expenses always. From your profits above them you have to make up what
Knapp has spent and what you will have to spend. That takes your close
attention and many years. For that I think you will not wish to go
ahead; and for that I come to make you an offer that will make it for
you not an entire loss. I do not ask that you believe me.
Investigate."
"Would you be willing to wait here while we investigate?" asked Murphy.
"Always, for my expenses," replied Lafond calmly.
The Easterners consulted.
"Very well," said Stevens. "Call it that."
Lafond in the little room at his hotel looked at himself closely in the
glass.
"A fool for luck! a fool for luck!" he cried at the imaged reflection,
repeating his old formula.
Stevens was gone just ten days. Of course he said nothing of Lafond's
presence in Chicago. He had merely dropped in to look over the
property, as was natural. Most of the men wondered why he had not done
so before. He was cordial to Billy, looked over what had been done,
asked many questions, listened attentively to all Billy had to say and
departed in the most friendly spirit. When he arrived in Chicago, he
went directly to his office in the Monadnock Building, where he had
already assembled his associates by telegraph.
Stevens was brief, business-like and coldly impartial. In a man of his
sort that indicated that he was very angry and chagrined.
"I have the following figures to submit," said he, taking up a paper.
"They are accurate, as I consulted with an expert as to the items of
future expense before leading Rapid.
10 horses at 105.00 . . . . . . . $1,050.00
10 sets harness at 60.00 . . . . . 600.00
Mill machinery . . . . . . . . . . 6,500.00
Pumps, hoists . . . . . . . . . . 1,250.00
4 months' wages at 4.00 a day . . 4,800.00
2 1/2 months' boarding expenses . 610.00
Hay, tools, implements . . . . . . 1,165.00
Wagons, household goods . . . . . 2,560.00
Miscellaneous . . . . . . . . . . 2,112.00
Building roads . . . . . . . . . . 829.00
----------
$21,476.00
"That is what has been spent up to date according to Knapp's accounts."
"But hold on!" interjected Murphy; "he has drawn six drafts. That
makes thirty thousand. Has he eight thousand in hand? Why did he have
to draw the last draft?"
"He doesn't know," replied Stevens grimly. "His bank balance," he
declared, consulting the paper again, "is just $1,126.40. He says he
doesn't know where the balance is."
"Do you think----?"
"Not at all. He is perfectly honest. That is the way he does things."
"Here," went on Stevens after a moment, "is what remains to be done
before we can even start to work. It is an estimate, but it is a close
one; for, as I told you, I had assistance in making it out:
Mills, pumps, hoists . . . . . . . $12,000.00
Sheds, ore-dumps, etc . . . . . . 1,500.00
20 horses and harness . . . . . . 3,200.00
Men, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,000.00
Wagons and tools . . . . . . . . . 5,000.00
----------
$26,700.00
That is to bring us up to the efficient working point. Now here are
our liabilities:
Miscellaneous bills . . . . . . . $850.00
Contract on 1,100 feet of shaft and tunnel
at 20 a foot . . . . . . . . . 22,000.00
----------
$22,850.00
That is what we owe, gentlemen," concluded Stevens, slapping his papers
on the table and looking about him. "Now if you want to throw good
money after bad, you can do so," he continued after a moment; "but this
is a limited liability company and I am done. I am strongly in favor
of pulling out some way to save our names as promoters of such a fool
enterprise, but I think we should pull out. This man Lafond thinks he
can do something with the property if he has a fair show, and perhaps
we can save something through him. Our fifty thousand is _gone_--and
more, after we've paid our debt to those men--and anything we can save
out of such a mess seems to me clear gain."
And so with equal haste they scrambled out.
The first inexplicable phenomenon is the sanguine blindness such men
show in going into mining; the second is the headlong thoughtlessness
with which they draw out. Anything to get back to daylight apparently.
Again the parallel of the button-hook factory. In case of failure
these men would have first looked the ground over well for possible
retrenchment along the old lines of expenditure: that failing, they
would have examined closely for a possible new plan. But in the
present case they never even conceived the possibility of any scale of
operation different from that grand vision of eleven contiguous mines
all going at full blast which Billy's vivid imagination had called into
being. Lafond saw it clearly enough. Had he been so minded, he could
have set the whole matter right; just as, if he had been so minded, he
could have turned the trend of Billy Knapp's extravagance with a little
timely advice.
"Gentlemen," he could have said, "has it ever occurred to you to start
on a small scale and work up gradually to a larger? You can mine one
shaft on one claim with one cheap five-stamp mill. In that way you
could at least pay expenses from the very surface. After a little you
can pay more. Then you might open up another claim. That would take
time to be sure; but what business does not take time?"
His actual speech was of quite different tenor. When called before the
meeting by a special messenger, and asked to name the terms he was
willing to offer, he replied quite simply--
"Fifteen thousand dollars."
This was, of course, quite unthinkable. An animated discussion ensued.
"We have spent over twenty thousand dollars," said Stevens, "and we owe
twenty-six thousand more. Then the claims are worth something, surely.
It would be better to hold the property just as it stands, on the
chance of some future sale."
"Of the twenty thousand you have spent," retorted Lafond, "fifteen has
been spent uselessly. I mean not that it was all waste, but that if I
had been running the mine I could have bought all I would need for five
thousand. And as for the twenty-six thousand you owe, what with
bonuses for fast work and contracts at a high price, it ought all to
have been completed for fifteen thousand. And besides, if it was I who
had developed the property, I would not have sunk all these shafts
before making the mill to work. I would have my mine to pay before. I
am making you the offer of five thousand for the mine and ten thousand
for the works."
This argument carried some weight. It availed to induce an acceptance
of Lafond's final offer of five thousand cash, and the assumption of
the twenty-six thousand debt. A man in his position and in his
business could easily reduce the latter item.
"Of course this is merely informal," explained Stevens. "We have to
call a directors' meeting yet to take official action."
"We hold controlling interest," added Murphy, for the purpose of
reassuring Lafond.
"I understand," said the latter. "And now another thing. What are you
going to do about the camp itself?"
Stevens hesitated. "I suppose we'll shut down and give Knapp his
walking papers," he answered at last.
"That is just it. I want that you look out for my interests in that.
If you shut down, that gives the camp a bad name, and a bad name is of
all things in the West the worst. And you know not that man Knapp.
You discharge him. Eh, well? He is angry; he is without law; he is
reckless. He is able to do that which he wishes. He can burn the
buildings, break the machinery. Who is it that will stop him? No,
when Knapp is discharged, it must be that the deeds are in my hands, so
that I can protect my property."
All saw the justice of this argument.
"What would you suggest then?" asked the chairman.
"How is it that you intend to discharge him?" returned Lafond.
"What do you mean?"
"What is the formality? Do you just write and tell him he is
discharged?"
"Oh! No; we call a directors' meeting, and pass resolutions to that
effect, a copy of which we send him. We will do that at the same time
we authorize the sale to you."
Lafond drummed for a moment on the polished table near his hand.
"Eh, well," he announced at last, "let it be like this. When it is
that you have had your directors' meeting and have passed your
resolutions, then you send your copy to me, and I will give it to
Knapp. Thus I will be on the ground to see that he makes no trouble.
And at the same time you send the deeds to this man"--he rapidly
scribbled an address--"he is a notary public at Rapid. You will have
time to look up his reliability. He can hold the deeds until I pay to
him the five thousand dollars and sign a contract to take the debt we
spoke of. Is that satisfactory?"
"Quite," they agreed.
"How long will it be before you finish your meetings?"
"Ten days. It takes a week's notice for a special meeting."
On the way to South Dakota again Lafond stared out of the windows with
unseeing eyes in which lurked laughter. "Ten days," said he to
himself, passing the fingers of one hand softly over the palm of the
other. His dark bearded face in the twilight lost its outlines against
the upholstery of the Pullman. A nervous little bride on her wedding
trip to California grasped her husband's arm.
"What is it, dear?" inquired the latter.
"Foolishness," she laughed, a little forcedly. "But see that man's
eyes. Aren't they uncanny?"
"Looks a bit like a maniac," admitted the groom, "but it's this queer
light. Odd fellow. Looks as if he might have one of those interesting
Western histories you read about."
"A fool for luck! A fool for luck!" Black Mike was repeating to
himself. "Ten days! I can fix the date for that dance-hall opening
now!"
XXIX
BISMARCK ANNE ARRIVES
As has been hinted, the outward and visible signs of prosperity had to
some extent increased the feminine population of Copper Creek. Molly
Lafond had long since lost the distinction of being the only woman in
camp. Some of the newcomers were blessed with wives, one or two were
favored with daughters. All told, there were perhaps fifteen or twenty
of the gentler sex scattered among the new and old log cabins of the
valley.
But from them Molly had little to fear in the way of rivalry. The
older women were either buxom and decisive, representing the sturdier
pioneer race, or dyspeptic and drawling, as typical of the effects of a
high altitude on nervous and underfed organizations. The young girls
were angular, awkward and shy, especially so when in the presence of
Miss Molly's breezy self-possession. They would all make good
"filling" at the new dance-house ball, but they would never obtrude
into the foreground.
Then Bismarck Anne came to camp. She conceived the idea quite
suddenly, late one afternoon, and without so much as a word to anybody
she strapped her most becoming ball-gown inside a poncho and rode
across from Spanish Gulch on her little pinto pony.
Bismarck Anne was at that time in the heyday of her youth and
prosperity. She was of the dark-skinned, black-haired, black-eyed
type, so "common" when it falls just short of attractiveness, but so
abundantly vital when, as in the present case, it does not fall short.
Bismarck Anne was instinct, charged with life. Into everything she did
she threw a verve and abandon that carried the adventure well through
with something to spare. And she was afraid of nothing. She denied
the possibility of nothing.
About three o'clock of the afternoon she galloped in. A number of men
recognized her and ran to help her down from her horse. Everybody knew
her by sight or reputation, but few had ever dared attempt her
acquaintance, for ordinarily Bismarck Anne chose her coterie from the
powerful and wealthy. Now, however, there seemed to be little cause
for anxiety on that point. Bismarck Anne had come over for a good time
and she was going to have it. If the men who surrounded her on her
arrival felt any momentary restraint or trepidation, they were almost
immediately set at ease by the warmth of her manner.
It was Old Mizzou, I believe, who steadied her stirrup, and Dave Kelly
who helped her from her horse and held her a moment longer than was
necessary, and, to his vast astonishment, instead of being slapped was
heartily kissed for his temerity. There was a breathless element of
unexpectedness in this which appealed to the miners' sense of humor,
and they all laughed consumedly and felt good comrades at once. Old
Mizzou mentally added another exception to his sweeping rule about
"grass widders and school ma'ams." There sprang up a rapid fire of
good-humored joking back and forth in which no man was favored, where
each had a chance to enter the lists, and in the course of which each
conceived an inner conviction that all he needed to "win out" was a
chance unhindered by the crowd. Bismarck Anne stood in the centre of
the group, flashing her black eyes back and forth from one to the other
and showing her white teeth in a series of dazzling smiles.
Just at this moment Cheyenne Harry and Molly Lafond, returning from one
of their numerous expeditions, caught sight of the animated group near
the hotel, and naturally turned aside to investigate its cause.
Bismarck Anne faced toward them.
"Why, Harry!" she cried, holding out both hands, "you here? I didn't
know you-all hung out in this camp. You look just the same as ever.
'Spose you're goin' to take in th' dance to-night. Yes, that's what I
came over for; that an' nothing else. We'll have to stir this camp up
a bit and make her seem like old times. I'm afraid you boys have been
getting a little slow," she flashed good-humoredly at the others.
"Harry, you ought to have seen them when I kissed that boy over there,
just for a 'kid,' you know. I don't believe you've got a girl in this
camp who knows beans, and it's about time you did. I'm _mighty_ glad
to see you. But you got to watch out, though! This is a pretty
good-looking lot of boys, and you'll have to hustle to hold your job."
She said this still holding both his hands in hers, and alternately
smiling now at him, now at the men about her. She had taken rapid
stock of Molly--whom she now ignored for the moment--and had as rapidly
come to the conclusion that if a rival were to appear at all, it would
be Harry's companion. She hoped her speech would at the same time
attach Harry to herself, and render assiduous his devotions by a fear
of rivalry.
"You bet we will!" cried Harry. His manner was enthusiastic, not so
much with joy over seeing Bismarck Anne, as with instinctive relief
from the tension of his rather sentimental interview with Molly. He
remembered the latter and performed some sort of an introduction.
The two women looked each other in the eye.
"How do you do?" asked Molly coolly, without moving an inch.
"Very well, my dear," replied Bismarck Anne smiling, "and very glad to
get here."
The endearing epithet relegated Molly at once to the category of little
girls.
The conversation continued for some moments longer, the men standing as
silent spectators. Molly continued very reserved. The newcomer did
not appear to notice it, but chattered on unconcernedly in a
light-hearted fashion, appealing to the other just often enough to
convey the idea that there was nothing noticeably repellent in her
manner. In fact she did it so well that the group gained the
impression that Molly carried her share of the small talk, which was
not true. But in spite of the apparent good-feeling Cheyenne Harry
felt uncomfortably that something was wrong. Searching about for the
cause, he at last discovered it in Molly's attitude.
So on the way to the cabin he was vexed, and showed it. And Molly felt
so strongly the innate justice of her position and appreciated so
keenly the skill with which she had been made to appear sulky and
unreasonable, that when she had finally shut her own door behind her,
she threw herself on her bed and cried as though her heart would break.
Then her blood told. She dried her eyes and in her inmost heart she
declared war against this woman, war to the knife and to the uttermost.
The momentary defeat dashed her at first, then it nerved her. After
all nothing definite had occurred. This creature had planted several
stinging thrusts which had hit home because Molly, in the innocence of
her heart, was not expecting them. She was on her guard now. It would
not happen again. Cheyenne Harry had known the woman before,
evidently, and surely it was natural that in the first surprise of
seeing her so unexpectedly, he should display a certain enthusiasm of
recognition. But his relations with her--Molly Lafond--were too
intimate, too long-continued, to be lightly broken.
As the twilight fell she saw, through the oblong of her sliding window,
that men were hurrying by to dine early, in order that they might
prepare for the festivities of the evening. Across the square she
could make out the dim shape of the new dance hall, a long low
structure trimmed with evergreens and bunting. Frosty was even then
lighting the lamps in the Little Nugget. She sat there motionless,
staring out into the night, fingering the soft white stuff of the gown
lying across her lap, until a certain peace came to her and a
conviction that all would be well.
The night was warm and balmy with the odors of early spring. Molly had
slid back the halves of her narrow window, and over the boxes of
flowers that fringed this little artificial horizon the mellow notes of
the first whitethroat, that nightingale of the north, floated in on the
tepid air. Beyond the nearer silhouette of the flowers another dimmer
silhouette of the hills wavered uncertainly beneath a few uncertain
stars. The girl watched these stars idly, dreaming in tune with the
plaintive notes of the bird. Then silently another bulkier silhouette
interposed itself, almost filling the window.
"What is it?" she cried, starting.
"It's I," came the voice of Jack Graham. The silhouette rested two
black-outlined elbows against the sill.
"My, how you frightened me!" she cried pettishly. "What in the world
do you want? Why aren't you at dinner?"
"Molly," said Graham solemnly, "I don't suppose you'll listen to me.
We haven't gotten along very well lately, have we? But I want you to
know that I am asking this for your sake, and that I believe it."
She was impressed by the sincere quality of his tone. "Why, Jack," she
said softly, "I know you mean well, and I suppose I _am_ very frivolous
and careless. What is it?"
"I wish you would not go to the dance to-night."
There fell a pause. She was evidently in a softened mood and she
wished to conduct the interview considerately. "But, Jack," she
hesitatingly asked at last. "Do you think there is going to be
trouble?"
"It will only give you pain. You are going to be forced against things
you have never had to combat before."
"I don't understand you."
"I am going to talk very plainly, Molly; I hope you won't get angry. I
can't help it if you do. It's because I love you so, girl; I love you
so!"
His voice was deep and rich with emotion, so poignant and compelling
that it forced her attention in spite of herself. This was a
declaration, she dimly felt, and yet its import as such was somehow
lost in the more pregnant subject-matter to which it but added emphasis.
"Go on," she said breathlessly.
"You are well liked by everybody here," he continued, carefully
avoiding more pointed personalities, "and you have grown so used to
being liked by everybody that it would hurt you cruelly if you were
not. Isn't that true?"
"Yes," assented Molly gravely, after a moment's consideration.
"You want to hold first place in their thoughts and in their goodwill.
You want to be first with them and you want them to show to you and to
each other by their actions that they are your best friends and are
going to stand by you. Do I read you right?"
"Yes, of course I want all the boys to like me. I've known them so
long, and I should feel dreadfully if they didn't. But what do you
mean by it? I don't understand."
The silhouette moved uneasily. "Now don't get angry," he pleaded.
"Take to-night. To speak plainly, you want to be the woman who
receives the most attention at that ball. Answer frankly."
"Well," confessed the gill after another moment's hesitation, "frankly
then, I do."
"You will not."
"Why?"
"Because the woman who came this afternoon, Bismarck Anne, will take
your place."
Molly Lafond would have become angry if her experience of the afternoon
had not already made her uneasy on just this point.
"Do you consider her more attractive than me?" she asked a little
resentfully.
"A thousand times No!" assured the silhouette.
"Has she known the boys as long as I? Is she as good friends with
them? Can she talk better? Is she brighter?"
"No."
"Then I don't believe I quite see."
"It's just this. The men all like you and admire you, and would do
anything for you, but at the same time they look up to you a little.
You are better than they are, so, more or less, they are a
little--well--a little _restricted_ with you. This woman is their
sort. She isn't a bit better than they are. When they are out to have
a good time, like at the dance to-night, they want somebody they can
have their sort of fun with. _You are too good for them_."
"That is very theoretical."
"It is very true."
"And supposing, just supposing, it were. You want me to lie down and
quit without making a fight. Do you call that being game? What would
you think of a man who would run away because the other man was a
little stronger? Don't you think I'd fight?"
"That's just it. You'd fight too well."
"I don't----"
"She has ways of drawing men to her which you know nothing about. They
are her weapons. I know you'd fight. You'd fight to the last because
it is in you to, and I'm afraid, very much afraid, that when you found
your weapons were not enough you'd use hers."
There fell between them a long silence, while Molly slowly pondered
these last words and gradually apprehended their meaning. In the
darkness she could feel the blood tingeing her face, forehead, and
neck. At first she was inclined to be angry and to show it, but the
man's evident sincerity, coupled with the fervor of his incidental
declaration of love, softened her.
"I don't believe I ever had anybody tell me such things before," she
could not restrain herself from saying, "and I don't know whether I
ought to thank you for your lack of trust in me. However, you'll be
there, and I can rely on your protection against these awful dangers."
"I will not be there," contradicted Graham bluntly.
"Well, then, there's Harry." She said the name out of bravado to show
that there was no reason why she should not say it.
"Yes," cried Graham, with a burst of anger that astonished her. "It is
he I mean."
It was the red flag to them both, the idea of this man. "I think you'd
better go now," she replied coldly.
Graham turned away with a little curse.
She sat down again and tried desperately to regain her confidence of a
few moments before, but it would not come. She was angry and insulted,
and she was vexed at herself that she could not throw off the
uneasiness which lay behind these emotions; but she could not. It grew
on her as her nervousness increased. She sat staring straight before
her into the dark, clasping and unclasping her hands, and striving with
all the earnestness of which she was capable to seize and formulate the
vague fear that seemed unreasonably to weigh on her spirits. Analyze
it as she would, she could find no adequate reason for it. It was
therefore the more terrible. The dinner hour passed quite unnoticed.
The nervousness increased until she could have shrieked aloud. And
then with a sudden start she recognized it--this old formless causeless
sense of an indefinite guilt, as for something left undone; the voice,
although this she did not know, of her inherited New England conscience.
At the discovery she rebelled. She had always rebelled, and heretofore
she had succeeded in putting it down, in stifling it underneath mere
surface moods. But now the surface moods proved inadequate. The
uneasy guiltiness increased until it almost overflowed in tears. Molly
was afraid, just as a child is afraid of the dark.