender hands, and thereafter was
happy until, detecting signs of fatigue, he made her go into the house
and rest.

As soon as she dared she was back again, making fun of him and the
earnestness with which he worked.

“Robinson Crusoe” was one name she fastened upon him, and she was not
satisfied till she had made him call her “Friday.”

Twilight fell austere and sudden upon them with an immediate fall of
temperature that found a thermometer in her blue face.

He recommended the house, but she was of a contrary mood.

“I don’t want to,” she announced debonairly.

In a stiff military attitude he gave raucous mandate from his throat.

“Commanding officer’s orders, lieutenant.”

“I think I’m going to mutiny,” she informed him, with chin saucily in
air.

This would not do at all. The chill wind sweeping down the canon was
searching her insufficient clothing already. He picked her up in his
arms and ran with her toward the house, setting her down in the trench
outside the door. She caught her startled breath and looked at him in
shy, dubious amazement.

“Really you” she was beginning when he cut her short.

“Commanding officer’s orders, lieutenant,” came briskly from lips that
showed just a hint of a smile.

At once she clicked her heels together, saluted, and wheeled into the
cabin.

From the grimy window she watched his broad-shouldered vigor, waving
her hand whenever his face was turned her way. He worked like a Titan,
reveling in the joy of physical labor, but it was long past dark before
he finished and came striding to the hut.

They made a delightful evening of it, living in the land of Never Was.
For one source of her charm lay in the gay, childlike whimsicality of
her imagination. She believed in fairies and heroes with all her heart,
which with her was an organ not located in her brain. The delicious
gurgle of gaiety in her laugh was a new find to him in feminine
attractions.

There had been many who thought the career of this pirate of industry
beggared fiction, though, few had found his flinty personality a
radiaton of romance. But this convent-nurtured child had made a
discovery in men, one out of the rut of the tailor-made,
convention-bound society youths to whom her experience for the most
part had been limited. She delighted in his masterful strength, in the
confidence of his careless dominance. She liked to see that look of
power in his gray-blue eyes softened to the droll, half-tender,
expression with which he played the game of make-believe. There were no
to-morrows; to-day marked the limit of time for them. By tacit consent
they lived only in the present, shutting out deliberately from their
knowledge of each other, that past which was not common to both. Even
their names were unknown to each other, and both of them were glad that
it was so.

The long winter evening had fallen early, and they dined by
candle-light, considering merrily how much they might with safety eat
and yet leave enough for the to-morrows that lay before them. Afterward
they sat before the fire, in the shadow and shine of the flickering
logs, happy and content in each other’s presence. She dreamed, and he,
watching her, dreamed, too. The wild, sweet wonder of life surged
through them, touching their squalid surroundings to the high mystery
of things unreal.

The strangeness of it was that he was a man of large and not very
creditable experience of women, yet her deep, limpid eyes, her sweet
voice, the immature piquancy of her movements that was the expression
of her, had stirred his imagination more potently than if he had been
the veriest schoolboy nursing a downy lip. He could not keep his eyes
from this slender, exquisite girl, so dainty and graceful in her mobile
piquancy. Fire and passion were in his heart and soul, restraint and
repression in his speech and manner. For the fire and passion in him
were pure and clean as the winds that sweep the hills.

But for the girl—she was so little mistress of her heart that she had
no prescience of the meaning of this sweet content that filled her. And
the voices that should have warned her were silent, busy behind the
purple hills with lies and love and laughter and tears.




CHAPTER V.
ENTER SIMON HARLEY


The prospector’s house in which they had found refuge was perched on
the mountainside just at one edge of the draw. Rough as the girl had
thought it, there was a more pretentious appearance to it than might
have been expected. The cabin was of hewn logs mortared with mud, and
care had been taken to make it warm. The fireplace was a huge affair
that ate fuel voraciously. It was built of stone, which had been
gathered from the immediate hillside.

The prospect itself showed evidence of having been worked a good deal,
and it was an easy guess for the man who now stood looking into the
tunnel that it belonged to some one of the thousands of miners who
spend half their time earning a grubstake, and the other half
dissipating it upon some hole in the ground which they have duped
themselves into believing is a mine.

From the tunnel his eye traveled up the face of the white mountain to
the great snow-comb that yawned over the edge of the rock-rim far
above. It had snowed again heavily all night, and now showed symptoms
of a thaw. Not once nor twice, but a dozen times, the man’s anxious
gaze had swept up to that great overhanging bank. Snowslides ran every
year in this section with heavy loss to life and property. Given a
rising temperature and some wind, the comb above would gradually settle
lower and lower, at last break off, plunge down the precipitous slope,
bringing thousands of tons of rock and snow with it, and, perhaps, bury
them in a Titanic grave of ice. There had been a good deal of timber
cut from the shoulder of the mountain during the past summer, and this
very greatly increased the danger. That there was a real peril the man
looking at it did not attempt to deny to himself. It would be enough to
deny it to her in case she should ever suspect.

He had hoped for cold weather, a freeze hard enough to crust the
surface of the snow. Upon this he might have made shift somehow to get
her to Yesler’s ranch, eighteen miles away though it was, but he knew
this would not be feasible with the snow in its present condition. It
was not certain that he could make the ranch alone; encumbered with
her, success would be a sheer impossibility. On the other hand, their
provisions would not last long. The outlook was not a cheerful one,
from whichever point of view he took it; yet there was one phase of it
he could not regret. The factors which made the difficulties of the
situation made also its delights. Though they were prisoners in this
solitary untrodden canyon, the sentence was upon both of them. She
could look to none other than he for aid; and, at least, the drifts
which kept them in held others out.

Her voice at his shoulder startled him.

“Wherefore this long communion with nature, my captain?” she gaily
asked. “Behold, my lord’s hot cakes are ready for the pan and his
servant to wait upon him.” She gave him a demure smiling little curtsy
of mock deference.

Never had her distracting charm been more in evidence. He had not seen
her since they parted on the previous night. He had built for himself a
cot in the woodshack, and had contrived a curtain that could be drawn
in front of her bed in the living-room. Thus he could enter in the
morning, light the fires, and start breakfast without disturbing her.
She had dressed her hair, now in a different way, so that it fell in
low waves back from the forehead and was bunched at the nape of her
neck. The light swiftness of her dainty grace, the almost exaggerated
carnation of the slightly parted lips, the glad eagerness that sparked
her eyes, brought out effectively the picturesqueness of her beauty.

His grave eyes rested on her so long that a soft glow mantled her
cheeks. Perhaps her words had been too free, though she had not meant
them so. For the first time some thought of the conventions distressed
her. Ought she to hold herself more in reserve toward him? Must she
restrain her natural impulses to friendliness?

His eyes released her presently, but not before she read in them the
feelings that had softened them as they gazed into hers. They mirrored
his poignant pleasure at the delight of her sweet slenderness so close
to him, his perilous joy at the intimacy fate had thrust upon them.
Shyly her lids fell to the flushed cheeks.

“Breakfast is ready,” she added self-consciously, her girlish innocence
startled like a fawn of the forest at the hunter’s approach.

For whereas she had been blind now she saw in part. Some flash of
clairvoyance had laid bare a glimpse of his heart and her own to her.
Without misunderstanding the perfect respect for her which he felt, she
knew the turbid banked emotions which this dammed. Her heart seemed to
beat in her bosom like an imprisoned dove.

It was his voice, calm and resonant with strength, that brought her to
earth again.

“And I am ready for it, lieutenant. Right about face. Forward—march!”

After breakfast they went out and tramped together the little path of
hard-trodden snow in front of the house. She broached the prospect of a
rescue or the chances of escape.

“We shall soon be out of food, and, anyhow, we can’t stay here all
winter,” she suggested with a tremulous little laugh.

“You are naturally very tired of it already,” he hazarded.

“It has been the experience of my life. I shall fence it off from all
the days that have passed and all that are to come,” she made answer
vividly.

Their eyes met, but only for an instant.

“I am glad,” he said quietly.

He began, then, to tell her what he must do, but at the first word of
it she broke out in protest.

“No—no—no! We shall stay together. If you go I am going, too.”

“I wish you could, but it is not possible. You could never get there.
The snow is too soft and heavy for wading and not firm enough to bear
your weight.”

“But you will have to wade.”

“I am stronger than you, lieutenant.”

“I know, but——” She broke down and confessed her terror. “Would you
leave me here—alone—with all this snow Oh, I couldn’t stay—I couldn’t.”

“It’s the only way,” he said steadily. Every fiber in him rebelled at
leaving her here to face peril alone, but his reason overrode the
desire and rebellion that were hot within him. He must think first of
her ultimate safety, and this lay in getting her away from here at the
first chance.

Tears splashed down from the big eyes. “I didn’t think you would leave
me here alone. With you I don’t mind it, but— Oh, I should die if I
stayed alone.”

“Only for twenty-four hours. Perhaps less. I shouldn’t think of it if
it weren’t necessary.”

“Take me with you. I am strong. You don’t know how strong I am. I
promise to keep up with you. Please!”

He shook his head. “I would take you with me if I could. You know that.
But it’s a man’s fight. I shall have to stand up to it hour after hour
till I reach Yesler’s ranch. I shall get through, but it would not be
possible for you to make it.”

“And if you don’t get through?”

He refused to consider that contingency. “But I shall. You may look to
see me back with help by this time to-morrow morning.”

“I’m not afraid with you. But if you go away Oh, I can’t stand it. You
don’t know—you don’t know.” She buried her face in her hands.

He had to swallow down his sympathy before he went on. “Yes, I know.
But you must be brave. You must think of every minute as being one
nearer to the time of my return.”

“You will think me a dreadful coward, and I am. But I can’t help it. I
AM afraid to stay alone. There’s nothing in the world but mountains of
snow. They are horrible—like death—except when you are here.”

Her child eyes coaxed him to stay. The mad longing was in him to kiss
the rosy little mouth with the queer alluring droop to its corners. It
was a strange thing how, with that arched twist to her eyebrows and
with that smile which came and went like sunshine in her eyes, she
toppled his lifelong creed. The cardinal tenet of his faith had been a
belief in strength. He had first been drawn to Virginia by reason of
her pluck and her power. Yet this child’s very weakness was her
fountain of strength. She cried out with pain, and he counted it an
asset of virtue in her. She acknowledged herself a coward, and his
heart went out to her because of it. The battle assignments of life
were not for the soft curves and shy winsomeness of this dainty lamb.

“You will be brave. I expect you to be brave, lieutenant.” Words of
love and comfort were crowding to his brain, but he would not let them
out.

“How long will you be gone?” she sobbed.

“I may possibly get back before midnight, but you mustn’t begin to
expect me until to-morrow morning, perhaps not till to-morrow
afternoon.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—I couldn’t stay here at night alone. Don’t go, please.
I’ll not get hungry, truly I won’t, and to-morrow they will find us.”

He rose, his face working. “I MUST go, child. It’s the thing to do. I
wish to Heaven it weren’t. You must think of yourself as quite safe
here. You ARE safe. Don’t make it hard for me to go, dear.”

“I AM a coward. But I can’t help it. There is so much snow—and the
mountains are so big.” She tried valiantly to crush down her sobs. “But
go. I’ll—I’ll not be afraid.”

He buried her little hands in his two big ones and looked deep into her
eyes. “Every minute of the time I am away from you I shall be with you
in spirit. You’ll not be alone any minute of the day or night. Whether
you are awake or asleep I shall be with you.”

“I’ll try to remember that,” she answered, smiling up at him but with a
trembling lip.

She put him up some lunch while he made his simple preparations. To the
end of the trench she walked with him, neither of them saying a word.
The moment of parting had come.

She looked up at him with a crooked wavering little smile. She wanted
to be brave, but she could not trust herself to say a word.

“Remember, dear. I am not leaving you. My body has gone on an errand.
That is all.”

Just now she found small comfort in this sophistry, but she did not
tell him so.

“I—I’ll remember.” She gulped down a sob and still smiled through the
mist that filmed her sight.

In his face she could see how much he was moved at her distress. Always
a creature of impulse, one mastered her now, the need to let her
weakness rest on his strength. Her arms slipped quickly round his neck
and her head lay buried on his shoulder. He held her tight, eyes
shining, the desire of her held in leash behind set teeth, the while
sobs shook her soft round body in gusts.

“My lamb—my sweet precious lamb,” she heard him murmur in anguish.

From some deep sex trait it comforted her that he suffered. With the
mother instinct she began to regain control of herself that she might
help him.

“It will not be for long,” she assured him. “And every step of your way
I shall pray for, your safety,” she whispered.

He held her at arm’s length while his gaze devoured her, then silently
he wheeled away and plunged waist deep into the drifts. As long as he
was in sight he saw her standing there, waving her handkerchief to him
in encouragement. Her slight, dark figure, outlined against the snow,
was the last thing his eyes fell upon before he turned a corner of the
gulch and dropped downward toward the plains.

But when he was surely gone, after one fearful look at the white sea
which encompassed her, the girl fled to the cabin, slammed the door
after her, and flung herself on the bed to weep out her lonely terror
in an ecstasy of tears. She had spent the first violence of her grief,
and was sitting crouched on the rug before the open fire when the sound
of a footstep, crunching the snow, startled her. The door opened, to
let in the man who had just left her.

“You are back—already,” she cried, her tear? stained face lifted toward
him.

“Yes,” he smiled’ from the doorway. “Come here, little partner.”

And when she had obediently joined him her eye followed his finger up
the mountain-trail to a bend round which men and horses were coming.

“It’s a relief-party,” he said, and caught up his field-glasses to look
them over more certainly. Two men on horseback, leading a third animal,
were breaking a way down the trail, black spots against the background
of white. “I guess Fort Salvation’s about to be relieved,” he added
grimly, following the party through the glasses.

She touched the back of his hand with a finger. “Are you glad?” she
asked softly.

“No, by Heaven!” he cried, lowering his glasses swiftly.

As he looked into her eyes the blood rushed to his brain with a surge.
Her face turned to his unconsciously, and their lips met.

“And I don’t even know your name,” she murmured.

“Waring Ridgway; and yours?”

“Aline Hope,” she said absently. Then a hot Rush ran over the girlish
face. “No, no, I had forgotten. I was married last week.”

The gates of paradise, open for two days, clanged to on Ridgway. He
stared out with unseeing eyes into the silent wastes of snow. The
roaring in his ears and the mountainsides that churned before his eyes
were reflections of the blizzard raging within him.

“I’ll never forget—never,” he heard her falter, and her voice was a
thousand miles away.

From the storm within him he was aroused by a startled cry from the
girl at his side. Her fascinated gaze was fixed on the summit of the
ridge above them. There was a warning crackle. The overhanging comb
snapped, slid slowly down, and broke off. With gathering momentum it
descended, sweeping into its heart rocks, trees, and debris. A terrific
roar filled the air as the great white cloud came tearing down like an
express-train.

Ridgway caught her round the waist and flung the girl against the wall
of the cabin, protecting her with his body. The avalanche was upon
them, splitting great trees to kindling-wood in the fury of its rush.
The concussion of the wind shattered every window to fragments, almost
tore the cabin from its foundations. Only the extreme tail of the slide
touched them, yet they were buried deep in flying snow.

He found no great difficulty in digging a way out, and when he lifted
her to the surface she was conscious. Yet she was pale even to the lips
and trembled like an aspen in the summer breeze, clinging to him for
support helplessly.

His cheerful voice rang like a bugle to her shocked brain.

“It’s all past. We’re safe now, dear—quite safe.”

The first of the trail-breakers had dismounted and was plowing his way
hurriedly to the cabin, but neither of them saw him as he came up the
slope.

“Are you sure?” She shuddered, her hands still in his. “Wasn’t it
awful? I thought—” Her sentence trailed out unfinished.

“Are you unhurt, Aline?” cried the newcomer. And when he saw she was,
he added: “Praise ye the Lord. O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is
good: for His mercy endureth forever. He saved them for His name’s
sake, that He might make His mighty power to be known.”

At sound of the voice they turned and saw the man hurrying toward them.
He was tall, gray, and seventy, of massive frame and gaunt, still
straight and vigorous, with the hooked nose and piercing eyes of a
hawk. At first glance he looked always the bird of prey, but at the
next as invariably the wolf, an effect produced by the salient reaching
jaw and the glint of white teeth bared for a lip smile. Just now he was
touched to a rare emotion. His hands trembled and an expression of
shaken thankfulness rested in his face.

Aline, still with Ridgway’s strong arms about her, slowly came back to
the inexorable facts of life.

“You—here?”

“As soon as we could get through—and thank God in time.”

“I would have died, except for—” This brought her immediately to an
introduction, and after she had quietly released herself the man who
had saved her heard himself being formally presented: “Mr. Ridgway, I
want you to meet my husband, Mr. Harley.”

Ridgway turned to Simon Harley a face of hammered steel and bowed,
putting his hands deliberately behind his back.

“I’ve been expecting you at Mesa, Mr. Harley,” he said rigidly. “I’ll
be glad to have the pleasure of welcoming you there.”

The great financier was wondering where he had heard the man’s name
before, but he only said gravely: “You have a claim on me I can never
forget, Mr. Ridgway.”

Scornfully the other disdained this proffer. “Not at all. You owe me
nothing, Mr. Harley—absolutely nothing. What I have done I have done
for her. It is between her and me.”

At this moment the mind of Harley fitted the name Ridgway to its niche
in his brain. So this was the audacious filibuster who had dared to
fire on the trust flag, the man he had come West to ruin and to humble.

“I think you will have to include me, Mr. Ridgway,” he said suavely.
“What is done for my wife is done, also, for me.”




CHAPTER VI.
ON THE SNOW-TRAIL


Aline had passed into the house, moved by an instinct which shrank from
publicity in the inevitable personal meeting between her and her
husband. Now, Harley, with the cavalier nod of dismissal, which only a
multimillionaire can afford, followed her and closed the door. A
passionate rush of blood swept Ridgway’s face. He saw red as he stood
there with eyes burning into that door which had been shut in his face.
The nails of his clenched fingers bit into his palms, and his muscles
gathered themselves tensely. He had been cast aside, barred from the
woman he loved by this septuagenarian, as carelessly as if he had no
claim.

And it came home to him that now he had no claim, none before the law
and society. They had walked in Arcadia where shepherds pipe. They had
taken life for granted as do the creatures of the woods, forgetful of
the edicts of a world that had seemed far and remote. But that world
had obtruded itself and shattered their dream. In the person of Simon
Harley it had shut the door which was to separate him and her. Hitherto
he had taken from life what he had wanted, but already he was grappling
with the blind fear of a fate for once too strong for him.

“Well, I’m damned if it isn’t Waring Ridgway,” called a mellow voice
from across the gulch.

The man named turned, and gradually the set lines of his jaw relaxed.

“I didn’t notice it was you, Sam. Better bring the horses across this
side of that fringe of aspens.”

The dismounted horseman followed directions and brought the floundering
horses through, and after leaving them in the cleared place where
Ridgway had cut his firewood he strolled leisurely forward to meet the
mine-owner. He was a youngish man, broad of shoulder and slender of
waist, a trifle bowed in the legs from much riding, but with an elastic
sufficiency that promised him the man for an emergency, a pledge which
his steady steel-blue eyes, with the humorous lines about the corners,
served to make more valuable. His apparel suggested the careless
efficiency of the cow-man, from the high-heeled boots into which were
thrust his corduroys to the broad-brimmed white Stetson set on his
sunreddened wavy hair. A man’s man, one would vote him at first sight,
and subsequent impressions would not contradict the first.

“Didn’t know you were down in this neck of woods, Waring,” he said
pleasantly, as they shook hands.

An onlooker might have noticed that both of them gripped hands heartily
and looked each other squarely in the eye.

“I came down on business and got caught in the blizzard on my way back.
Came on her freezing in the machine and brought her here along with me.
I had my eye on that slide. The snow up there didn’t look good to me,
and the grub was about out, anyhow, so I was heading for the C B Ranch
when I sighted you.”

“Golden luck for her. I knew it was a chance in a million that she was
still alive, but Harley wanted to take it. Say, that old fellow’s made
of steel wire. Two of my boys are plugging along a mile or two behind
us, but he stayed right with the game to a finish—and him
seventy-three, mind you, and a New Yorker at that. The old boy rides
like he was born in a saddle,” said Sam Yesler with enthusiasm.

“I never said he was a quitter,” conceded Ridgway ungraciously.

“You’re right he ain’t. And say, but he’s fond of his wife. Soon as he
struck the ranch the old man butted out again into the blizzard to get
her—slipped out before we knew it. The boys rounded him up wandering
round the big pasture, and none too soon neither. All the time we had
to keep herd on him to keep him from taking another whirl at it. He was
like a crazy man to tackle it, though he must a-known it was suicide.
Funny how a man takes a shine to a woman and thinks the sun rises and
sets by her. Far, as I have been able to make out women are much of a
sameness, though I ain’t setting up for a judge. Like as not this woman
don’t care a hand’s turn for him.”

“Why should she? He bought her with his millions, I suppose. What right
has an old man like that with one foot in the grave to pick out a child
and marry her? I tell you, Sam, there’s something ghastly about it.”

“Oh, well, I reckon when she sold herself she knew what she was
getting. It’s about an even thing—six of one and half a dozen of the
other. There must be something rotten about a woman who will do a thing
of that sort.”

“Wait till you’ve seen her before passing judgment. And after you have
you’ll apologize if you’re a white man for thinking such a thing about
her,” the miner said hotly.

Yesler looked at his friend in amiable surprise. “I don’t reckon we
need to quarrel about Simon Harley’s matrimonial affairs, do we?” he
laughed.

“Not unless you want to say any harm of that lamb.”

A glitter of mischief gleamed from the cattleman’s eyes. “Meaning
Harley, Waring?”

“You know who I mean. I tell you she’s an angel from heaven, pure as
the driven snow.”

“And I tell you that I’ll take your word for it without quarreling with
you,” was the goodhumored retort. “What’s up, anyhow? I never saw you
so touchy before. You’re a regular pepper-box.”

The rescuers had brought food with them, and the party ate lunch before
starting back. The cow-punchers of the C B had now joined them, both of
them, as well as their horses, very tired with the heavy travel.

“This here Marathon race business through three-foot snow ain’t for
invalids like me and Husky,” one of them said cheerfully, with his
mouth full of sandwich. “We’re also rans, and don’t even show for
place.”

Yet though two of them had, temporarily at least, been rescued from
imminent danger, and success beyond their expectations had met the
others, it was a silent party. A blanket of depression seemed to rest
upon it, which the good stories of Yesler and the genial nonsense of
his man, Chinn, were unable to lift. Three of them, at least, were
brooding over what the morning had brought forth, and trying to realize
what it might mean for them.

“We’d best be going, I expect,” said Yesler at last. “We’ve got a right
heavy bit of work cut out for us, and the horses are through feeding.
We can’t get started any too soon for me.”

Ridgway nodded silently. He knew that the stockman was dubious, as he
himself was, about being able to make the return trip in safety. The
horses were tired; so, too, were the men who had broken the heavy trail
for so many miles, with the exception of Sam himself, who seemed built
of whipcord and elastic. They would be greatly encumbered by the woman,
for she would certainly give out during the journey. The one point in
their favor was that they could follow a trail which had already been
trodden down.

Simon Harley helped his wife into the boy’s saddle on the back of the
animal they had led, but his inexperience had to give way to Yesler’s
skill in fitting the stirrups to the proper length for her feet. To
Ridgway, who had held himself aloof during this preparation, the
stockman now turned with a wave of his hand toward his horse.

“You ride, Waring.”

“No, I’m fresh.”

“All right. We’ll take turns.”

Ridgway led the party across the gulch, following the trail that had
been swept by the slide. The cowboys followed him, next came Harley,
his wife, and in the rear the cattleman. They descended the draw, and
presently dipped over rolling ground to the plain beyond. The
procession plowed steadily forward mile after mile, the pomes
floundering through drifts after the man ahead.

Chinn, who had watched him breasting the soft heavy blanket that lay on
the ground so deep and hemmed them in, turned to his companion.

“On the way coming I told you, Husky, we had the best man in Montana at
our head. We got that beat now to a fare-you-well. We got the two best
in this party, by crickey.”

“He’s got the guts, all right, but there ain’t nothing on two legs can
keep it up much longer,” replied the other. “If you want to know, I’m
about all in myself.”

“Here, too,” grunted the other. “And so’s the bronc.”

It was not, however, until dusk was beginning to fall that the leader
stopped. Yesler’s voice brought him up short in his tracks.

“Hold on, Waring. The lady’s down.”

Ridgway strode back past the exhausted cowboys and Harley, the latter
so beaten with fatigue that he could scarce cling to the pommel of his
saddle.

“I saw it coming. She’s been done for a long time, but she hung on like
a thoroughbred,” explained Yesler from the snow-bank where Aline had
fallen.

He had her in his arms and was trying to get at a flask of whisky in
his hip-pocket.

“All right. I’ll take care of her, Sam. You go ahead with your horse
and break trail. I don’t like the way this wind is rising. It’s wiping
out the path you made when you broke through. How far’s the ranch now?”

“Close to five miles.”

Both men had lowered their voices almost to a whisper.

“It’s going to be a near thing, Sam. Your men are played out. Harley
will never make it without help. From now on every mile will be worse
than the last.”

Yesler nodded quietly. “Some one has got to go ahead for help. That’s
the only way.”

“It will have to be you, of course. You know the road best and can get
back quickest. Better take her pony. It’s the fittest.”

The owner of the C B hesitated an instant before he answered. He was
the last man in the world to desert a comrade that was down, but his
common sense told him his friend had spoken wisely. The only chance for
the party was to get help to it from the ranch.

“All right. If anybody plays out beside her try to keep him going. If
it comes to a showdown leave him for me to pick up. Don’t let him stop
the whole outfit.”

“Sure. Better leave me that bottle of whisky. So-long.”

“You’re going to ride, I reckon?”

“Yes. I’ll have to.”

“Get up on my horse and I’ll give her to you. That’s right Well, I’ll
see you later.”

And with that the stockman was gone. For long they could see him,
plunging slowly forward through the drifts, getting always smaller and
smaller, till distance and the growing darkness swallowed him.

Presently the girl in Ridgway’s arms opened her eyes.

“I heard what you and he said,” she told him quietly.

“About what?” he smiled down into the white face that looked up into
his.

“You know. About our danger. I’m not afraid, not the least little bit.”

“You needn’t be. We’re coming through, all right. Sam will make it to
the ranch. He’s a man in a million.”

“I don’t mean that. I’m not afraid, anyway, whether we do or not.”

“Why?” he asked, his heart beating wildly.

“I don’t know, but I’m not,” she murmured with drowsy content.

But he knew if she did not. Her fear had passed because he was there,
holding her in his arms, fighting to the last ounce of power in him for
her life. She felt he would never leave her, and that, if it came to
the worst, she would pass from life with him close to her. Again he
knew that wild exultant beat of blood no woman before this one had ever
stirred in him.

Harley was the first to give up. He lurched forward and slipped from
the saddle to the snow, and could not be cursed into rising. The man
behind dismounted, put down his burden, and dragged the old man to his
feet.

“Here! This won’t do. You’ve got to stick it out.”

“I can’t. I’ve reached my limit.” Then testily: “‘Are not my days few?
Cease then, and let me alone,’” he added wearily, with his everready
tag of Scripture.

The instant the other’s hold on him relaxed the old man sank back.
Ridgway dragged him up and cuffed him like a troublesome child. He knew
this was no time for reasoning.

“Are you going to lie down and quit, you old loafer? I tell you the
ranch is only a mile or two. Here, get into the saddle.”

By sheer strength the younger man hoisted him into the seat. He was
very tired himself, but the vital sap of youth in him still ran strong
in his blood. For a few yards farther they pushed on before Harley slid
down again and his horse stopped.

Ridgway passed him by, guiding his bronco in a half-circle through the
snow.

“I’ll send back help for you,” he promised.

“It will be too late, but save her—save her,” the old man begged.

“I will,” called back the other between set teeth.

Chinn was the next to drop out, and after him the one he called Husky.
Both their horses had been abandoned a mile or two back, too exhausted
to continue. Each of them Ridgway urged to stick to the trail and come
on as fast as they could.

He knew the horse he was riding could not much longer keep going with
the double weight, and when at length its strength gave out completely
he went on afoot, carrying her in his arms as on that eventful night
when he had saved her from the blizzard.

It was so the rescue-party found him, still staggering forward with her
like a man in a sleep, flesh and blood and muscles all protestant
against the cruelty of his indomitable will that urged them on in spite
of themselves. In a dream he heard Yesler’s cheery voice, gave up his
burden to one of the rescuers, and found himself being lifted to a
fresh horse. From this dream he awakened to find himself before the
great fire of the living-room of the ranch-house, wakened from it only
long enough to know that somebody was undressing him and helping him
into bed.

Nature, with her instinct for renewing life, saw to it that Ridgway
slept round the clock. He arose fit for anything. His body, hard as
nails, suffered no reaction from the terrific strain he had put upon
it, and he went down to his breakfast with an appetite ravenous for
whatever good things Yesler’s Chinese cook might have prepared for him.

He found his host already at work on a juicy steak.

“Mornin’,” nodded that gentleman. “Hope you feel as good as you look.”

“I’m all right, barring a little stiffness in my muscles. I’ll feel
good as the wheat when I’ve got outside of the twin steak to that one
you have.”

Yesler touched a bell, whereupon a soft-footed Oriental appeared,
turned almond eyes on his proprietor, took orders and padded silently
back to his kingdom—the kitchen. Almost immediately he reappeared with
a bowl of oatmeal and a pitcher of cream.

“Go to it, Waring.”

His host waved him the freedom of the diningroom, and Ridgway fell to.
Never before had food tasted so good. He had been too sleepy to eat
last night, but now he made amends. The steak, the muffins, the coffee,
were all beyond praise, and when he came to the buckwheat hot cakes,
sandwiched with butter and drenched with real maple syrup, his
satisfied soul rose up and called Hop Lee blessed. When he had
finished, Sam capped the climax by shoving toward him his case of
Havanas.

Ridgway’s eyes glistened. “I haven’t smoked for days,” he explained,
and after the smoke had begun to rise, he added: “Ask what you will,
even to the half of my kingdom, it’s yours.”

“Or half of the Consolidated’s,” amended his friend with twinkling
eyes.

“Even so, Sam,” returned the other equably. “And now, tell me how you
managed to round us all up safely.”

“You’ve heard, then, that we got the whole party in time?”

“Yes, I’ve been talking with one of your enthusiastic riders that went
out with you after us. He’s been flimflammed into believing you the
greatest man in the United States. Tell me how you do it.”

“Nick’s a good boy, but I reckon he didn’t tell you quite all that.”

“Didn’t he? You should have heard him reel off your praises by the
yard. I got the whole story of how you headed the relief-party after
you had reached the ranch more dead than alive.”

“Then, if you’ve got it, I don’t need to tell you. I WAS a bit worried
about the old man. He was pretty far gone when we reached him, but he
pulled through all right. He’s still sleeping like a top.”

“Is he?” His guest’s hard gaze came round to meet his. “And the lady?
Do you know how she stood it?”

“My sister says she was pretty badly played out, but all she needs is
rest. Nell put her in her own bed, and she, too, has been doing nothing
but sleep.”

Ridgway smoked out his cigar in silence then tossed it into the
fireplace as he rose briskly.

“I want to talk to Mesa over the phone, Sam.”

“Can’t do it. The wires are down. This storm played the deuce with
them.”

“The devil! I’ll have to get through myself then.”

“Forget business for a day or two, Waring, and take it easy up here,”
counseled his host.

“Can’t do it. I have to make arrangements to welcome Simon Harley to
Mesa. The truth is, Sam, that there are several things that won’t wait.
I’ve got to frame them up my way. Can you get me through to the
railroad in time to catch the Limited?”

“I think so. The road has been traveled for two or three days. If you
really must go. I hate to have you streak off like this.”

“I’d like to stay, Sam, but I can’t. For one thing, there’s that
senatorial fight coming on. Now that Harley’s on the ground in person,
I’ll have to look after my fences pretty close. He’s a good fighter,
and he’ll be out to win.”

“After what you’ve done for him. Don’t you think that will make a
difference, Waring?”

His friend laughed without mirth. “What have I done for him? I left him
in the snow to die, and while a good many thousand other people would
bless me for it, probably he has a different point of view.”

“I was thinking of what you did for his wife.”

“You’ve said it exactly. I did it for her, not for him. I’ll accept
nothing from Harley on that account. He is outside of the friendship
between her and me, and he can’t jimmy his way in.”

Yesler shrugged his shoulders. “All right. I’ll order a rig hitched for
you and drive you over myself. I want to talk over this senatorial
fight anyhow. The way things look now it’s going to be the rottenest
session of the legislature we’ve ever had. Sometimes I’m sick of being
mixed up in the thing, but I got myself elected to help straighten out
things, and I’m certainly going to try.”

“That’s right, Sam. With a few good fighters like you we can win out.
Anything to beat the Consolidated.”

“Anything to keep our politics decent,” corrected the other. “I’ve got
nothing against the Consolidated, but I won’t lie down and let it or
any other private concern hog-tie this State—not if I can help it,
anyhow.”

Behind wary eyes Ridgway studied him. He was wondering how far this man
would go as his tool. Sam Yesler held a unique position in the State.
His influence was commanding among the sturdy old-time population
represented by the non-mining interests of the smaller towns and open
plains. He must be won at all hazards to lend it in the impending fight
against Harley. The mine-owner knew that no thought of personal gain
would move him. He must be made to feel that it was for the good of the
State that the Consolidated be routed. Ridgway resolved to make him see
it that way.




CHAPTER VII.
BACK FROM ARCADIA


The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company stepped from the
parlor-car of the Limited at the hour when all wise people are taking
life easy after a good dinner. He did not, however, drive to his club,
but took a cab straight for his rooms, where he had telegraphed Eaton
to meet him with the general superintendent of all his properties and
his private secretary, Smythe. For nearly a week his finger had been
off the pulse of the situation, and he wanted to get in touch again as
soon as possible. For in a struggle as tense as the one between him and
the trust, a hundred vital things might have happened in that time. He
might be coming back to catastrophe and ruin, brought about while he
had been a prisoner to love in that snow-bound cabin.

Prisoner to love he had been and still was, but the business men who
met him at his rooms, fellow adventurers in the forlorn hope he had
hitherto led with such signal success, could have read nothing of this
in the marble, chiseled face of their sagacious general, so indomitable
of attack and insatiate of success. His steel-hard eyes gave no hint of
the Arcadia they had inhabited so eagerly a short twenty-four hours
before. The intoxicating madness he had known was chained deep within
him. Once more he had a grip on himself; was sheathed in a cannonproof
plate armor of selfishness. No more magic nights of starshine,
breathing fire and dew; no more lifted moments of exaltation stinging
him to a pulsating wonder at life’s wild delight. He was again the
inexorable driver of men, with no pity for their weaknesses any more
than for his own.

The men whom he found waiting for him at his rooms were all young
Westerners picked out by him because he thought them courageous,
unscrupulous and loyal. Like him, they were privateers in the seas of
commerce, and sailed under no flag except the one of insurrection he
had floated. But all of them, though they were associated with him and
hoped to ride to fortune on the wave that carried him there, recognized
themselves as subordinates in the enterprises he undertook. They were
merely heads of departments, and they took orders like trusted clerks
with whom the owner sometimes unbends and advises.

Now he heard their reports, asked an occasional searching question, and
swiftly gave decisions of far-reaching import. It was past midnight
before he had finished with them, and instead of retiring for the sleep
he might have been expected to need, he spent the rest of the night
inspecting the actual workings of the properties he had not seen for
six days. Hour after hour he passed examining the developments,
sometimes in the breasts of the workings and again consulting with
engineers and foremen in charge. Light was breaking in the sky before
he stepped from the cage of the Jack Pot and boarded a street-car for
his rooms. Cornishmen and Hungarians and Americans, going with their
dinner-buckets to work, met him and received each a nod or a word of
greeting from this splendidly built young Hermes in miners’ slops, who
was to many of them, in their fancy, a deliverer from the slavery which
the Consolidated was ready to force upon them.

Once at his rooms, Ridgway took a cold bath, dressed carefully,
breakfasted, and was ready to plunge into the mass of work which had
accumulated during his absence at the mining camp of Alpine and the
subsequent period while he was snowbound. These his keen, practical
mind grasped and disposed of in crisp sentences. To his private
secretary he rapped out order sharply and decisively.

“Phone Ballard and Dalton I want to see them at once. Tell Murphy I
won’t talk with him. What I said before I left was final. Write
Cadwallader we can’t do business on the terms he proposes, but add that
I’m willing to continue his Mary Kinney lease. Dictate a letter to
Riley’s lawyer, telling him I can’t afford to put a premium on
incompetence and negligence; that if his client was injured in the Jack
Pot explosion, he has nobody but himself to blame for it. Otherwise, of
course, I should be glad to pension him. Let me see the letter before
you send it. I don’t want anything said that will offend the union.
Have two tons of good coal sent up to Riley’s house, and notify his
grocer that all bills for the next three months may be charged to me.
And, Smythe, ask Mr. Eaton to step this way.”

Stephen Eaton, an alert, clear-eyed young fellow who served as fidus
Achates to Ridgway, and was the secretary and treasurer of the Mesa
Ore-producing Company, took the seat Smythe had vacated. He was
good-looking, after a boyish, undistinguished fashion, but one disposed
to be critical might have voted the chin not quite definite enough. He
had been a clerk of the Consolidated, working for one hundred dollars a
month, when Ridgway picked him out and set his feet in the way of
fortune. He had done this out of personal liking, and, in return, the
subordinate was frankly devoted to his chief.

“Steve, my opinion is that Alpine is a false alarm. Unless I guess
wrong, it is merely a surface proposition and low-grade at that.”

“Miller says—”

“Yes, I know what Miller says. He’s wrong. I don’t care if he is the
biggest copper expert in the country.”

“Then you won’t invest?”

“I have invested—bought the whole outfit, lock, stock and barrel.”

“But why? What do you want with it if the property is no good?” asked
Eaton in surprise.

Ridgway laughed shortly. “I don’t want it, but the Consolidated does.
Two of their experts were up at Alpine last week, and both of them
reported favorably. I’ve let it leak out to their lawyer, O’Malley,
that Miller thought well of it; in fact, I arranged to let one of their
spies steal a copy of his report to us.”

“But when they know you have bought it?”

“They won’t know till too late. I bought through a dummy. It seemed a
pity not to let then have the property since they wanted it so badly,
so this morning he sold out for me to the Consolidated at a profit of a
hundred and fifty thousand.”

Eaton grinned appreciatively. It was in startling finesse of this sort
his chief excelled, and Stephen was always ready with applause.

“I notice that Hobart slipped out of town last night. That is where he
must have been going. He’ll be sick when he learns how you did him.”

Ridgway permitted himself an answering smile. “I suppose it will
irritate him a trifle, but that can’t be helped. I needed that money to
get clear on that last payment for the Sherman Bell.”

“Yes, I was worried about that. Notes have been piling up against us
that must be met. There’s the Ransom note, too. It’s for a hundred
thousand.”

“He’ll extend it,” said the chief confidently.

“He told me he would have to have his money when it came due. I’ve
noticed he has been pretty close to Mott lately. I expect he has an
arrangement with the Consolidated to push us.”

“I’m watching him, Steve. Don’t worry about that. He did arrange to
sell the note to Mott, but I stopped that little game.”

“How?”

“For a year I’ve had all the evidence of that big government timber
steal of his in a safety-deposit vault. Before he sold, I had a few
words with him. He changed his mind and decided he preferred to hold
the notes. More, he is willing to let us have another hundred thousand
if we have to have it.”

Eaton’s delight bubbled out of him in boyish laughter. “You’re a
wonder, Waring. There’s nobody like you. Can’t any of them touch
you—not Harley himself, by Jove.”

“We’ll have a chance to find that out soon, Steve.”

“Yes, they say he’s coming out in person to run the fight against you.
I hope not.”

“It isn’t a matter of hoping any longer. He’s here,” calmly announced
his leader.

“Here! On the ground?”

“Yes.”

“But—he can’t be here without us knowing it.”

“I’m telling you that I do know it.”

“Have you seen him yourself?” demanded the treasurer incredulously.

“Seen him, talked with him, cursed him and cuffed him,” announced
Ridgway with a reminiscent gleam in his eye.

“Er—what’s that you say?” gasped the astounded Eaton.

“Merely that I have already met Simon Harley.”

“But you said—”

“—that I had cursed and cuffed him. That’s all right. I have.”

The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company leaned back with his
thumbs in the armholes of his fancy waistcoat and smiled debonairly at
his associate’s perplexed amazement.

“Did you say—CUFFED him?”

“That’s what I meant to say. I roughed him around quite a
bit—manhandled him in general. But all FOR HIS GOOD, you know.”

“For his good?” Eaton’s dazed brain tried to conceive the situation of
a billionaire being mauled for his good, and gave it up in despair. If
Steve Eaton worshipped anything, it was wealth. He was a born
sycophant, and it was partly because his naive unstinted admiration had
contributed to satisfy his chief’s vanity that the latter had made of
him a confidant. Now he sat dumb before the lese-majeste of laying
forcible hands upon the richest man in the world.

“But, of course, you’re only joking,” he finally decided.

“You haven’t been back twelve hours. Where COULD you have seen him?”

“Nevertheless I have met him and been properly introduced by his wife.”

“His wife?”

“Yes, I picked her out of a snow-drift.”

“Is this a riddle?”

“If it is, I don’t know the answer, Steve. But it is a true one,
anyhow, not made to order merely to astonish you.”

“True that you picked Simon Harley’s wife out of a snow-drift and
kicked him around?”

“I didn’t say kicked, did I?” inquired the other, judicially. “But I
rather think I did knee him some.”

“Of course, I read all about his marriage two weeks ago to Miss Aline
Hope. Did he bring her out here with him for the honeymoon?”

“If he did, I euchred him out of it. She spent it with me alone in a
miner’s cabin,” the other cried, malevolence riding triumph on his
face.

“Whenever you’re ready to explain,” suggested Eaton helplessly. “You’ve
piled up too many miracles for me even to begin guessing them.”

“You know I was snow-bound, but you did not know my only companion was
this Aline Hope you speak of. I found her in the blizzard, and took her
to an empty cabin near. She and her husband were motoring from
Avalanche to Mesa, and the machine had broken down. Harley had gone for
help and left her there alone when the blizzard came up. Three days
later Sam Yesler and the old man broke trail through from the C B Ranch
and rescued us.”

It was so strange a story that it came home to Eaton piecemeal.

“Three days—alone with Harley’s wife—and he rescued you himself.”

“He didn’t rescue me any. I could have broken through any time I wanted
to leave her. On the way back his strength gave out, and that was when
I roughed him. I tried to bullyrag him into keeping on, but it was no
go. I left him there, and Sam went back after him with a relief-party.”

“You left him! With his wife?”

“No!” cried Ridgway. “Do I look like a man to desert a woman on a
snow-trail? I took her with me.”

“Oh!” There was a significant silence before Eaton asked the question
in his mind. “I’ve seen her pictures in the papers. Does she look like
them?”

His chief knew what was behind the question, and he knew, too, that
Eaton might be taken to represent public opinion. The world would cast
an eye of review over his varied and discreditable record with women.
It would imagine the story of those three days of enforced confinement
together, and it would look to the woman in the case for an answer to
its suspicions. That she was young, lovely, and yet had sold herself to
an old man for his millions, would go far in itself to condemn her; and
he was aware that there were many who would accept her very childish
innocence as the sophistication of an artist.

Waring Ridgway put his arms akimbo on the table and leaned across with
his steady eyes fastened on his friend.

“Steve, I’m going to answer that question. I haven’t seen any pictures
of her in the papers, but if they show a face as pure and true as the
face of God himself then they are like her. You know me. I’ve got no
apologies or explanations to make for the life I’ve led. That’s my
business. But you’re my friend, and I tell you I would rather be hacked
in pieces by Apaches than soil that child’s white soul by a single
unclean breath. There mustn’t be any talk. Do you understand? Keep the
story out of the newspapers. Don’t let any of our people gossip about
it. I have told you because I want you to know the truth. If any one
should speak lightly about this thing stop him at once. This is the one
point on which Simon Harley and I will pull together. Any man who joins
that child’s name with mine loosely will have to leave this camp—and
suddenly.”

“It won’t be the men—it will be the women that will talk.”

“Then garble the story. Change that three days to three hours, Steve.
Anything to stop their foul-clacking tongues!”

“Oh, well! I dare say the story won’t get out at all, but if it does
I’ll see the gossips get the right version. I suppose Sam Yesler will
back it up.”

“Of course. He’s a white man. And I don’t need to tell you that I’ll be
a whole lot obliged to you, Stevie.”

“That’s all right. Sometimes I’m a white man, too, Waring,” laughed
Steve. Ridgway circled the table and put a hand on the younger man’s
shoulder affectionately. Steve Eaton was the one of all his associates
for whom he had the closest personal feeling.

“I don’t need to be told that, old pal,” he said quietly.




CHAPTER VIII.
THE HONORABLE THOMAS B. PELTON


It was next morning that Steve came into Ridgway’s offices with a copy
of the Rocky Mountain Herald in his hands. As soon as the president of
the Mesa Ore-producing Company was through talking with Dalton, the
superintendent of the Taurus, about the best means of getting to the
cage a quantity of ore he was looting from the Consolidated property
adjoining, the treasurer plumped out with his news.

“Seen to-day’s paper, Waring? It smokes out Pelton to a finish. They’ve
moled out some facts we can’t get away from.”

Ridgway glanced rapidly over the paper. “We’ll have to drop Pelton and
find another candidate for the Senate. Sorry, but it can’t be helped.
They’ve got his record down too fine. That affidavit from Quinton puts
an end to his chances.”

“He’ll kick like a bay steer.”

“His own fault for not covering his tracks better. This exposure
doesn’t help us any at best. If we still tried to carry Pelton, we
should last about as long as a snowball in hell.”

“Shall I send for him?”

“No. He’ll be here as quick as he can cover the ground. Have him shown
in as soon as he comes. And Steve—did Harley arrive on the eight-thirty
this morning?”

“Yes. He is putting up at the Mesa House. He reserved an entire floor
by wire, so that he has bed-rooms, dining-rooms, parlors,
reception-halls and private offices all together. The place is policed
thoroughly, and nobody can get up without an order.”

“I haven’t been thinking of going up and shooting him, even though it
would be a blessing to the country,” laughed his chief.

“No, but it is possible somebody else might. This town is full of
ignorant foreigners who would hardly think twice of it. If he had asked
my advice, it would have been to stay away from Mesa.”

“He wouldn’t have taken it,” returned Ridgway carelessly. “Whatever
else is true about him, Simon Harley isn’t a coward. He would have told
you that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the permission of
the distorted God he worships, and he would have come on the next
train.”

“Well, it isn’t my funeral,” contributed Steve airily.

“All the same I’m going to pass his police patrols and pay a visit to
the third floor of the Mesa House.”

“You are going to compromise with him?” cried Eaton swiftly.

“Compromise nothing, I’m going to pay a formal social call on Mrs.
Harley, and respectfully hope that she has suffered no ill effects from
her exposure to the cold.”

Eaton made no comment, unless to whistle gently were one.

“You think it isn’t wise?”

“Well, is it?” asked Steve.

“I think so. We’ll scotch the lying tongue of rumor by a strict
observance of the conventions. Madam Grundy is padlocked when we reduce
the situation to the absurdity of the common place.”

“Perhaps you are right, if it doesn’t become too common commonplace.”

“I think we may trust Simon Harley to see to that,” answered his chief
with a grim smile “Obviously our social relations aren’t likely to be
very intimate. Now it’s ‘Just before the battle mother,’ but once the
big guns begin to boor we’ll neither of us be in the mood for functions
social.”

“You’ve established a sort of claim on him. It wouldn’t surprise me if
he would meet you halfway in settling the trouble between you,” said
Eaton thoughtfully.

“I expect he would,” agreed Ridgway indifferently as he lit a cigar.

“Well, then?”

“The trouble is that I won’t meet him halfway. I can’t afford to be
reasonable, Steve. Just suppose for an instant that I had been
reasonable five years ago when this fight began. They would have bought
me out for a miserable pittance of a hundred and fifty thousand or so.
That would have been a reasonable figure then. You might put it now at
five or six millions, and that would be about right. I don’t want their
money. I want power, and I’d rather fight for it than not. Besides, I
mean to make what I have already wrung from them a lever for getting
more. I’m going to show Harley that he has met a man at last he can’t
either freeze out or bully out. I’m going to let him and his bunch know
I’m on earth and here to stay; that I can beat them at their own game
to a finish.”

“Did it ever occur to you, Waring, that it might pay to make this a
limited round contest? You’ve won on points up to date by a mile, but
in a finish fight endurance counts. Money is the same as endurance
here, and that’s where they are long.”

Eaton made this suggestion diffidently, for though he was a stockholder
and official of the Mesa Ore-producing Company, he was not used to
offering its head unasked advice. The latter, however, took it without
a trace of resentment.

“Glad of it, my boy. There’s no credit in beating a cripple.”

To this jaunty retort Eaton had found no answer when Smythe opened the
door to announce the arrival of the Honorable Thomas B. Pelton, very
anxious for an immediate interview with Mr. Ridgway.

“Show him in,” nodded the president, adding in an aside: “You better
stay, Steve.”

Pelton was a rotund oracular individual in silk hat and a Prince Albert
coat of broadcloth. He regarded himself solemnly as a statesman because
he had served two inconspicuous terms in the House at Washington. He
was fond of proclaiming himself a Southern gentleman, part of which
statement was unnecessary and part untrue. Like many from his section,
he had a decided penchant for politics.

“Have you seen the infamous libel in that scurrilous sheet of the
gutters the Herald?” he demanded immediately of Ridgway.

“Which libel? They don’t usually stop at one, colonel.”

“The one, seh, which slanders my honorable name; which has the
scoundrelly audacity to charge me with introducing the mining extension
bill for venal reasons, seh.”

“Oh! Yes, I’ve seen that. Rather an unfortunate story to come out just
now.”

“I shall force a retraction, seh, or I shall demand the satisfaction
due a Southern gentleman.

“Yes, I would, colonel,” replied Ridgway, secretly amused at the vain
threats of this bag of wind which had been punctured.

“It’s a vile calumny, an audacious and villainous lie.”

“What part of it? I’ve just glanced over it, but the part I read seems
to be true. That’s the trouble with it. If it were a lie you could
explode it.”

“I shall deny it over my signature.”

“Of course. The trouble will be to get people to believe your denial
with Quinton’s affidavit staring them in the face. It seems they have
got hold of a letter, too, that you wrote. Deny it, of course, then lie
low and give the public time to forget it.”

“Do you mean that I should withdraw from the senatorial race?”

“That’s entirely as you please, colonel, but I’m afraid you’ll find
your support will slip away from you.”

“Do you mean that YOU won’t support me, seh?”

Ridgway locked his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair.
“We’ve got to face facts, colonel. In the light of this exposure you
can’t be elected.”

“But I tell you, by Gad, seh, that I mean to deny it.”

“Certainly. I should in your place,” agreed the mine-owner coolly. “The
question is, how many people are going to believe you?”

Tiny sweat-beads stood on the forehead of the Arkansan. His manner was
becoming more and more threatening. “You pledged me your support. Are
you going to throw me down, seh?”

“You have thrown yourself down, Pelton. Is it my fault you bungled the
thing and left evidence against you? Am I to blame because you wrote
incriminating letters?”

“Whatever I did was done for you,” retorted the cornered man
desperately.

“I beg your pardon. It was done for what was in it for you. The
arrangement between us was purely a business one.”

The coolness of his even voice maddened the harassed Pelton.

“So I’m to get burnt drawing your chestnuts out of the fire, am I?
You’re going to stand back and let my career be sacrificed, are you? By
Gad, seh, I’ll show you whether I’ll be your catspaw,” screamed the
congressman.

“Use your common sense, Pelton, and don’t shriek like a fish-wife,”
ordered Ridgway sharply. “No sane man floats a leaky ship. Go to
drydock and patch up your reputation, and in a few years you’ll come
out as good as new.”

All his unprincipled life Pelton had compromised with honor to gain the
coveted goal he now saw slipping from him. A kind of madness of despair
surged up in him. He took a step threateningly toward the seated man,
his hand slipping back under his coat-tails toward his hip pocket.
Acridly his high voice rang out.

“As a Southern gentleman, seh, I refuse to tolerate the imputations you
cast upon me. I demand an apology here and now, seh.”

Ridgway was on his feet and across the room like a flash.

“Don’t try to bully ME, you false alarm. Call yourself a Southern
gentleman! You’re a shallow scurvy impostor. No more like the real
article than a buzzard is like an eagle. Take your hand from under that
coat or I’ll break every bone in your flabby body.”

Flabby was the word, morally no less than physically. Pelton quailed
under that gaze which bored into him like a gimlet. The ebbing color in
his face showed he could summon no reserve of courage sufficient to
meet it. Slowly his empty hand came forth.

“Don’t get excited, Mr. Ridgway. You have mistaken my purpose, seh. I
had no intention of drawing,” he stammered with a pitiable attempt at
dignity.

“Liar,” retorted his merciless foe, crowding him toward the door.

“I don’t care to have anything more to do with you. Our relations are
at an end, seh,” quavered Pelton as he vanished into the outer once and
beat a hasty retreat to the elevator.

Ridgway returned to his chair, laughing ruefully. “I couldn’t help it,
Steve. He would have it. I suppose I’ve made one more enemy.”

“A nasty one, too. He’ll stick at nothing to get even.”

“We’ll draw his fangs while there is still time. Get a good story in
the Sun to the effect that I quarreled with him as soon as I discovered
his connection with this mining extension bill graft. Have it in this
afternoon’s edition, Steve. Better get Brayton to write it.”

Steve nodded. “That’s a good idea. We may make capital out of it after
all. I’ll have an editorial in, too. ‘We love him for the enemies he
has made.’ How would that do for a heading?”

“Good. And now we’ll have to look around for a candidate to put against
Mott. I’m hanged if I know where we’ll find one.”

Eaton had an inspiration.

“I do?”

“One that will run well, popular enough to catch the public fancy?”

“Yes.”

“Who, then?”

“Waring Ridgway.”

The owner of the name stared at his lieutenant in astonishment, but
slowly the fascination o the idea sank in.

“By Jove! Why not?”




CHAPTER IX.
AN EVENING CALL


“Says you’re to come right up, Mr. Ridgway,” the bell-hop reported, and
after he had pocketed his tip, went sliding off across the polished
floor to answer another call.

The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company turned with a
good-humored smile to the chief clerk.

“You overwork your boys, Johnson. I wasn’t through with that one. I’ll
have to ask you to send another up to show me the Harley suite.”

They passed muster under the eye of the chief detective, and, after the
bell-boy had rung, were admitted to the private parlor where Simon
Harley lay stretched on a lounge with his wife beside him. She had been
reading, evidently aloud and when her visitor was announced rose with
her finger still keeping the place in the closed book.

The gaze she turned on him was of surprise, almost of alarm, so that
the man on the threshold knew he was not expected.

“You received my card?” he asked quickly.

“No. Did you send one?” Then, with a little gesture of half-laughing
irritation: “It must have gone to Mr. Harvey again. He is Mr. Harley’s
private secretary, and ever since we arrived it has been a comedy of
errors. The hotel force refuses to differentiate.”

“I must ask you to accept my regrets for an unintentional intrusion,
Mrs. Harley. When I was told to come up, I could not guess that my card
had gone amiss.”

The great financier had got to his feet and now came forward with
extended hand.

“Nevertheless we are glad to see you, Mr. Ridgway, and to get the
opportunity to express our thanks for all that you have done for us.”

The cool fingers of the younger man touched his lightly before they met
those of his wife.

“Yes, we are very glad, indeed, to see you, Mr. Ridgway,” she added to
her husband’s welcome.

“I could not feel quite easy in my mind without hearing from your own
lips that you are none the worse for the adventures you have suffered,”
their visitor explained after they had found seats.

“Thanks to you, my wife is quite herself again, Mr. Ridgway,” Harley
announced from the davenport. “Thanks also to God, who so mercifully
shelters us beneath the shadow of His wing.”

But her caller preferred to force from Aline’s own lips this affidavit
of health. Even his audacity could not ignore his host entirely, but it
gave him the least consideration possible. To the question which still
rested in his eyes the girl-wife answered shyly.

“Indeed, I am perfectly well. I have done nothing but sleep to-day and
yesterday. Miss Yesler was very good to me. I do not know how I can
repay the great kindness of so many friends,” she said with a swift
descent of fluttering lashes to the soft cheeks upon which a faint
color began to glow.

“Perhaps they find payment for the service in doing it for you,” he
suggested.

“Yet, I shall take care not to forget it,” Harley said pointedly.

“Indeed!” Ridgway put it with polite insolence, the hostility in his
face scarcely veiled.

“It has pleased Providence to multiply my portion so abundantly that I
can reward those well who serve me.”

“At how much do you estimate Mrs. Harley’s life?” his rival asked with
quiet impudence.

In the course of the past two days Aline had made the discovery that
her husband and her rescuer were at swords drawn in a business way.
This had greatly distressed her, and in her innocence she had resolved
to bring them together. How could her inexperience know that she might
as well have tried to induce the lion and the lamb to lie down together
peaceably? Now she tried timidly to drift the conversation from the
awkwardness into which Harley’s suggestion of a reward and his
opponent’s curt retort had blundered it.

“I hope you did not find upon your return that your business was
disarranged so much as you feared it might be by your absence.”

“I found my affairs in very good condition,” Ridgway smiled. “But I am
glad to be back in time to welcome to Mesa you—and Mr. Harley.”

“It seems so strange a place,” the girl ventured, with a hesitation
that showed her anxiety not to offend his local pride. “You see I never
before was in a place where there was no grass and nothing green in
sight. And to-night, when I looked out of the window and saw streams of
red-hot fire running down hills, I thought of Paradise Lost and Dante.
I suppose it doesn’t seem at all uncanny to you?”

“At night sometimes I still get that feeling, but I have to cultivate
it a bit,” he confessed. “My sober second thought insists that those
molten rivers are merely business, refuse disgorged as lava from the
great smelters.”

“I looked for the sun to-day through the pall of sulphur smoke that
hangs so heavy over the town, but instead I saw a London gas-lamp
hanging in the heavens. Is it always so bad?”

“Not when the drift of the wind is right. In fact, a day like this is
quite unusual.”

“I’m glad of that. I feel more cheerful in the sunshine. I know that’s
a bit of the child still left in me. Mr. Harley takes all days alike.”

The Wall Street operator was in slippers and house-jacket. His wife,
too, was dressed comfortably in some soft clinging stuff. Their visitor
saw that they had disposed themselves for a quiet uninterrupted evening
by the fireside. The domesticity of it all stirred the envy in him. He
did not want her to be contented and at peace with his enemy. Something
deeper than his vanity cried out in protest against it.

She was still making talk against the gloom of the sulphur fog which
seemed to have crept into the spirit of the room.

“We were reading before you came in, Mr. Ridgway. I suppose you read a
good deal. Mr. Harley likes to have me read aloud to him when he is
tired.”

An impulse came upon Ridgway to hear her, some such impulse as makes a
man bite on sore tooth even though he knows he must pay later for it.

“Will you not go on with your reading? I should like to hear it. I
really should.”

She was a little taken aback, but she looked inquiringly at her
husband, who bowed silently.

“I was just beginning the fifty-ninth psalm. We have been reading the
book through. Mr. Harley finds great comfort in it,” she explained.

Her eyes fell to the printed page and her clear, sweet voice took up
the ancient tale of vengeance.

“Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise
up against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me
from bloody men.

“For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul: the mighty are gathered against
me; not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O Lord. They run and
prepare themselves without my fault: awake to help me, and behold.

“Thou, therefore, O Lord God of Hosts, the God of Israel, awake to
visit all the heathen: be not merciful to any wicked transgressors.
Selah.”

Ridgway glanced across in surprise at the strong old man lying on the
lounge. His hands were locked in front of him, and his gaze rested
peacefully on the fair face of the child reading. His foe’s mind swept
up the insatiable cruel years that lay behind this man, and he marveled
that with such a past he could still hold fast to that simple faith of
David. He wondered whether this ruthless spoiler went back to the Old
Testament for the justification of his life, or whether his credo had
given the impulse to his career. One thing he no longer doubted: Simon
Harley believed his Bible implicitly and literally, and not only the
New Testament.

“For the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips even be taken
in their pride: and for cursing and lying which they speak.

“Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be: and let
them know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth.”

The fresh young girlish voice died away into silence. Harley,
apparently deep in meditation, gazed at the ceiling. His guest felt a
surge of derision at this man who thought he had a compact with God to
rule the world for his benefit.

“I am sure Mr. Harley must enjoy the Psalms a great deal,” he said
ironically, but it was in simple faith the young wife answered eagerly:

“He does. He finds so much in them that is applicable to life.”

“I can see how he might,” agreed the young man.

“Few people take their religion so closely into their every-day lives
as he does,” she replied in a low voice, seeing that her husband was
lost in thought.

“I am sure you are right.”

“He is very greatly misunderstood, Mr. Ridgway. I am sure if people
knew how good he is— But how can they know when the newspapers are so
full of falsehoods about him? And the magazines are as bad, he says. It
seems to be the fashion to rake up bitter things to say about prominent
business men. You must have noticed it.”

“Yes. I believe I have noticed that,” he answered with a grim little
laugh.

“Don’t you think it could be explained to these writers? They can’t
WANT to distort the truth. It must be they don’t know.”

“You must not take the muckrakers too seriously. They make a living
roasting us. A good deal of what they say is true in a way. Personally,
I don’t object to it much. It’s a part of the penalty of being
successful. That’s how I look at it.”

“Do they say bad things about you, too?” she asked in open-eyed
surprise.

“Occasionally,” he smiled. “When they think I’m important enough.”

“I don’t see how they can,” he heard her murmur to herself.

“Oh, most of what they say is true.”

“Then I know it can’t be very bad,” she made haste to answer.

“You had better read it and see.”

“I don’t understand business at all,” she said

“But—sometimes it almost frightens me. Business isn’t really like war,
is it?”

“A good deal like it. But that need not frighten you. All life is a
battle—sometimes, at least. Success implies fighting.”

“And does that in turn imply tragedy—for the loser?”

“Not if one is a good loser. We lose and make another start.”

“But if success is a battle, it must be gained at the expense of
another.”

“Sometimes. But you must look at it in a big way.” The secretary of the
trust magnate had come in and was in low-toned conversation with him.
The visitor led her to the nearest window and drew back the curtains so
that they looked down on the lusty life of the turbid young city, at
the lights in the distant smelters and mills, at the great hill
opposite, with its slagdumps, gallows-frames and shaft-houses black
against the dim light, which had yielded its millions and millions of
tons of ore for the use of mankind. “All this had to be fought for. It
didn’t grow of itself. And because men fought for it, the place is what
it is. Sixty thousand people live here, fed by the results of the
battle. The highest wages in the world are paid the miners here. They
live in rough comfort and plenty, whereas in the countries they came
from they were underpaid and underfed. Is that not good?”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“Life for you and for me must be different, thank God. You are in the
world to make for the happiness of those you meet. That is good. But
unless I am to run away from my work, what I do must make some unhappy.
I can’t help that if I am to do big things. When you hear people
talking of the harm I do, you will remember what I have told you
to-night, and you will think that a man and his work cannot be judged
by isolated fragments.”

“Yes,” she breathed softly, for she knew that this man was saying
good-by to her and was making his apologia.

“And you will remember that no matter how bitter the fight may grow
between me and Mr. Harley, it has nothing to do with you. We shall
still be friends, though we may never meet again.”

“I shall remember that, too,” he heard her murmur.

“You have been hoping that Mr. Harley and I would be friends. That is
impossible. He came out here to crush me. For years his subordinates
have tried to do this and failed. I am the only man alive that has ever
resisted him successfully. I don’t underestimate his power, which is
greater than any czar or emperor that ever lived, but I don’t think he
will succeed. I shall win because I understand the forces against me.
He will lose because he scorns those against him.”

“I am sorry. Oh, I am so sorry,” she wailed, gently as a breath of
summer wind. For she saw now that the cleavage between them was too
wide for a girl’s efforts to bridge.

“That I am going to win?” he smiled gravely.

“That you must be enemies; that he came here to ruin you, since you say
he did.”

“You need not be too hard on him for that. By his code I am a
freebooter and a highwayman. Business offers legitimate ways of
robbery, and I transgress them. His ways are not my ways, and mine are
not his, but it is only fair to say that his are the accepted ones.”

“I don’t understand it at all. You are both good men. I know you are.
Surely you need not be enemies.”

But she knew she could hope for no reassurance from the man beside her.

Presently she led him back across the big room to the fireplace near
where her husband lay. His secretary had gone, and he was lying resting
on the lounge. He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “Has Mr. Ridgway
been pointing out to you the places of interest?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, dear.” The last word came hesitantly after the slightest of
pauses. “He says he must be going now.”

The head of the greatest trust on earth got to his feet and smiled
benignantly as he shook hands with the departing guest. “I shall hope
to see you very soon and have a talk regarding business, Mr. Ridgway,”
he said.

“Whenever you like, Mr. Harley.” To the girl he said merely, “Good
night,” and was gone.

The old man put an arm affectionately across his young wife’s shoulder.

“Shall we read another psalm, my dear? Or are you tired?”

She repressed the little shiver that ran through her before she
answered wearily. “I am a little tired. If you don’t mind I would like
to retire, please.”

He saw her as far as the door of her apartments and left her with her
maid after he had kissed the cold cheek she dutifully turned toward
him.




CHAPTER X.
HARLEY MAKES A PROPOSITION


Apparently the head of the great trust intended to lose no time in
having that business talk with Ridgway, which he had graciously
promised the latter. Eaton and his chief were busy over some
applications for leases when Smythe came into the room with a letter.

“Messenger-boy brought it; said it was important,” he explained.

Ridgway ripped open the envelope, read through the letter swiftly, and
tossed it to Eaton. His eyes had grown hard and narrow.

“Write to Mr. Hobart that I am sorry I haven’t time to call on Mr.
Harley at the Consolidated offices, as he suggests. Add that I expect
to be in my offices all morning, and shall be glad to make an
appointment to talk with Mr. Harley here, if he thinks he has any
business with me that needs a personal interview.”

Smythe’s leathery face had as much expression as a blank wall, but
Eaton gasped. The unparalleled audacity of flinging the billionaire’s
overture back in his face left him for the moment speechless. He knew
that Ridgway had tempted Providence a hundred times without coming to
disaster, but surely this was going too far. Any reasonable compromise
with the great trust builder would be cause for felicitation. He had
confidence in his chief to any point in reason, but he could not blind
himself to the fact that the wonderful successes he had gained were
provisional rather than final. He likened them to Stonewall Jackson’s
Shenandoah raid, very successful in irritating, disorganizing and
startling the enemy, but with no serious bearing on the final
inevitable result. In the end Harley would crush his foes if he set in
motion the whole machinery of his limitless resources. That was Eaton’s
private opinion, and he was very much of the feeling that this was an
opportune time to get in out of the rain.

“Don’t you think we had better consider that answer before we send it,
Waring?” he suggested in a low voice.

His chief nodded a dismissal to the secretary before answering.

“I have considered it.”

“But—surely it isn’t wise to reject his advances before we know what
they are.”

“I haven’t rejected them. I’ve simply explained that we are doing
business on equal terms. Even if I meant to compromise, it would pay me
to let him know he doesn’t own me.”

“He may decide not to offer his proposition.”

“It wouldn’t worry me if he did.”

Eaton knew he must speak now if his protest were to be of any avail.
“It would worry me a good deal. He has shown an inclination to be
friendly. This answer is like a slap in the face.”

“Is it?”

“Doesn’t it look like that to you?”

Ridgway leaned back in his chair and looked thoughtfully at his friend.
“Want to sell out, Steve?”

“Why—what do you mean?” asked the surprised treasurer.

“If you do, I’ll pay anything in reason for your stock.” He got up and
began to pace the floor with long deliberate strides. “I’m a born
gambler, Steve. It clears my head to take big chances. Give me a good
fight on my hands with the chances against me, and I’m happy. You’ve
got to take the world by the throat and shake success out of it if
you’re going to score heavily. That’s how Harley made good years ago.
Read the story of his life. See the chances he took. He throttled
combinations a dozen times as strong as his. Some people say he was an
accident. Don’t you believe it. Accidents like him don’t happen. He won
because he was the biggest, brainiest, most daring and unscrupulous
operator in the field. That’s why I’m going to win—if I do win.”

“Yes, if you win.”

“Well, that’s the chance I take,” flung back the other as he swung
buoyantly across the room. “But YOU don’t need to take it. If you want,
you can get out now at the top market price. I feel it in my bones I’m
going to win; but if you don’t feel it, you’d be a fool to take
chances.”

Eaton’s mercurial temperament responded with a glow.

“No, sir. I’ll sit tight. I’m no quitter.”

“Good for you, Steve. I knew it. I’ll tell you now that I would have
hated like hell to see you leave me. You’re the only man I can rely on
down to the ground, twenty-four hours of every day.”

The answer was sent, and Eaton’s astonishment at his chief’s temerity
changed to amazement when the great Harley, pocketing his pride, asked
for an appointment, and appeared at the offices of the Mesa
Ore-producing Company at the time set. That Ridgway, who was busy with
one of his superintendents, should actually keep the most powerful man
in the country waiting in an outer office while he finished his
business with Dalton seemed to him insolence florescent.

“Whom the gods would destroy,” he murmured to himself as the only
possible explanation, for the reaction of his enthusiasm was on him.

Nor did his chief’s conference with Dalton show any leaning toward
compromise. Ridgway had sent for his engineer to outline a program in
regard to some ore-veins in the Sherman Bell, that had for months been
in litigation between the two big interests at Mesa. Neither party to
the suit had waited for the legal decision, but each of them had put a
large force at work stoping out the ore. Occasional conflicts had
occurred when the men of the opposing factions came in touch, as they
frequently did, since crews were at work below and above each other at
every level. But none of these as yet had been serious.

“Dalton, I was down last night to see that lease of Heyburn’s on the
twelfth level of the Taurus. The Consolidated will tap our workings
about noon to-day, just below us. I want you to turn on them the
air-drill pipe as soon as they break through. Have a lot of loose rock
there mixed with a barrel of lime. Let loose the air pressure full on
the pile, and give it to their men straight. Follow them up to the end
of their own tunnel when they retreat, and hold it against them. Get
control of the levels above and below, too. Throw as many men as you
can into their workings, and gut them till there is no ore left.”

Dalton had the fighting edge. “You’ll stand by me, no matter what
happens?”

“Nothing will happen. They’re not expecting trouble. But if anything
does, I’ll see you through. Eaton is your witness that I ordered it.”

“Then it’s as good as done, Mr. Ridgway,” said Dalton, turning away.

“There may be bloodshed,” suggested Eaton dubiously, in a low voice.

Ridgway’s laugh had a touch of affectionate contempt. “Don’t cross
bridges till you get to them, Steve. Haven’t you discovered, man, that
the bold course is always the safe one? It’s the quitter that loses out
every time. The strong man gets there; the weak one falls down. It’s as
invariable as the law of gravity.” He got up and stretched his broad
shoulders in a deep breath. “Now for Mr. Harley. Send him in, Eaton.”

That morning Simon Harley had done two things for many years foreign to
his experience: He had gone to meet another man instead of making the
man come to him, and he had waited the other man’s pleasure in an outer
office. That he had done so implied a strong motive.

Ridgway waved Harley to a chair without rising to meet him. The eyes of
the two men fastened, wary and unwavering. They might have been jungle
beasts of prey crouching for the attack, so tense was their attention.
The man from Broadway was the first to speak.

“I have called, Mr. Ridgway, to arrange, if possible, a compromise. I
need hardly say this is not my usual method, but the circumstances are
extremely unusual. I rest under so great a personal obligation to you
that I am willing to overlook a certain amount of youthful
presumption.” His teeth glittered behind a lip smile, intended to give
the right accent to the paternal reproof. “My personal obligation—”

“What obligation? I left you to die in the snow.’,

“You forget what you did for Mrs. Harley.”

“You may eliminate that,” retorted the younger man curtly. “You are
under no obligations whatever to me.”

“That is very generous of you, Mr. Ridgway, but—”

Ridgway met his eyes directly, cutting his sentence as with a knife.
“‘Generous’ is the last word to use. It is not a question of generosity
at all. What I mean is that the thing I did was done with no reference
whatever to you. It is between me and her alone. I refuse to consider
it as a service to you, as having anything at all to do with you. I
told you that before. I tell you again.”

Harley’s spirit winced. This bold claim to a bond with his wife that
excluded him, the scornful thrust of his enemy—he was already beginning
to consider him in that light rather than as a victim—had touched the
one point of human weakness in this money-making Juggernaut. He saw
himself for the moment without illusions, an old man and an unlovable
one, without near kith or kin. He was bitterly aware that the child he
had married had been sold to him by her guardian, under fear of
imminent ruin, before her ignorance of the world had given her
experience to judge for herself. The money and the hidden hunger of
sentiment he wasted on her brought him only timid thanks and wan
obedience. But for this man, with his hateful, confident youth, he had
seen the warm smile touch her lips and the delicate color rose her
cheeks. Nay, he had seen more her arms around his neck and her, warm
breath on his cheek. They had lived romance, these two, in the days
they had been alone together. They had shared danger and the joys of
that Bohemia of youth from which he was forever excluded. It was his
resolve to wipe out by financial favors—he could ruin the fellow later
if need be—any claims of Ridgway upon her gratitude or her foolish
imagination. He did not want the man’s appeal upon her to carry the
similitude of martyrdom as well as heroism.

“Yet, the fact remains that it was a service”—his thin lips smiled. “I
must be the best judge of that, I think. I want to be perfectly frank,
Mr. Ridgway. The Consolidated is an auxiliary enterprise so far as I am
concerned, but I have always made it a rule to look after details when
it became necessary. I came to Montana to crush you. I have always
regarded you as a menace to our legitimate interests, and I had quite
determined to make an end of it. You are a good fighter, and you’ve
been on the ground in person, which counts for a great deal. But you
must know that if I give myself to it in earnest, you are a ruined
man.”

The Westerner laughed hardily. “I hear you say it.”

“But you don’t believe,” added the other quietly. “Many men have heard
and not believed. They have KNOWN when it was too late.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll buy my experience instead of borrowing it,”
Ridgway flung back flippantly.

“One moment, Mr. Ridgway. I have told you my purpose in coming to
Montana. That purpose no longer exists. Circumstances have completely
altered my intentions. The finger of God is in it. He has not brought
us together thus strangely, except to serve some purpose of His own. I
think I see that purpose. ‘The stone which the builders refused is
become the headstone of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing; it is
marvelous in our eyes,’” he quoted unctiously. “I am convinced that it
is a waste of good material to crush you; therefore I desire to effect
a consolidation with you, buy all the other copper interests of any
importance in the country, and put you at the head of the resulting
combination.”

In spite of himself, Ridgway’s face betrayed him. It was a magnificent
opportunity, the thing he had dreamed of as the culmination of a
lifetime of fighting. Nobody knew better than he on how precarious a
footing he stood, on how slight a rock his fortunes might be wrecked.
Here was his chance to enter that charmed, impregnable inner circle of
finance that in effect ruled the nation. That Harley’s suave
friendliness would bear watching he did not doubt for a moment, but,
once inside, so his vital youth told him proudly, he would see to it
that the billionaire did not betray him. A week ago he could have asked
nothing better than this chance to bloat himself into a some-day
colossus. But now the thing stuck in his gorge. He understood the
implied obligation. Payment for his service to Aline Harley was to be
given, and the ledger balanced. Well, why not? Had he not spent the
night in a chaotic agony of renunciation? But to renounce voluntarily
was one thing, to be bought off another.

He looked up and met Harley’s thin smile, the smile that on Wall Street
was a synonym for rapacity and heartlessness, in the memory of which
men had committed murder and suicide. On the instant there jumped
between him and his ambition the face that had worked magic on him.
What a God’s pity that such a lamb should be cast to this ravenous
wolf! He felt again her arms creeping round his neck, the divine trust
of her lovely eyes. He had saved her when this man who called himself
her husband had left her to perish in the storm. He had made her happy,
as she had never been in all her starved life. Had she not promised
never to forget, and was there not a deeper promise in her wistful eyes
that the years could not wipe out? She was his by every right of
natural law. By God! he would not sell his freedom of choice to this
white haired robber!

“I seldom make mistakes in my judgment of men, Mr. Ridgway,” the oily
voice ran on. “No small share of such success as it has been given me
to attain has been due to this instinct for putting my finger on the
right man. I am assured that in you I find one competent for the great
work lying before you. The opportunity is waiting; I furnish it, and
you the untiring energy of youth to make the most of the chance.” His
wolfish smile bared the tusks for a moment. “I find myself not so young
as I was. The great work I have started is well under way. I must trust
its completion to younger and stronger hands than mine. I intend to
rest, to devote myself to my home, more directly to such philanthropic
and educational work as God has committed to my hands.”

The Westerner gave him look for look, his eyes burning to get over the
impasse of the expressionless mask no man had ever penetrated. He began
to see why nobody had ever understood Harley. He knew there would be no
rest for that consuming energy this side of the grave. Yet the man
talked as if he believed his own glib lies.

“Consolidated is the watchword of the age; it means elimination of
ruinous competition, and consequent harmony and reduced expense in
management. Mr. Ridgway, may I count you with us? Together we should go
far. Do you say peace or war?”

The younger man rose, leaning forward with his strong, sinewy hands
gripping the table. His face was pale with the repression of a rage
that had been growing intense. “I say war, and without quarter. I don’t
believe you can beat me. I defy you to the test. And if you should—even
then I had rather go down fighting you than win at your side.”

Simon Harley had counted acceptance a foregone conclusion, but he never
winked a lash at the ringing challenge of his opponent. He met his
defiance with an eye cold and steady as jade.

“As you please, Mr. Ridgway. I wash my hands of your ruin, and when you
are nothing but a broken gambler, you will remember that I offered you
the greatest chance that ever came to a man of your age. You are one of
those men, I see, that would rather be first in hell than second in
heaven. So be it.” He rose and buttoned his overcoat.

“Say, rather, that I choose to go to hell my own master and not as the
slave of Simon Harley,” retorted the Westerner bitterly.

Ridgway’s eyes blazed, but those of the New Yorker were cool and fishy.

“There is no occasion for dramatics,” he said, the cruel, passionless
smile at his thin lips. “I make you a business proposition and you
decline it. That is all. I wish you good day.”

The other strode past him and flung the door open. He had never before
known such a passion of hatred as raged within him. Throughout his life
Simon Harley had left in his wake wreckage and despair. He was the
best-hated man of his time, execrated by the working classes, despised
by the country at large, and distrusted by his fellow exploiters. Yet,
as a business opponent, Ridgway had always taken him impersonally, had
counted him for a condition rather than an individual. But with the new
influence that had come into his life, reason could not reckon, and
when it was dominant with him, Harley stood embodied as the wolf ready
to devour his ewe lamb.

For he couldn’t get away from her. Wherever he went he carried with him
the picture of her sweet, shy smile, her sudden winsome moments, the
deep light in her violet eyes; and in the background the sinister bared
fangs of the wild beast dogging her patiently, and yet lovingly.




CHAPTER XI.
VIRGINIA INTERVENES


James K. Mott, local chief attorney for the Consolidated, was
struggling with a white tie before the glass and crumpling it
atrociously.

“This dress-suit habit is the most pernicious I know. It’s sapping the
liberties of the American people,” he grunted at last in humorous
despair.

“Let me, dear.”

His wife tied it with neatness and dispatch, and returned to the
inspection of how her skirt hung.

“Mr. Harley asked me to thank you for calling on his wife. He says she
gets lonesome during the day while he is away so much. I was wondering
if you couldn’t do something for her so that she could meet some of the
ladies of Mesa. A luncheon, or something of that sort, you know. Have
you seen my hat-brush anywhere?”

“It’s on that drawer beside your hat-box. She told me she would rather
not. I suggested it. But I’ll tell you what I could do: take Virginia
Balfour round to see her. She’s lively and good company, and knows some
of the people Mrs. Harley knows.”

“That’s a good idea. I want Harley to know that we appreciate his
suggestions, and are ready to do our part. He has shown a disposition
to consult me on a good many things that ought to lie in Hobart’s
sphere rather than mine. Something’s going to drop. Now, I like Hobart,
but I want to show myself in a receptive mood for advancement when his
head falls, as it certainly will soon.”


Virginia responded eagerly to Mrs. Mott’s suggestion that they call
together on Mrs. Harley at the hotel.

“My dear, you have saved my life. I’ve been dying of curiosity, and I
haven’t been able to find vestige of an excuse to hang my call on. I
couldn’t ask Mr. Ridgway to introduce me, could I?”

“No, I don’t see that you could,” smiled Mrs. Mott, a motherly little
woman with pleasant brown eyes. “I suppose Mr. Ridgway isn’t exactly on
calling terms with Mr. Harley’s wife, even if he did save her life.”

“Oh, Mr. Ridgway isn’t the man to let a little thing like a war a
outrance stand in the way of his social duties, especially when those
duties happen to be inclinations, too. I understand he DID call the
evening of their arrival here.”

“He didn’t!” screamed Mrs. Mott, who happened to possess a voice of the
normal national register. “And what did Mr. Harley say?”

“Ah, that’s what one would like to know. My informant deponeth not
beyond the fact unadorned. One may guess there must have been
undercurrents of embarrassment almost as pronounced as if the President
were to invite his Ananias Club to a pink tea. I can imagine Mr. Harley
saying: ‘Try this cake, Mr. Ridgway; it isn’t poisoned;’ and Mr.
Ridgway answering: ‘Thanks! After you, my dear Gaston.’”

Miss Balfour’s anxiety to meet the young woman her fiance had rescued
from the blizzard was not unnatural. Her curiosity was tinged with
frank envy, though jealousy did not enter into it at all. Virginia had
come West explicitly to take the country as she found it, and she had
found it, unfortunately, no more hazardous than little old New York,
though certainly a good deal more diverting to a young woman with
democratic proclivities that still survived the energetic weeding her
training had subjected them to.

She did not quite know what she had expected to find in Mesa. Certainly
she knew that Indians were no longer on the map, and cowboys were
kicking up their last dust before vanishing, but she had supposed that
they had left compensations in their wake. On the principle that
adventures are to the adventurous, her life should have been a whirl of
hairbreadth escapes.

But what happened? She took all sorts of chances without anything
coming of it. Her pirate fiance was the nearest approach to an
adventure she had flushed, and this pink-and-white chit of a married
schoolgirl had borrowed him for the most splendid bit of excitement
that would happen in a hundred years. She had been spinning around the
country in motor-cars for months without the sign of a blizzard, but
the chit had hit one the first time. It wasn’t fair. That was her
blizzard by rights. In spirit, at least, she had “spoken for it,” as
she and her brother used to say when they were children of some coveted
treasure not yet available. Virginia was quite sure that if she had
seen Waring Ridgway at the inspired moment when he was plowing through
the drifts with Mrs. Harley in his arms—only, of course, it would have
been she instead of Mrs. Harley, and he would not have been carrying
her so long as she could stand and take it—she would have fallen in
love with him on the spot. And those two days in the cabin on
half-ration they would have put an end forever to her doubts and to
that vision of Lyndon Hobart that persisted in her mind. What luck
glace’ some people did have!

But Virginia discovered the chit to be rather a different personality
than she had supposed. In truth, she lost her heart to her at once. She
could have stood out against Aline’s mere good looks and been the
stiffer for them. She was no MAN, to be moved by the dark hair’s dusky
glory, the charm of soft girlish lines, the effect of shy
unsophistication that might be merely the highest art of social
experience. But back of the sweet, trembling mouth that seemed to be
asking to be kissed, of the pathetic appeal for friendliness from the
big, deep violet eyes, was a quality of soul not to be counterfeited.
Miss Balfour had furbished up the distant hauteur of the society manner
she had at times used effectively, but she found herself instead taking
the beautiful, forlorn little creature in her arms.

“Oh, my dear; my dear, how glad I am that dreadful blizzard did not
hurt you!”

Aline clung to this gracious young queen as if she had known her a
lifetime. “You are so good to me everybody is. You know how Mr. Ridgway
saved me. If it had not been for him I should have died. I didn’t
care—I wanted to die in peace, I think—but he wouldn’t let me.”

“I should think not.”

“If you only knew him—perhaps you do.”

“A little,” confessed Virginia, with a flash of merry eyes at Mrs.
Mott.

“He is the bravest man—and the strongest.”

“Yes. He is both,” agreed his betrothed, with pride.

“His tenderness, his unselfishness, his consideration for others—did
you ever know anybody like him for these things?”

“Never,” agreed Virginia, with the mental reservations that usually
accompanied her skeptical smile. She was getting at her fiance from a
novel point of view.

“And so modest, with all his strength and courage.’,

“It’s almost a fault in him,” she murmured.

“The woman that marries him will be blessed among women.”

“I count it a great privilege,” said Miss Balfour absently, but she
pulled up with a hurried addendum: “To have known him.”

“Indeed, yes. If one met more men like him this would be a better
world.”

“It would certainly be a different world.”

It was a relief to Aline to talk, to put into words the external
skeleton facts of the surging current that had engulfed her existence
since she had turned a corner upon this unexpected consciousness of
life running strong and deep. Harley was not a confidant she could have
chosen under the most favorable circumstances, and her instinct told
her that in this matter he was particularly impossible. But to Virginia
Balfour—Mrs. Mott had to leave early to preside over the Mesa Woman’s
Club, and her friend allowed herself to be persuaded to stay longer—she
did not find it at all hard to talk. Indeed, she murmured into the
sympathetic ear of this astute young searcher of hearts more than her
words alone said, with the result that Virginia guessed what she
herself had not yet quite found out, though her heart was hovering
tremblingly on the brink of discovery.

But Virginia’s sympathy for the trouble fate had in store for this
helpless innocent consisted with an alert appreciation of its obvious
relation to herself. What she meant to discover was the attitude toward
the situation of one neither particularly innocent nor helpless. Was
he, too, about to be “caught in the coil of a God’s romances,” or was
he merely playing on the vibrating strings of an untaught heart?

It was in part to satisfy this craving for knowledge that she wrote
Ridgway a note as soon as she reached home. It said:

MY DEAR RECREANT LAGGARD: If you are not too busy playing Sir Lancelot
to fair dames in distress, or splintering lances with the doughty
husbands of these same ladies, I pray you deign to allow your servant
to feast her eyes upon her lord’s face. Hopefully and gratefully yours,
VIRGINIA.


P. S.—Have you forgotten, sir, that I have not seen you since that
terrible blizzard and your dreadful imprisonment in Fort Salvation?


P. P. S.—I have seen somebody else, though. She’s a dear, and full of
your praises. I hardly blame you.


V.


She thought that ought to bring him soon, and it did.

“I’ve been busy night and day,” he apologized when they met.

Virginia gave him a broadside demurely.

“I suppose your social duties do take up a good deal of your time.”

“My social duties? Oh, I see!” He laughed appreciation of her hit.
Evidently through her visit she knew a good deal more than he had
expected. Since he had nothing to hide from her except his feelings,
this did not displease him. “My duties in that line have been confined
to one formal call.”

She sympathized with him elaborately. “Calls of that sort do bore men
so. I’ll not forget the first time you called on me.”

“Nor I,” he came back gallantly.

“I marveled how you came through alive, but I learned then that a man
can’t be bored to death.”

“I came again nevertheless,” he smiled. “And again—and again.”

“I am still wondering why.”

“‘Oh, wad some power the giffie gite us
To see ourselves as others see us!’”


he quoted with a bow.

“Is that a compliment?” she asked dubiously.

“I have never heard it used so before. Anyhow, it is a little hackneyed
for anybody so original as you.”

“It was the best I could do offhand.”

She changed the subject abruptly. “Has the new campaign of the war
begun yet?”

“Well, we’re maneuvering for position.”

“You’ve seen him. How does he impress you?”

“The same as he does others. A hard, ruthless fighter. Unless all signs
fail, he is an implacable foe.”

“But you are not afraid?”

He smiled. “Do I look frightened?”

“No, you remind me of something a burglar once told me—”

“A what?”

“A burglar—a reformed burglar!” She gave him a saucy flash of her dark
eyes. “Do you think I don’t know any lawbreakers except those I have
met in this State? I came across this one in a mission where I used to
think I was doing good. He said it was not the remuneration of the
profession that had attracted him, but the excitement. It was
dreadfully frowned down upon and underpaid. He could earn more at his
old trade of a locksmith, but it seemed to him that every impediment to
success was a challenge to him. Poor man, he relapsed again, and they
put him in Sing Sing. I was so interested in him, too.”

“You’ve had some queer friends in your time,” he laughed, but without a
trace of disapproval.

“I have some queer ones yet,” she thrust back.

“Let’s not talk of them,” he cried, in pretended alarm.

Her inextinguishable gaiety brought back the smile he liked. “We’ll
talk of SOME ONE else—some one of interest to us both.”

“I am always ready to talk of Miss Virginia Balfour,” he said,
misunderstanding promptly.

She smiled her disdain of his obtuseness in an elaborately long survey
of him.

“Well?” he wanted to know.

“That’s how you look—very well, indeed. I believe the storm was greatly
exaggerated,” she remarked.

“Isn’t that rather a good definition for a blizzard—a greatly
exaggerated storm?”

“You don’t look the worse for wear—not the wreck I expected to behold.”

“Ah, you should have seen me before I saw you.”

“Thank you. I have no doubt you find the sight of my dear face as
refreshing as your favorite cocktail. I suppose that is why it has
taken you three days after your return to reach me and then by special
request.”

“A pleasure delayed is twice a pleasure anticipation and realization.”

Miss Balfour made a different application of his text, her eyes trained
on him with apparent indifference. “I’ve been enjoying a delayed
pleasure myself. I went to see her this afternoon.”

He did not ask whom, but his eyes brightened.

“She’s worth a good deal of seeing, don’t you think?”

“Oh, I’m in love with her, but it doesn’t follow you ought to be.”

“Am I?”—he smiled.

“You are either in love or else you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“An interesting thing about you is your point of view. Now, anybody
else would tell me I ought to be ashamed if I am in love.”

“I’m not worried about your morals,” she scoffed. “It’s that poor child
I’m thinking of.”

“I think of her a good deal, too.”

“Ah! and does she think of you a good deal That’s what we must guard
against.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. You see I’m her confidante.” She told it him with sparkling eyes,
for the piquancy of it amused her. Not every engaged young woman can
hear her lover’s praises sung by the woman whose life he has saved with
the proper amount of romance.

“Really?”

She nodded, laughing at him. “I didn’t get a chance to tell her about
me.”

“I suppose not.”

“I think I’ll tell her about you, though—just what a ruthless barbarian
you are.”

His eyes gleamed “I wish you would. I’d like to find out whether she
would believe you. I have tried to tell her myself, but the honest
truth is, I funk it.”

“You haven’t any right to let her know you are interested in her.” She
interrupted him before he could speak. “Don’t trifle with her, Waring.
She’s not like other girls.”

He met her look gravely. “I wouldn’t trifle with her for any reason.”

Her quick rejoinder overlapped his sentence. “Then you love her!”

“Is that an alternative?”

“With you—yes.”

“Faith, my lady, you’re frank!”

“I’m not mealy-mouthed. You don’t think yourself scrupulous, do you?”

“I’m afraid I am not.”

“I don’t mind so much your being in love with HER, though it’s not
flattering to my vanity, but—” She stopped, letting him make the
inference.

“Do you think that likely?” he asked, the color flushing his face.

He wondered how much Aline had told this confidante. Certain specific
things he knew she had not revealed, but had she let her guess the
situation between them?

She compromised with her conscience. “I don’t know. She is romantic—and
Simon Harley isn’t a very fertile field for romance, I suppose.”

“You would imply?”

“Oh, you have points, and nobody knows them better than Waring
Ridgway,” she told him jauntily. “But you needn’t play that role to the
address of Aline Harley. Try ME. I’m immune to romance. Besides, I’m
engaged to you,” she added, laughing at the inconsequence the fact
seemed to have for both of them.

“I’m afraid I can’t help the situation, for if I’ve been playing a
part, it has been an unconscious one.”

“That’s the worst of it. When you star as Waring Ridgway you are most
dangerous. What I want is total abstinence.”

“You’d rather I didn’t see her at all?”

Virginia dimpled, a gleam of reminiscent laughter in her eyes. “When I
was in Denver last month a Mrs. Smythe—it was Smith before her husband
struck it rich last year—sent out cards for a bridge afternoon. A Mrs.
Mahoney had just come to the metropolis from the wilds of Cripple
Creek. Her husband had struck a gold-mine, too, and Mr. Smythe was
under obligations to him. Anyhow, she was a stranger, and Mrs. Smythe
took her in. It was Mrs. Mahoney’s introduction to bridge, and she did
not know she was playing for keeps. When the afternoon was over, Mrs.
Smythe hovered about her with the sweetest sympathy. ‘So sorry you had
such a horrid run of cards, dear. Better luck next time.’ It took Mrs.
Mahoney some time to understand that her social afternoon had cost one
hundred and twenty dollars, but next day her husband sent a check for
one hundred and twenty-two dollars to Mrs. Smythe. The extra two
dollars were for the refreshments, he naively explained, adding that
since his wife was so poor a gambler as hardly to be able to keep
professionals interested, he would not feel offended if Mrs. Smythe
omitted her in future from her social functions.”

Ridgway took it with a smile. “Simon Harley brought his one hundred and
twenty-two dollars in person.”

“He didn’t! When?”

“This morning. He proposed benevolent assimilation as a solution of our
troubles.”

“Just how?”

“He offered to consolidate all the copper interests of the country and
put me at the head of the resulting combine.”

“If you wouldn’t play bridge with Mrs. Harley?”

“Exactly.”

“And you?”

“Declined to pledge myself.”

She clapped her hands softly. “Well done, Waring Ridgway! There are
times when you are magnificent, when I could put you on a pedestal, you
great big, unafraid man. But you mustn’t play with her, just the same.”

“Why mustn’t I?”

“For her sake.”

He frowned past her into space, his tight-shut jaw standing out
saliently. “You’re right, Virginia. I’ve been thinking so myself. I’ll
keep off the grass,” he said, at last.

“You’re a good fellow,” slipped out impulsively.

“Well, I know where there’s another,” he said. “I ought to think myself
a lucky dog.”

Virginia lifted quizzical eyebrows. “Ought to! That tastes of duty.
Don’t let it come to that. We’ll take it off if you like.” She touched
the solitaire he had given her.

“Ah, but I don’t like”—he smiled.




CHAPTER XII.
ALINE MAKES A DISCOVERY


Aline pulled her horse to a walk. “You know Mr. Ridgway pretty well,
don’t you?”

Miss Balfour gently flicked her divided skirt with a riding-whip,
considering whether she might be said to know him well. “Yes, I think I
do,” she ventured.

“Mrs. Mott says you and he are great friends, that you seem very fond
of each other.”

“Goodness me! I hope I don’t seem fond of him. I don’t think ‘fond’ is
exactly the word, anyway, though we are good friends.” Quickly, keenly,
her covert glance swept Aline; then, withdrawing her eyes, she flung
her little bomb. “I suppose we may be said to appreciate each other. At
any rate, we are engaged.”

Mrs. Harley’s pony came to an abrupt halt. “I thought I had dropped my
whip,” she explained, in a low voice not quite true.

Virginia, though she executed an elaborate survey of the scenery, could
not help noticing that the color had washed from her friend’s face. “I
love this Western country—its big sweep of plains, of low, rolling
hills, with a background of mountains. One can see how it gets into a
man’s blood so that the East seems insipid ever afterward,” discoursed
Miss Balfour.

A question trembled on Aline’s blanched lips.

“Say it,” permitted Virginia.

“Do you mean that you are engaged to him—that you are going to marry
Mr. Ridgway—without caring for him?”

“I don’t mean that at all. I like him immensely.”

“But—do you love him?” It was almost a cry—these low words wrung from
the tortured heart.

“No fair,” warned her friend smilingly.

Aline rode in silence, her stricken face full of trouble. How could
she, from her glass house, throw stones at a loveless marriage? But
this was different from her own case! Nobody was worthy to marry her
hero without giving the best a woman had to give. If she were a girl—a
sudden tide of color swept her face; a wild, delirious tingle of joy
flooded her veins—oh, if she were a girl, what a wealth of love could
she give him! Clarity of vision had come to her in a blinding flash.
Untutored of life, the knowledge of its meaning had struck home of the
suddenest. She knew her heart now that it was too late; knew that she
could never be indifferent to what concerned Waring Ridgway.

Aline caught at the courage behind her childishness, and accomplished
her congratulations “You will be happy, I am sure. He is good.”

“Goodness does not impress me as his most outstanding quality,” smiled
Miss Balfour.

“No, one never feels it emphasized. He is too free of selfishness to
make much of his goodness. But one can’t help feeling it in everything
he does and says.”

“Does Mr. Harley agree with you? Does he feel it?”

“I don’t think Mr. Harley understands him. I can’t help thinking that
he is prejudiced.” She was becoming mistress of her voice and color
again.

“And you are not?”

“Perhaps I am. In my thought of him he would still be good, even if he
had done all the bad things his enemies accuse him of.”

Virginia gave her up. This idealized interpretation of her betrothed
was not the one she had, but for Aline it might be the true one. At
least, she could not disparage him very consistently under the
circumstances.

“Isn’t there a philosophy current that we find in people what we look
for in them? Perhaps that is why you and Mr. Harley read in Mr. Ridgway
men so diverse as you do. It is not impossible you are both right and
both wrong. Heaven knows, I suppose. At least, we poor mortals fog
around enough when we sit in judgment.” And Virginia shrugged the
matter from her careless shoulders.

But Aline seemed to have a difficulty in getting away from the subject.
“And you—what do you read?” she asked timidly.

“Sometimes one thing and sometimes another. To-day I see him as a
living refutation of all the copy-book rules to success. He shatters
the maxims with a touch-and-go manner that is fascinating in its
immorality. A gambler, a plunger, an adventurer, he wins when a
careful, honest business man would fail to a certainty.”

Aline was amazed. “You misjudge him. I am sure you do. But if you think
this of him why—”

“Why do I marry him? I have asked myself that a hundred times, my dear.
I wish I knew. I have told you what I see in him to-day; but
tomorrow—why, to-morrow I shall see him an altogether different man. He
will be perhaps a radiating center of altruism, devoted to his friends,
a level-headed protector of the working classes, a patron of the arts
in his own clearminded, unlettered way. But whatever point of view one
gets at him, he spares one dullness. Will you explain to me, my dear,
why picturesque rascality is so much more likable than humdrum virtue?”

Mrs. Harley’s eyes blazed. “And you can talk this way of the man you
are going to marry, a man—” She broke off, her voice choked.

Miss Balfour was cool as a custard. “I can, my dear, and without the
least disloyalty. In point of fact, he asked me to tell you the kind of
man I think him. I’m trying to oblige him, you see.”

“He asked you—to tell me this about him?” Aline pulled in her pony in
order to read with her astonished eyes the amused ones of her
companion.

“Yes. He was afraid you were making too much of his saving you. He
thinks he won’t do to set on a pedestal.”

“Then I think all the more of him for his modesty.”

“Don’t invest too heavily on his modesty, my dear. He wouldn’t be the
man he is if he owned much of that commodity.”

“The man he is?”

“Yes, the man born to win, the man certain of himself no matter what
the odds against him. He knows he is a man of destiny; knows quite well
that there is something big about him that dwarfs other men. I know it,
too. Wherefore I seize my opportunity. It would be a sin to let a man
like that get away from one. I could never forgive myself,” she
concluded airily.

“Don’t you see any human, lovable things in him?” Aline’s voice was an
accusation.

“He is the staunchest friend conceivable. No trouble is too great for
him to take for one he likes, and where once he gives his trust he does
not take it back. Oh, for all his force, he is intensely human! Take
his vanity, my dear. It soars to heaven.”

“If I cared for him I couldn’t dissect his qualities as you do.”

“That’s because you are a triumph of the survival of nature and impulse
over civilization, in spite of its attempts to sap your freshness. For
me, I fear I’m a sophisticated daughter of a critical generation. If I
weren’t, I should not hold my judgment so safely in my own keeping, but
would surrender it and my heart.”

“There is something about the way you look at him that shocks me. One
ought not to let oneself believe all that seems easy to believe.”

“That is your faith, but mine is a different one. You see, I’m a
Unitarian,” returned Virginia blithely.

“He will make you love him if you marry him,” sighed Aline, coming back
to her obsession.

Virginia nodded eagerly. “In my secret heart that is what I am hoping
for, my dear.”

“Unless there is another man,” added Aline, as if alone with her
thoughts.

Virginia was irritably aware of a flood of color beating into her
cheeks. “There isn’t any other man,” she said impatiently.

Yet she thought of Lyndon Hobart. Curiously enough, whenever she
conceived herself as marrying Ridgway, the reflex of her brain carried
to her a picture of Hobart, clean-handed, fine of instinct, with the
inherited inflections of voice and unconscious pride of caste that come
from breeding and not from cultivation. If he were not born to
greatness, like his rival, at least he satisfied her critical judgment
of what a gentleman should be; and she was quite sure that the
potential capacity lay in her to care a good deal more for him than for
anybody else she had met. Since it was not on the cards, as Miss
Virginia had shuffled the pack, that she should marry primarily for
reasons sentimental, this annoyed her in her sophisticated hours.

But in the hours when she was a mere girl when she was not so
confidently the heir of all the feminine wisdom of the ages, her
annoyance took another form. She had told Lyndon Hobart of her
engagement because it was the honest thing to do; because she supposed
she ought to discourage any hopes he might be entertaining. But it did
not follow that he need have let these hopes be extinguished so
summarily. She could have wished his scrupulous regard for the proper
thing had not had the effect of taking him so completely out of her
external life, while leaving him more insistently than ever the subject
of her inner contemplation.

Virginia’s conscience was of the twentieth century and American, though
she was a good deal more honest with herself than most of her sex in
the same social circle. Also she was straightforward with her neighbors
so far as she could reasonably be. But she was not a Puritan in the
least, though she held herself to a more rigid account than she did her
friends. She judged her betrothed as little as she could, but this was
not to be entirely avoided, since she expected her life to become
merged so largely in his. There were hours when she felt she must
escape the blighting influence of his lawlessness. There were others
when it seemed to her magnificent.

Except for the occasional jangle of a bit or the ring of a horse’s shoe
on a stone, there was silence which lasted many minutes. Each was busy
with her thoughts, and the narrowness of the trail, which here made
them go in single file, served as an excuse against talk.

“Perhaps we had better turn back,” suggested Virginia, after the path
had descended to a gulch and merged itself in a wagon-road. “We shall
have no more than time to get home and dress for dinner.”

Aline turned her pony townward, and they rode at a walk side by side.

“Do you know much about the difficulty between Mr. Harley and Mr.
Ridgway? I mean about the mines—the Sherman Bell, I think they called
it?”

“I know something about the trouble in a general way. Both the
Consolidated and Mr. Ridgway’s company claim certain veins. That is
true of several mines, I have been told.”

“I don’t know anything about business. Mr. Harley does not tell me
anything about his. To day I was sitting in the open window, and two
men stopped beneath it. They thought there would be trouble in this
mine—that men would be hurt. I could not make it all out, but that was
part of it. I sent for Mr. Harley and made him tell me what he knew. It
would be dreadful if anything like that happened.”

“Don’t worry your head about it, my dear. Things are always threatening
and never happening. It seems to be a part of the game of business to
bluff, as they call it.”

“I wish it weren’t,” sighed the girl-wife.

Virginia observed that she looked both sad and weary. She had started
on her ride like a prisoner released from his dungeon, happy in the
sunshine, the swift motion, the sting of the wind in her face. There
had been a sparkle in her eye and a ring of gaiety in her laugh. Into
her cheeks a faint color had glowed, so that the contrast of their
clear pallor with the vivid scarlet of the little lips had been less
pronounced than usual. But now she was listless and distraite, the
girlish abandon all stricken out of her. It needed no clairvoyant to
see that her heart was heavy and that she was longing for the moment
when she could be alone with her pain.

Her friend had learned what she wanted to know, and the knowledge of it
troubled her. She would have given a good deal to have been able to
lift this sorrow from the girl riding beside her. For she was aware
that Aline Harley might as well have reached for the moon as that
toward which her untutored heart yearned. She had come to life late and
traveled in it but a little way. Yet the tragedy of it was about to
engulf her. No lifeboat was in sight. She must sink or swim alone.
Virginia’s unspoiled heart went out to her with a rush of pity and
sympathy. Almost the very words that Waring Ridgway had used came to
her lips.

“You poor lamb! You poor, forsaken lamb!”

But she spoke instead with laughter and lightness, seeing nothing of
the girl’s distress, at least, until after they separated at the door
of the hotel.




CHAPTER XIII.
FIRST BLOOD


After Ridgway’s cavalier refusal to negotiate a peace treaty, Simon
Harley and his body-guard walked back to the offices of the
Consolidated, where they arrived at the same time as the news of the
enemy’s first blow since the declaration of renewed war.

Hobart was at his desk with his ear to the telephone receiver when the
great financier came into the inner office of the manager.

“Yes. When? Driven out, you say? Yes—yes. Anybody hurt? Followed our
men through into our tunnel? No, don’t do anything till you hear from
me. Send Rhys up at once. Let me know any further developments that
occur.”

Hobart hung up the receiver and turned on his swivel-chair toward his
chief. “Another outrage, sir, at the hands of Ridgway. It is in regard
to those veins in the Copper King that he claims. Dalton, his
superintendent of the Taurus, drove a tunnel across our lateral lines
and began working them, though their own judge has not yet rendered a
decision in their favor. Of course, I put a large force in them at
once. To-day we tapped their workings at the twelfth level. Our
foreman, Miles, has just telephoned me that Dalton turned the air
pressure on our men, blew out their candles, and flung a mixture of
lime and rocks at them. Several of the men are hurt, though none badly.
It seems that Dalton has thrown a force into our tunnels and is holding
the entrances against us at the point where the eleventh, twelfth, and
thirteenth levels touch the cage. It means that he will work those
veins, and probably others that are acknowledged to be ours, unless we
drive them out, which would probably be a difficult matter.”

Harley listened patiently, eyes glittering and clean-shaven lips
pressed tightly against his teeth. “What do you propose to do?”

“I haven’t decided yet. If we could get any justice from the courts, an
injunction.”

“Can’t be got from Purcell. Don’t waste time considering it. Fight it
out yourself. Find his weakest spot, then strike hard and suddenly.”
Harley’s low metallic voice was crisp and commanding.

“His weakest spot?”

“Exactly. Has he no mines upon which we can retaliate?”

“There is the Taurus. It lies against the Copper King end to end. He
drove a tunnel into some of our workings last winter. That would give a
passageway to send our men through, if we decide to do so. Then there
is his New York. Its workings connect with those of the Jim Hill.”

“Good! Send as many men through as is necessary to capture and hold
both mines. Get control of the entire workings of them both, and begin
taking ore out at once. Station armed guards at every point where it is
necessary, and as many as are necessary. Use ten thousand men, if you
need that many. But don’t fail. We’ll give Ridgway a dose of his own
medicine, and teach him that for every pound of our ore he steals we’ll
take ten.”

“He’ll get an injunction from the courts.”

“Let him get forty. I’ll show him that his robber courts will not save
him. Anyhow, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Hobart, almost swept from his moorings by the fiery energy of his
chief, braced himself to withstand the current.

“I shall have to think about that. We can’t fight lawlessness with
lawlessness except for selfpreservation.”

“Think! You do nothing but think, Mr. Hobart. You are here to act,”
came the scornful retort; “And what is this but self-preservation.”

“I am willing to recapture our workings in the Copper King. I’ll lead
the attack in person, sir. But as to a retaliatory attack—the facts
will not justify a capture of his property because he has seized ours.”

“Wrong, sir. This is no time for half-way measures. I have resolved to
crush this freebooter; since he has purchased your venal courts, then
by the only means left us—force.”

Hobart rose from his seat, very pale and erect. His eyes met those of
the great man unflinchingly. “You realize that this may mean murder,
Mr. Harley? That a clash cannot possibly be avoided if you pursue this
course?”

“I realize that it is self-preservation,” came the cold retort. “There
is no law here, none, at least, that gives us justice. We are back to
savagery, dragged back by the madness of this ruffian. It is his
choice, not mine. Let him abide by it.”

“Your intention to follow this course is irrevocable?”

“Absolutely.”

“In that case, I must regretfully offer my resignation as manager of
the Consolidated.”

“It is accepted, Mr. Hobart. I can’t have men working under me that are
not loyal, body and soul, to the hand that feeds them. No man can serve
two masters, Mr. Hobart.”

“That is why I resign, Mr. Harley. You give me the devil’s work to do.
I have done enough of it. By Heaven, I will be a free man hereafter.”
The disgust and dissatisfaction that had been pent within him for many
a month broke forth hot from the lips of this self-repressed man. “It
is all wrong on both sides. Two wrongs do not make a right. The system
of espionage we employ over everybody both on his side and ours, the
tyrannical use we make of our power, the corruption we foster in
politics, our secret bargains with railroads, our evasions of law as to
taxes, and in every other way that suits us: it is all wrong—all wrong.
I’ll be a party to it no longer. You see to what it leads—murder and
anarchy. I’ll be a poor man if I must, but I’ll be a free and honest
one at least.”

“You are talking wickedly and wildly, Mr. Hobart. You are criticizing
God when you criticize the business conditions he has put into the
world. I did not know that you were a socialist, but what you have just
said explains your course,” the old man reproved sadly and
sanctimonious.

“I am not a socialist, Mr. Harley, but you and your methods have made
thousands upon thousands of them in this country during the past ten
years.”

“We shall not discuss that, Mr. Hobart, nor, indeed, is any discussion
necessary. Frankly, I am greatly disappointed in you. I have for some
time been dissatisfied with your management, but I did not, of course,
know you held these anarchistic views. I want, however, to be perfectly
just. You are a very good business man indeed, careful and thorough.
That you have not a bold enough grasp of mind for the place you hold is
due, perhaps, to these dangerous ideas that have unsettled you. Your
salary will be continued for six months. Is that satisfactory?”

“No, sir. I could not be willing to accept it longer than to-day. And
when you say bold enough, why not be plain and say unscrupulous
enough?” amended the younger man.

“As you like. I don’t juggle with words. The point is, you don’t
succeed. This adventurer, Ridgway, scores continually against you. He
has beaten you clear down the line from start to finish. Is that not
true?”

“Because he does not hesitate to stoop to anything, because—”

“Precisely. You have given the very reason why he must be fought in the
same spirit. Business ethics would be as futile against him as chivalry
in dealing with a jungle-tiger.”

“You would then have had me stoop to any petty meanness to win, no
matter how contemptible?”

The New Yorker waved him aside with a patient, benignant gesture. “I
don’t care for excuses. I ask of my subordinates success. You do not
get it for me. I must find a man who can.”

Hobart bowed with fine dignity. The touch of disdain in his slight
smile marked his sense of the difference between them. He was again his
composed rigid self.

“Can you arrange to allow my resignation to take effect as soon as
possible? I should prefer to have my connection with the company
severed before any action is taken against these mines.”

“At once—to-day. Your resignation may be published in the Herald this
afternoon, and you will then be acquitted of whatever may follow.”

“Thank you.” Hobart hesitated an instant before he said: “There is a
point that I have already mentioned to you which, with your permission,
I must again advert to. The temper of the miners has been very bitter
since you refused to agree to Mr. Ridgway’s proposal for an eight-hour
day. I would urge upon you to take greater precautions against a
personal attack. You have many lawless men among your employees. They
are foreigners for the most part, unused to self-restraint. It is only
right you should know they execrate your name.”

The great man smiled blandly. “Popularity is nothing to me. I have
neither sought it nor desired it. Given a great work to do, with the
Divine help I have done it, irrespective of public clamor. For many
years I have lived in the midst of alarms, Mr. Hobart. I am not
foolhardy. What precautions I can reasonably take I do. For the rest,
my confidence is in an all-wise Providence. It is written that not even
a sparrow falls without His decree. In that promise I put my trust. If
I am to be cut off it can only be by His will. ‘The Lord gave, and the
Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ Such, I pray,
may be the humble and grateful spirit with which I submit myself to His
will.”

The retiring manager urged the point no further. “If you have decided
upon my successor and he is on the ground I shall be glad to give the
afternoon to running over with him the affairs of the office. It would
be well for him to retain for a time my private secretary and
stenographer.”

“Mr. Mott will succeed you. He will no doubt be glad to have your
assistance in helping him fall into the routine of the office, Mr.
Hobart.”

Harley sent for Mott at once and told him of his promotion. The two men
were closeted together for hours, while trusted messengers went and
came incessantly to and from the mines. Hobart knew, of course, that
plans were in progress to arm such of the Consolidated men as could be
trusted, and that arrangements were being made to rush the Taurus and
the New York. Everything was being done as secretly as possible, but
Hobart’s experience of Ridgway made it obvious to him that this
excessive activity could not pass without notice. His spies, like those
of the trust, swarmed everywhere.

It was not till mid-afternoon of the next day that Mott found time to
join him and run over with him the details of such unfinished business
as the office had taken up. The retiring manager was courtesy itself,
nor did he feel any bitterness against his successor. Nevertheless, he
came to the end of office hours with great relief. The day had been a
very hard one, and it left him with a longing for solitude and the wide
silent spaces of the open hills. He struck out in the direction which
promised him the quickest opportunity to leave the town behind him. A
good walker, he covered the miles rapidly, and under the physical
satisfaction of the tramp the brain knots unraveled and smoothed
themselves out. It was better so—better to live his own life than the
one into which he was being ground by the inexorable facts of his
environment. He was a young man and ambitious, but his hopes were not
selfish. At bottom he was an idealist, though a practical one. He had
had to shut his eyes to many things which he deplored, had been driven
to compromises which he despised. Essentially clean-handed, the soul of
him had begun to wither at the contact of that which he saw about him
and was so large a part of.

“I am not fit for it. That is the truth. Mott has no imagination, and
property rights are the most sacred thing on earth to him. He will do
better at it than I,” he told himself, as he walked forward bareheaded
into the great sunset glow that filled the saddle between two purple
hills in front of him.

As he swung round a bend in the road a voice, clear and sweet, came to
him through the light filtered air.

“Laska!”

A young woman on horseback was before him. Her pony stood across the
road, and she looked up a trail which ran down into it. The lifted
poise of the head brought out its fine lines and the distinction with
which it was set upon the well-molded throat column. Apparently she was
calling to some companion on the trail who had not yet emerged into
view.

At sound of his footsteps the rider’s head turned.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Hobart,” she said quietly, as coolly as if her
heart had not suddenly begun to beat strangely fast.

“Good afternoon, Miss Balfour.”

Each of them was acutely conscious of the barrier between them. Since
the day when she had told him of her engagement they had not met, even
casually, and this their first sight of each other was not without
embarrassment.

“We have been to Lone Pine Cone,” she said rather hurriedly, to bridge
an impending silence.

He met this obvious statement with another as brilliant.

“I walked out from town. My horse is a little lame.”

But there was something she wanted to say to him, and the time for
saying it, before the arrival of her companion, was short. She would
not waste it in commonplaces.

“I don’t usually read the papers very closely, but this morning I read
both the Herald and the Sun. Did you get my note?”

“Your note? No.”

“I sent it by mail. I wanted you to know that your friends ar

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