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 are proud of
you. We know why you resigned. It is easy to read between the lines.”
“Thank you,” he said simply. “I knew you would know.”
“Even the Sun recognizes that it was because you are too good a man for
the place.”
“Praise from the Sun has rarely shone my way,” he said, with a touch of
irony, for that paper was controlled by the Ridgway interest. “In its
approval I am happy.”
Her impulsive sympathy for this man whom she so greatly liked would not
accept the rebuff imposed by this reticence. She stripped the gauntlet
from her hand and offered it in congratulation.
He took it in his, a slight flush in his face.
“I have done nothing worthy of praise. One cannot ask less of a man
than that he remain independent and honest. I couldn’t do that and stay
with the Consolidated, or, so it seemed to me. So I resigned. That is
all there is to it.”
“It is enough. I don’t know another man would have done it, would have
had the courage to do it after his feet were set so securely in the way
of success. The trouble with Americans is that they want too much
success. They want it at too big a price.”
“I’m not likely ever to have too much of it,” he laughed sardonically.
“Success in life and success in living aren’t the same thing. It is
because you have discovered this that you have sacrificed the less for
the greater.” She smiled, and added: “I didn’t mean that to sound as
preachy as it does.”
“I’m afraid you make too much of a small thing. My squeamishness has
probably made me the laughing-stock of Mesa.”
“If so, that is to the discredit of Mesa,” she insisted stanchly. “But
I don’t think so. A great many people who couldn’t have done it
themselves will think more of you for having done it.”
Another pony, which had been slithering down the steep trail in the
midst of a small rock slide, now brought its rider safely to a halt in
the road. Virginia introduced them, and Hobart, remembered that he had
heard Miss Balfour speak of a young woman whom she had met on the way
out, a Miss Laska Lowe, who was coming to Mesa to teach domestic
science in the public schools. There was something about the young
teacher’s looks that he liked, though she was of a very different type
than Virginia. Not at all pretty in any accepted sense, she yet had a
charm born of the vital honesty in her. She looked directly at one out
of sincere gray eyes, wide-awake and fearless. As it happened, her
friend had been telling her about Hobart, and she was interested in him
from the first. For she was of that minority which lives not by bread
alone, and she felt a glow of pride in the man who could do what the
Sun had given this man credit for editorially.
They talked at haphazard for a few minutes before the young women
cantered away. As Hobart trudged homeward he knew that in the eyes of
these two women, at least, he had not been a fool.