WESTON STANDS FAST
Business called Weston to Winnipeg a few days after his interview with
Ida, and, as it happened, he met Stirling at the head of the
companionway when the big lake steamer steamed out into Georgian Bay.
Neither of them had any other acquaintance on board, and they sat
together in the shade of a deckhouse as the steamer ploughed her way
smoothly across Lake Huron a few hours later. Weston had arranged to
meet a Chicago stock-jobber who had displayed some interest in the
mine, and he had chosen to travel up the lakes because it was more
comfortable than in the cars in the hot weather, besides being
somewhat cheaper, which was a consideration with him. Stirling, it
seemed, was going to inspect the route for a railroad which an
iron-mining company contemplated building. He lay in a deck-chair,
with a cigar in his hand, apparently looking out at the shining water
which stretched away before them, a vast sheet of turquoise, to the
far horizon.
"Well," he asked at length, "how's the Grenfell Consolidated
progressing?"
"It seems to be making most progress backward," said Weston. "Still, I
suppose the fact that somebody evidently considered it worth while to
send up men to jump our claim might be considered encouraging."
He briefly related what had taken place at the mine, as far as
Saunders' letter had acquainted him with the facts, and Stirling
listened thoughtfully.
"It's a crude maneuver, so crude that, as you've nothing but
suspicions to go upon, it would be wiser not to mention them to
anybody else," he said. "After all, the jumpers may have been acting
on their own account."
"You believe they were?"
Stirling smiled. "I naturally don't know enough about the matter to
decide; but, in a general way, when I come across anything that seems
to the discredit of any gentleman of importance, or big combine with
which I may happen to be at variance, I keep it judiciously quiet
until I have the proofs in hand. I find it an excellent rule." Then he
added in a suggestive manner: "You probably have had another rather
more favorable offer since those jumpers failed?"
Weston admitted that this was the case and said that he had ignored
the offer. He further stated that, as he had found the mine, he meant
to keep it until he could dispose of it on satisfactory terms.
"That," said Stirling, dryly, "is a very natural wish, but one now and
then has some trouble in carrying out views of that kind. I've seen
your prospectus. Any applications for your shares?"
"They're by no means numerous." And a flush of anger crept into
Weston's face. "If that were the result of a depressed market or of
investors' indifference I shouldn't mind so much, but we are evidently
being subjected to almost every kind of unwarranted attack."
"Any mode of attack's legitimate in this kind of deal, and there's a
rather effective one your friends don't seem to have tried yet. Quite
sure it wouldn't be wiser to make what terms you can and let them have
the mine?"
"I'm afraid I haven't considered the wisdom of the course I mean to
adopt. Anyway, it's a simple one. If those people want that mine they
must break us first."
"Well," Stirling said, "I guess if I were you I'd allot very few of
those shares to what one might call general applicants. Locate them
among your friends and Wannop's clerks."
"There are uncommonly few general applicants, and my friends are not
the kind of men who have money to invest. The same thing probably
applies to Wannop's clerks. It's quite certain that nobody connected
with the Grenfell Consolidated could make them a present of the
shares."
"Considering everything, that's unfortunate, for, as I once pointed
out, the next move will probably be to sell your stock down. It's a
game that contains a certain hazard in the case of a small concern,
because the stock is generally in few hands; but I've no doubt your
friends will try it."
"Then we're helpless," said Weston. "We must raise sufficient money
among the general investors, or give up the mine."
"The situation," said Stirling, dryly, "seems unpleasant, but it's the
kind of one in which a little man who will neither make terms with a
big concern nor let his friends help him might expect to find
himself."
Weston sat silent awhile, gazing at the steamer's smoke trail which
stretched far back, a dingy smear on the blueness, across the shining
lake; and the contractor watched him with a certain sympathy which,
however, he carefully refrained from expressing. There had been a time
in his career when it had seemed that every man of influence in his
profession and all the powers of capital had been arrayed against him.
He had been tricked into taking contracts the bigger men would not
touch; his accounts had been held over until long after the
convenanted settling day, and he had been compelled to submit to every
deduction that perverted ingenuity could suggest. He had, however,
hardened his heart, and toiled the more assiduously, planning half the
night and driving machine or plying shovel himself by day, whenever a
few dollars could be saved by doing so. He had lived on the plainest
fare, but he had, without borrowing or soliciting favors from any man,
borne the shrewd blows dealt him and struggled on inch by inch uphill
in spite of them. Now it seemed to him that this young Englishman was
bent on doing much the same. At length Weston turned to him with a wry
smile.
"It's quite possible that you're right, and the thing is too big for
me, but I have got to see it out," he said.
Stirling made a little sign of comprehension. His companion's
quietness pleased him, and he felt that, though the man must fight
with indifferent weapons and with formidable powers against him, he
would not easily be beaten. What was more to the purpose, the
contractor did not mean him to be beaten at all, if he could prevent
it, though this was a point that he did not consider it advisable to
mention.
"Well," he said reassuringly, "no one can tell exactly how a game of
this kind will go. All you can do is to hold tight and keep your eyes
open."
They changed the subject, and nothing more was said about the mine
during the rest of the journey.
In due time Stirling went ashore at a way port, and Weston met the man
from Chicago in Winnipeg a day or two later. The latter asked a good
many questions about the mine, but he contented himself with stating
that the matter would require investigation, and Weston, who gave him
a small bag of specimens, spent another day in Winnipeg in a very
dejected mood. He felt the hideous cruelty of the system which, within
certain rather ample limits, made it a legitimate thing to crush the
little man and rob him of his few possessions by any means available.
There was, it seemed, no mercy shown to weaklings in the arena he had
rashly entered with none of the weapons that the command of money
supplied to those pitted against him; but in place of shrinking from
the conflict a slow, smoldering rage crept into his heart.
He remembered the weary marches made in scorching heat and stinging
frost, how his shoulders had been rubbed raw by the pack-straps, and
how his burst boots had galled his bleeding feet. There had been long
nights of misery when he had lain, half-fed and too cold to sleep,
wrapped in dripping blankets beside a feeble, sputtering fire, while
the deluge thrashed the roaring pines. The bustle of the city jarred
on him that afternoon, and he wandered out of it, but the march,
parched with thirst, through the feathery ashes of the brûlée, rose up
in his memory as he walked aimlessly toward the prairie, and he
recalled Grenfell lying beside the lode he had died to find. It became
a grim duty to hold his own, and once more he determined that his
enemies should crush him before they laid their grasping hands on the
mine. He shrank, however, from going back to Montreal and waiting
there in suspense, and by the time he retraced his steps to his hotel
he had decided that this was out of the question. He wrote a few lines
to Wannop and started for the bush with the next day's train.
It was dark when he reached the camp, after an arduous journey, and
found Devine and Saunders sitting beside the fire. The latter, it
transpired, had engaged a clerk in Vancouver to take charge of his
store, and he smiled when Weston inquired whether he expected the man
to remain at the settlement any longer than his predecessor had done
when he heard that there was a new gold find in reach of him.
"I guess I've fixed that," he said. "I took some trouble to get one
who was very lame."
Neither of the pair, however, appeared cheerful, and Weston's face
grew hard when he heard what they had to say about the mine.
"As you'd see by the specimens, we were turning out high-grade milling
ore a little while ago," Devine observed.
"Well?"
The surveyor's gesture was expressive. "We're not in it now. Ore's
turned spotty, and it's running deeper. I think I remember your
telling me that Grenfell figured that the lode takes an inclination?"
"He certainly did."
"It's another proof that you could count on what he said. There's no
doubt about that inclination. We can't get out ore that will pay for
crushing with an open cut much longer."
"Then," said Weston, "we can follow it with an adit."
He looked at Saunders, who smiled in a rather grim fashion.
"Adits cost money to drive," observed the latter. "You have brought
some along?"
Weston said that this was not the case, and Saunders spread out his
hands.
"Well," he said, "I'm broke. Half the men on this location are owing
me quite a pile, and it's clear that I'll never get a dollar out of
them unless they strike it rich, or the Grenfell Consols go up with a
bang. That's how Jim from Okanagan fixed the thing. Now I've got
credit from a Vancouver wholesaler who takes a share in the store, and
that will keep us in pork and flour, but the giant-powder and
detonators in the shack yonder represent this syndicate's available
capital. I bought a big supply when I was in Vancouver, but there'll
be no more to be had when they run out."
"We'll go on until they do," said Weston, doggedly.
The next morning he laid his city clothes carefully aside, and
borrowed from his comrades garments more adapted to the bush. They
certainly did not fit him, but that was a matter of no account, and
when he had put them on he commenced work in very grim earnest. He was
hard pressed--up against it, as they say in that country--and every
crashing blow he struck upon the drill was a relief to him. Indeed, he
worked with curious cold-blooded fury that wore out his comrades long
before night came. Saunders had invested the proceeds of several years
of Spartan self-denial in the precarious venture, but that was as
nothing compared with Weston's stake. He must succeed or relinquish
all idea of winning the woman, who, he ventured to think, might listen
to him when he had accomplished his task; and when he desisted at
sunset his hands were bleeding and he had partly lamed Devine by an
incautious stroke of the pick. That, however, was a matter about which
the surveyor protested less than the hazards his comrade quietly took.
He rammed the giant-powder into the holes with reckless haste, and,
though the cheapest fuses are seldom to be relied on, he allowed his
companions scanty time to get out of the mine when he lighted them.
It was the same the next day, and for most of the next three weeks.
Indeed, Saunders and Devine were never sure how they contrived to keep
pace with him; but they did it for the credit of their manhood, which
would not allow them to be beaten by a Britisher. At nights their
hands and backs were distressfully sore, but the adit they drove crept
on steadily along the dip of the lode. Though they had worked
reasonably hard already, their faces grew gaunter and harder under the
strain, and as yet they had come upon little sign of any richer ore.
In the meanwhile it was very hot, and all day the withering sprays of
the fallen firs emitted heavy, honey-like odors under the scorching
sun.
Then it occurred to some of the others that, as there had been several
weeks of fierce dry weather, it would be a favorable opportunity to
burn off the slashing, or clear away the branches of the felled trees,
which is usually done before the great logs, which do not readily
burn, are attacked with the saw; and one day, when the wind promised
to drive the conflagration away from the camp, fires were kindled here
and there among the tindery undergrowth. The attempt proved
successful, and in a few hours the fire had spread into the
surrounding forest. It crept on through the latter steadily, springing
up the towering trunks from spray to spray, until the dark firs were
garlanded with climbing flame. Beneath them the brushwood crackled
furiously, and every now and then a mighty limb fell amidst a shower
of sparks, while half-charred logs and rows of blackened stumps marked
out the lode. The smoke obscured the sun until the workings were
wrapped in a haze, and it crept into the adit where Weston and his
comrades toiled; but they held on with their fish-oil lamps burning
until the light outside grew dim, and then, crawling back, sore all
over, to the wooden shack which had now replaced the tent, they lay
down outside it when supper was over.
It was an impressive spectacle that they gazed upon. The conflagration
was still not far from them, for, as a rule, a forest fire does not
move very rapidly. Across the valley hung a dusky pall of smoke, and
beneath it all trunks stripped to bare spires stood out black against
a sea of flame. The latter, however, was of no very great extent from
wing to wing, and, now that the wind had almost dropped, it made very
little progress, though it crept on down the valley in a confined
belt, rising and falling in pulsations with the sharp crackle of
licked-up undergrowth breaking through the deep-toned roar. Saunders,
lying propped up on one elbow, watched it meditatively.
"It's a high-class burn," he said. "Going to save somebody quite a lot
of chopping. But if that breeze whipped round there'd sure be
trouble."
As the men at work on the lode lived either in tents or rude shelters
of bark and logs, this seemed very probable; but Weston was not in the
mood to concern himself about the matter then.
"How much giant-powder have we got in hand?" he asked.
"Almost enough to last another three weeks with fuse and detonators to
match. You'll have to find the next lot when that runs out."
Weston laughed.
"I've just sufficient money to take me back to Montreal, traveling
Colonist, and I must go back to see how Wannop's getting on before
very long. What are you going to do then?"
Devine looked at Saunders, who smiled at him.
"Push the adit right on, if we have to cut every foot of it with the
drill," he said. "Before we let up, we'll rip the rock out with our
naked hands."
It was a characteristic answer, but Weston was satisfied with it. He
had discovered that if the men of the Pacific Slope were occasionally
a trifle assertive and what he called flamboyant in their
conversation, they nevertheless, as a rule, meant just what they said.
It is, of course, not unusual for an imaginative person to describe
what he intends to do in dramatic periods, but while some people are
wisely content with that, the western bushman generally can be
depended on to carry out the purpose.
They said nothing further, and presently went to sleep, with the
crackle of the undergrowth through which the fire crawled ringing in
their ears.