through the summit forest from the tramhead, Tregarvon found a sharp
surprise awaiting him at the point on the pike where the truck load
had been halted for the night. Scattered along the road or drawn
up under the trees were a dozen or more teams of all sorts and
descriptions--raw-boned mules in mismatched pairs, spans in which an
ancient horse was harnessed with a mule or with another horse to the
full as venerable, animals with back-bones like ridge-poles, others
posturing as the halt, the lame, and the blind, and, completing the
makeshifts, a wagon drawn by a pair of diminutive bulls. The drivers
of this new levy were harmoniously in keeping with their outworn
stock, decrepit wagons, and rope-patched harnesses; lank, sallow-faced
mountain men of the McNabb type, with a toothless patriarch of the
McNabb name to act as their spokesman.
“We-uns done heerd you-uns wuz a-needin’ holp fer to pull thish-yer
load thoo the woods,” said the aged spokesman, shrilling in a high,
cracked voice at Tregarvon. “Me an’ th’ boys ’lowed we’d drap
erlong an’ gin ye a h’ist. How-all does ye hitch on ter that thar
kintraption?” with a thumb-jerk over his shoulder toward the loaded
truck.
Tregarvon recovered from his surprise in a rebound of heartfelt
thankfulness. Here was manna from the skies, indeed. He asked no
questions; made no ungrateful effort to pry into the whys and
wherefores of the miracle. It was enough that the gods had relented.
Treading softly among the adjectives, he proceeded to set his curiously
assorted helpers, man and beast, in order, and the advance was begun.
Oddly enough, the task ran smoothly, despite the makeshift pulling
beasts and the prodigious inexperience of the drivers with any load so
formidable as the engine-mounted truck. To offset the inexperience,
there was a quiet and resolute willingness that was heart-warming after
the exacerbating sullenness of the valley farmers. Tregarvon found that
his normal good-nature had not been slain; it had only been pushed
aside; discovered also that hard words may make hard work. Turning the
new leaf handsomely, he let the agile old patriarch do the bossing, and
thus, rod by rod, the sandy half-mile was traversed and the goal in the
old burying-ground was reached.
Just before noon, when the truck load had been pushed and pulled and
inched into place in the glade, Carfax turned up, walking across from
the school. His congratulations were profuse, but if he knew anything
about the manner of the miracle-working, he betrayed neither himself
nor the secret.
“I was certain you’d find a way out of the strike trouble,” he
asserted blandly. “I told the folks at the dinner-table last evening
that I had never seen you knocked out so completely that you were
obliged to take the count. How did you do it?”
Tregarvon shook his head. “I didn’t do it; it was done for me. When I
came up this morning with Tryon and the trackmen, the teams were ready
and waiting. Somebody had rounded them up for me during the night. I
have been charging it to you.”
Carfax’s laugh was a sufficient negation of the charge. “Do I look it?”
he demanded. “If I do, I can prove an _alibi_. I spent a very pleasant
evening with the Caswells and a bunch of the senior girls, and I am
reasonably sure that I didn’t walk in my sleep afterward.”
“Did Richardia go home for the week-end, as usual?”
“She did; though she stayed and took dinner with us at Highmount. I
drove her over to Westwood House in the car, later.”
“So the car is all right again, is it?”
“Oh, yes; there wasn’t much the matter with it.”
Tryon had taken over the bossing of the gang, with Rucker for his able
second, and Tregarvon was free to stand aside and talk with Carfax
about the miracle.
“You say Richardia went home after dinner?” he queried. Then: “I can’t
help thinking that this is her doing. These men are all mountaineers.”
Carfax’s chuckle was frankly derisive. “That is mere sentiment on your
part; the wish the father to the thought. You’d rather like to feel
that you are indebted to her, wouldn’t you? But I shall have to spoil
that little day-dream. She was with the rest of us at Highmount until
after ten o’clock, and it must have been nearly eleven when I drove
her over to Westwood House--much too late to begin any campaign of
team-raising for you.”
Tregarvon took this apparent evidence of Miss Richardia’s
non-complicity at its face value, but he was still shaking his head
dubiously.
“I can’t understand it, Poictiers. These McNabbs and their cousins
might very properly have it in for me on the old score of the land
lawsuit; and, as you know, we have been suspecting them, more or less,
all along. But now they turn out to give me a lift, just as I am about
to lose my grip. What’s the answer?”
Carfax’s grin was as nearly impish as his cherubic semblance would
permit. “Call it an attack of conscience,” he suggested playfully.
“The other night we decided that it was one of the McNabbs who put the
dynamite into the old boiler. Perhaps they have all had a change of
heart, and this is their way of showing it. Will you be ready to go on
drilling this afternoon?”
“I am afraid not. We shall have the machinery unloaded in another hour
or so, and I can let these outsiders go home. But it will take the
remainder of the day to get the engine in working order, so Rucker
says.”
“How about the C. C. & I. buying offer? The option expires with to-day,
doesn’t it?”
Tregarvon turned quickly upon the questioner.
“Do you advise me to take the offer, Poictiers? You will remember that
after our talk with Hartridge a week ago you said I was not to sell.”
“I know; but only idiots and corpses are unable to change their minds.
You owe it to your people at home not to fall between two stools. After
all is said, a sure hundred thousand is better than nothing.”
“Hartridge has been working on you again,” said Tregarvon accusingly.
“And this time he has taken the other tack. Isn’t that so?”
Carfax neither admitted nor denied a later talk with the schoolmaster.
“He asserts positively that you will find the two thin veins again
here, with the rock between. He ought to know.”
Tregarvon was silenced for the moment. Then he broke out impatiently.
“I’ve got to know for myself, Poictiers. If I don’t stay with it long
enough to prove up, I shall be a quitter. I’m all the other things you
have occasionally called me, but not that!”
“No; I know you are not. I was just thinking: if you could meet Thaxter
and talk with him? Possibly you could get the option time extended for
a few days. You have a good reason for asking--apart from the real
one, which is to find out what this drill-hole is going to say to you.
You might urge that you’d like to have time to communicate with your
lawyers. Suppose we drive up to Whitlow this afternoon?”
“We’ll see,” Tregarvon conceded. “It is barely possible that we shall
get the drill in operation again to-day, and in that case I shall know
definitely what to do. Do you lunch at Highmount?”
“I do,” laughed the golden youth. “The Caswells have adopted me, and I
shall get square with them a little further along by financing the new
gymnasium. How about paying this miracle gang? Have you money enough
with you?”
“I haven’t, and I was going to ask if you would drive down to the
office and break into the safe for me.”
“I can do better than that,” said the money-finder, producing a thick
roll of bank-notes. “Money is the one thing I’m rotten with. I must go
back and report for luncheon now, but I’ll be over again later on, and
we can decide about the trip to Whitlow.”
A short time after Carfax’s departure, Tregarvon paid the mountaineers
and let them go. Singularly enough, some of the volunteers did not wish
to take money and had to be persuaded. The sums named were ridiculously
small, and in each instance Tregarvon gave more than was asked, putting
the larger wage on the ground of the value of the service to him.
In the settlement the beneficiary of the miracle made an attempt to
find out to whom the timely help was owing, but the effort spent itself
against a dead wall of mountaineer reticence--or unknowledge. The
McNabb patriarch had “heerd” of the trouble with the valley farmers
through “ol’ man Kent”; Kent had got the word from somebody else;
and so it went, with the first cause either unknown or carefully
concealed. Tregarvon did not press too curiously for the explanation.
It was too much like inquiring the age of the proverbial gift-horse.
After the noon halt, with the glade cleared of the men and teams, the
work of installation was begun. For a time it progressed handsomely.
Rucker and Tryon were both competent foremen, and by three o’clock they
had the engine and boiler shifted from the truck to its place behind
the drill derrick, with only the steam-pipe connections remaining to be
made.
Carfax had not yet returned, and Tregarvon began to wonder if he had
forgotten the proposed Whitlow expedition. By this time it seemed
altogether probable that the drilling could be resumed within an hour
or two, and the mining gambler’s passion to stay in the game until the
last card had been turned fought against cool-headed prudence for first
place in the struggle Tregarvon was making to decide as to what he
should do.
If he should leave the mountain before the drilling began, the
uncertainties would still be unresolved. On the other hand, if
Consolidated Coal meant to hold him rigidly to the terms of the option,
it became crucially necessary that he should know in advance what this
final drilling-test was going to prove. If it should prove only another
failure, the opportunity to sell must not be allowed to lapse. But
if the test should prove that he had at last discovered the workable
mother-vein.... Tregarvon gasped at the golden possibility, and the
offer of a paltry tenth of a million shrank to nothing.
He was wishing, for the hundredth time, that Carfax would come and
help him to decide, when a buggy drawn by a high-stepping black horse
appeared among the trees on the opposite side of the glade. Tregarvon
recognized the equipage at once. It was Thaxter’s, and the round-bodied
bookkeeper was alone. The victim of indecision pulled himself together
quickly. Chance, or the kindlier gods, had given him his opportunity,
and he meant to improve it.
Thaxter came across to the tool shanty with the Cheeryble smile in
commission.
“Still spending your good money on the kite-flying, are you?” he said,
with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder at the new power-plant.
“I don’t know as I can blame you so very much: I was young and
enthusiastic once, myself. You’ve worked wonders getting that thing up
the mountain in such a short time. Somebody told me you were hung up
with a strike, or something of the sort, and as it was our Saturday
half-holiday, I thought I’d drive up and condole with you.”
Tregarvon offered the bookkeeper a seat on the shanty step, saying: “We
were hung up, temporarily, but we are getting into shape now.”
“So I see,” returned the jovial little man; and for a space the talk
ran upon the difficulties of mountain installations and the drawbacks
of having to depend upon picked-up labor in a region where labor was
scarce. After a time, Thaxter broached the option matter of his own
accord.
“You got my note the other day, I presume?”
“Promptly,” Tregarvon acknowledged. “I was planning to go to Whitlow
this afternoon.”
“And you changed your mind?”
“I have changed it now, since you have been good enough to drive up.
I suppose we can talk here as well as in your office. I have been
considering the offer to purchase, and on some accounts it is rather
attractive. We all like to bet on a sure thing when we can.”
The genial go-between chuckled sagely. “And, on the other hand, we all
like to bet upon the possibilities, now and then,” he thrust in. “If
you only had any possibilities----”
Tregarvon made haste to fight away from that phase of the situation.
“We’ll disregard the possibilities, which I may believe in, and you
don’t, Mr. Thaxter. This new power outfit was bought before I had your
letter, and since we had it, we could hardly do less than to go on
and install it. Let that part of it go, and we’ll attack the business
affair. As I say, I have been considering Consolidated Coal’s offer to
buy me out. Since you are buying nothing but the equipment, the offer
is fair enough. But my father’s estate is concerned, and the option is
too short. In common prudence, I ought to consult my lawyers, and there
hasn’t been time.”
The small man shook his head regretfully.
“These matters are all decided for us by the big fellows in New York,”
he explained. “In my letter I gave you the reasons why they have put
the hurry speed on in this particular instance. It is really a very
small detail to Consolidated Coal whether it buys you out or doesn’t
buy you out--merely a pen-scratch in the day’s work. Of course, you
know that, as well as I do.”
“Yes,” Tregarvon admitted. “But in spite of that, I am going to ask you
to take it up with the powers again, suggesting that they give me a
little more time. A few days, more or less, can make no difference.”
This time the bookkeeper shook his head more firmly.
“I should be risking my poor little job, Mr. Tregarvon. I am only the
humblest of under-strappers in the big corporation, and if I should try
to pull strings for you, some nippy chief clerk in the New York offices
would tell me to pack my grip and get out.”
“Then supposing you turn the papers over to me and let me do my own
bargaining with headquarters,” Tregarvon ventured.
“It wouldn’t do a particle of good, as you’d know if you had had any
dealings with the great corporations. These things are mere matters of
routine, and you couldn’t break that routine with a sledge-hammer, Mr.
Tregarvon. I’m awfully sorry, but I am afraid the option will have to
stand as it was made--to expire at midnight to-night.”
Tregarvon had one small shot in reserve and the time had arrived when
it must be fired.
“In that view of the case, Mr. Thaxter, I am afraid I shall have to
stay out,” he said, hoping against hope that the shot might find its
target.
Once more Thaxter made the sign of regretful negation. From where
he was sitting the bookkeeper had a fair view of the installation
activities, and Tregarvon could not help wondering if their rapid
progress toward completion had anything to do with Thaxter’s
immovability. While he was waiting for the bluffing shot to penetrate,
if it would, Rucker came across from the new engine, carrying a piece
of iron pipe with a valve attached; carrying, also, a ferocious scowl
to emphasize his complaint.
“Them machinery guys over in Chattanooga is a fright!” he rapped out.
“That boiler dome is tapped for inch-and-a-quarter pipe, and so’s the
engine; and they’ve gone and sent us this inch-and-a-half throttle and
pipe connection! Wot t’ ’ell am I goin’ to do about that, I’d like to
know?”
Tregarvon grasped the new obstacle--and his own fierce
impatience--firmly by the neck and refused to make a profane show of
himself for Thaxter’s benefit.
“I suppose there is only one thing to do, Billy; to go down to the
railroad office and wire the machinery people to make good,” he
answered placably. Then to Thaxter: “We have hit so many of these
knock-outs that we are beginning to learn that we must take them as
they come.” And with that, he scribbled a telegram on a leaf of his
note-book, tore it out, and gave it to Rucker.
“There is the message,” he said. “Tell Tryon and the men that the jig
is up for to-day, and that I’ll be down a little later on to pay them
off. You’d better go down yourself and send that wire. If you can
persuade the railroad agent to hustle it, we may catch the machinery
shop before it closes.”
Thaxter sat quite silent during the dispersal of the working gang; did
not speak again until after the last of the men had disappeared in the
direction of the tramhead. Then he said: “Well, you are hung up until
next week safely enough now. Your wire won’t get an answer this late
Saturday afternoon.”
“No, I suppose not,” Tregarvon agreed. “The order will be filled
Monday, and the new throttle will get here Tuesday or Wednesday or
Thursday, at the pleasure of the railroad people. Cheerful layout,
isn’t it?”
“You certainly have bad luck enough to discourage most young men,” said
the bookkeeper, as one who would not withhold sympathy where sympathy
is due. “Do you know, it simply grinds me to be the one to add my bit
to the aggregation. I’ve half a mind to take a chance on the thunder
and lightning and ask New York for that extension of time for you.
You might reasonably hope to hear from your Philadelphia attorneys by
Monday or Tuesday, don’t you think?”
Tregarvon snatched at the concession avidly. “I’ll wire them
to-night,” he promised, as if his decision depended entirely upon the
result of the long-range consultation. But after Thaxter had driven
away, excusing his haste on the plea that no time must be lost in
reaching a telegraph office, Tregarvon wondered again; this time
half-suspiciously. Why had Thaxter changed his tune so suddenly? Was it
because he had just been given ocular proof that the test-drilling was
again postponed? The more Tregarvon thought of it, the more plausible
the assumption grew; and he was almost ready to call it a fact when, an
hour later, Carfax put in an appearance with the motor-car.
In a few words Tregarvon told the story of the afternoon’s happenings,
giving the suspicion due standing.
“It is only a guess, as usual,” he offered in conclusion. “But, in
any event, the strain is off for the present. Thaxter will get the
extension, and in the meantime we can take our chance to draw a
comfortable breath or two. After Rucker comes back, we’ll go down the
hill and get ready to enjoy an old-fashioned restful Sunday. I don’t
mind confessing that the strain has been getting next to me, Poictiers.
I’m going to push the whole wretched tangle into the background, for
one day, at least, and try to catch up with my nerve.”
“Good medicine!” laughed the one who had no nerves; and Rucker
returning a few minutes later to resume his duties as resident
watchman, they climbed into the yellow car and Tregarvon took the wheel
to drive to the valley.
XXII
Out of a Clear Sky
The event of the day for Coalville--the arrival of the afternoon
passenger-train from Chattanooga--was in the near prospect when the
yellow car rolled down the last of the grades and swept a wide circle
around the coke-ovens and past the unloading platforms.
The train-time signs were always unmistakable. A little while before
the hour, and always as if warned by some signal inaudible to alien
ears, the loungers under Tait’s porch rose, shook their legs to settle
wrinkled trousers, and filed slowly over to the railroad station.
Tregarvon’s motor-car, no longer a nine days’ wonder to the army of
leisure, was slowing to cross the rails of the Ocoee siding when the
station agent ran out of his office to wave the motorists down with a
telegram. The message was for Carfax, and the agent explained that it
had been delayed in transmission by some trouble with the wire on the
branch line.
While Carfax was opening the envelope, Tregarvon got out and went
around to see if the brakes had been running cool in the swift drop
from the summit of Pisgah. For this cause he did not hear Carfax’s, “Ye
gods and little fishes!” basing itself upon a glance at the delayed
telegram.
“Vance!” he called, turning in his place to see what had become
of Tregarvon. But Tregarvon did not hear. A canopy-topped surrey,
venerable with age and drawn by a great-boned horse of dapple gray, was
turning out of the Hesterville road to cross the tracks to the station.
Miss Richardia Birrell was holding the reins over the dapple gray, and
in the seat beside her was an old man, erect, white-haired, handsome as
an ancestral portrait.
“Jehu!” said Tregarvon under his breath. “So that is her father. If
looks count for anything, he is worthy of her; which is more than I
would say for any other Tennesseean I’ve met.” Then Carfax’s anxious
call was repeated, and this time Tregarvon answered.
“Not lost--only mislaid,” he returned. Then he saw Carfax’s face: “Why,
Poictiers!--who is dead?”
Carfax was standing up in his place, clinging to the steering-wheel
with one hand and waving the telegram like a flag of distress in the
other.
“Read that!” he commanded tragically, when the inspector of brakes came
within passing reach.
Tregarvon glanced at the message and became, in his turn, a man
stricken down without warning. The bolt was dated at Chattanooga, and
it had been filed for sending at nine in the forenoon. It was addressed
to Carfax, and it read:
“Here with papa and mamma, and the Pennsylvania battle-monument
dedicators. If I should run over to Coalville with Clotilde this
afternoon, will you and Vance put me up at the hotel and show me your
mine? But, of course, you will.
“ELIZABETH.”
“Oh, good heavens!” groaned Tregarvon, when the paralyzing effect of
the announcement gave place to the panic of dismay; “E-Elizabeth and
her maid?--coming here?”
Carfax laughed rather wildly. “Yes; coming here to stop at--at the
hotel!”
Tregarvon read the message again. “She says ‘this afternoon.’ That
means to-day--now--this minute; she’s on this train! Poictiers, if you
are any friend of mine, you’ll climb down here and find a club and put
me out of my misery!”
Carfax stopped laughing suddenly and sprang out of the car. “It’s no
joke!” he snapped. “It’s up to us, you wild ass of the desert--do you
hear? Stop your braying and listen to me: we’ve got to meet her over
there on that platform just as if we had been watching every train for
a week! There is the whistle: come along and invent your fairy-tale on
the run!”
They did not crowd too eagerly to the front when the three-car
train drew up to the platform. There were terms to be agreed upon;
things which might be said, and things which must not be said. Thus
it happened that an exceedingly handsome young woman, in a modish
travelling hat and a brown coat, and followed by a French maid bearing
impedimenta, was helped from the car-step by the brakeman.
“Charge!” Carfax commanded, in a hoarse whisper; but before they
could do it, Miss Richardia slipped through the ranks of the platform
loungers, put her arms quickly about the handsome young woman and
kissed her, with an “Oh, you dear thing!” to go with the affectionate
welcome.
Tregarvon saw, gasped, swallowed hard, and the smile of greeting which
he had called up for the emergency turned into a shocked grin.
“Get out in the road there and chunk me!” he whispered to Carfax. And
then: “Poictiers, I’m a ruined man! They were together in the Boston
music factory. Elizabeth has told me a hundred times how she chummed
with a charming little Southerner--without naming any names! And I’ve
been writing her--oh, I tell you, I’m a dead man. All you have to do
now is to get a wreath to lay on my coffin!”
“You’ll be needing the coffin if you don’t buck up and catch the step!”
hissed Carfax. Wherewith he dragged his companion masterfully into the
circle of welcomings.
The golden youth neither gave nor received the kiss of greeting; and
he pointedly looked another way when Miss Wardwell offered her cheek
for Tregarvon’s cousinly salute. Then he found himself shaking hands
with Richardia’s father; realized vaguely that the judge was taxing
him reproachfully for not having consented to occupy one of the many
bed-rooms at Westwood House the night before, instead of returning to
Highmount; realized also that Miss Wardwell was rallying Tregarvon
gayly upon his discomfiture accomplished by means of the jesting
telegram.
“Surely, it didn’t mislead you, too, did it, Poictiers?” she
questioned, turning to Tregarvon’s accomplice. “Vance is trying to
tell me that you took it harder than he did.” Then she explained to
Judge Birrell: “I sent a wire to these two from Chattanooga, you know,
asking them if they could put me and Clotilde up at the Coalville
hotel--by the way, Cousin Vance, where _is_ the hotel?” Then again to
the judge: “You see, I guessed, from what Richardia said in her last
letter, that they didn’t know I was invited to Westwood House. Fancy
it! they got the telegram only a few minutes ago!”