In Beacon Glory
Ivor McLagan eased his great body in the groaning wicker chair, and
his eyes snapped with something like irritation. The long, lean
cigar it was his habit to smoke he removed from between his lips,
and indicated the main thoroughfare beyond the window behind him.
“Don’t tell me you’ve a hunch for this muck-hole, Victor,” he said
sharply. “Take a pull at yourself, man. Get a cold douche, if you
can find a thing so wholesome in Beacon Glory, and wake yourself
right up. Take a look out there. Take a peek around you, and if
you aren’t as blind as a dead mule, and a sure candidate for the
foolish place, you’ll see this darnation monument to human vanity
as it is. I tell you there’s no sort of limit to human vanity when
it gets a-riot fixing cities. Beacon Glory? Did you ever call a
hogpen by any other fancy name? Sure you didn’t. You aren’t plumb
crazed yet for all you’re talking this burg as though winter had
no right hiding it up for six months of the year. Get a look at
the garbage lying around even the business avenue. Avenue! Sounds
fine, doesn’t it? And then think of the hell of flies and skitters
you got to live through next summer. Look at the shanties lying
scattered around desecrating a swell picture of Nature’s painting.
They’re enough to insult a half-breed settlement that don’t know
better. But that’s no circumstance to the folks who’re to blame
for despoiling God Almighty’s decent earth with a pestilential
collection of man’s assorted junk. The moral atmosphere of Beacon
Glory would leave the hottest oven in hell hollering. There’s more
dirt an’ dishonesty to the square inch in Beacon Glory than you’d
ever find in any mediæval Turkish penitentiary, kept especially for
housing the folks they don’t like the faces of. And they call this
quagmire of corruption ‘Beacon Glory’! They laid it out in Avenues!
They filled it up with garbage an’ human junk, an’ folk like you
sit around with your hat in one hand and the other on your left
chest and breathe the word ‘city’ in the sort of tone you’d hand
out over a deathbed. That’s you, who don’t belong to it. You, who
aren’t any sort of part of it, except you’re here to collect any
stray gold lying around, and pass it back to your home city. You, a
banker! My, it’s queer how folks can fall for their surroundings!”
Victor Burns laughed cordially at his friend’s diatribe. It amused
him thoroughly. McLagan was on his pet theme, which was an utter
contempt and detestation of the city of Beacon Glory.
“That’s all right, Ivor,” he said. “You can’t run a branch of your
bank and shout at the folks you do business with. For just as long
as it’s my job collecting the dust folks don’t know better than to
waste their lives chasing, Beacon Glory’s a deal bigger than ‘ace
high’ to me. It’s a swell city that does a mighty big credit to
the folks whose enterprise set it up--and made my living possible.
You’re collecting oil in the big valleys, which is liable to leave
you finding a queer sort of human fog lying about our principal
avenue, but I’d like to say the ‘muck-hole’ of Beacon Glory don’t
hurt your prospect a cent, and you’d miss its ‘beauties’ if the
foolish ones had never dumped it down.”
McLagan laughed good-naturedly, and returned his cigar to its
place in the corner of his capacious mouth. They were lounging in
the office of Beacon Glory’s principal hotel, this engineer of
the Mountain Oil Corporation and the chief banker of the place.
They were something more than business acquaintances. A pleasant
friendship existed between them, inspired perhaps by mutual esteem
for the other’s integrity in surroundings which each knew to be
something morally deplorable.
The hotel--the Plaza by name--was an angular three-storied,
wooden-frame building that had once been well and truly painted.
But that was in the boom days. It had a verandah fronting on the
city’s only business avenue, a long, unpaved thoroughfare that had
wrecked the running gear of more vehicles in its time than any
roadway the world had ever known. Over the verandah, on a level
with the first floor, was a wide balcony of similar proportions.
In the heyday of prosperity this had been covered by a brilliant
striped awning, but that, like the outside paint, had long since
yielded to the weather. But for all its dreary, derelict appearance
the Plaza stood out amongst the rest of the city’s buildings, with
one or two exceptions, as something rather magnificent, if only for
its proportions.
McLagan and the banker had the office with its decayed furniture
and spluttering wood stove to themselves. That is, they only
shared it with its atmosphere of general uncleanness. It was the
hour immediately before supper, a meal which Abe Cranfield’s
fly-blown menu described as “dinner,” a title his boarders refused
to accept. Soon contingents of humanity would foregather in
anticipation of a meal to sustain stomachs which had long since
learned to satisfy themselves on a diet of unsavoury monotony.
“That’s all right, Victor,” McLagan said readily. “You’re a banker,
I’m not. I’m just a hard citizen the same as the rest, and don’t
need to worry to keep my notions of Beacon Glory to myself. And if
any feller feels like disputing, why, I can argue it out any old
way he fancies. But I’m sick with this city the same as I’m sick
with most things unclean. I guess it isn’t altogether the fault
of folks so much as the times, and the thing life’s drifted into.
Does it ever worry you thinking of modern conditions and the crazy
scramble of it all? You know, I ought to’ve been born two or three
centuries back before some fool guy invented the words ‘democracy’
and ‘proletariat.’ You can’t run a thing right by committees and
assemblies set up by any popular vote. Think of me trying to
locate oil in the hills back here with a bunch of guys sitting
around telling me how I need to go about it, and where to start my
drills. No, sir. It’s the same with countries and cities and Sunday
schools. You need one head and one hand. And whether for good or
bad you’ll get some sort of order and discipline and things’ll move
quick. I’d say it’s better, seeing human nature is what it is,
to let one feller graft than a government of hundreds, and it’s
cheaper. This territory’s run by a government that only cares for
its job and legislates thousands of miles away. What’s the result?
Why--Beacon Glory, an undisciplined quagmire of human muck!”
Victor Burns lit a cigarette and grinned through the smoke. He
was a small, round, sleek little man, clean-shaven and with a
pleasant face that looked to be made for smiling. He was almost in
ridiculous contrast to the huge frame and rugged exterior of the
other.
“That’s all so, all right,” Burns nodded. “I’ve thought heaps
more than that lying awake at nights wondering how far the other
feller’s got me beat. But a grouch in this office isn’t going to
fix things right.” He glanced alertly round the room which still
remained empty. “And that’s why I’m kind of glad for that bunch of
boys who got together to try and clean things up. It don’t matter
to me who or what the folks of the Aurora Clan are, or the ultimate
purpose lying back of their game. They started out a year ago to
clean things up some and they got half the toughs of this burg
scared to foolishness. There hasn’t been a hold-up in months, and
only a week back these white-gowned purifiers burnt out stark that
drug den of Bernard’s where Charlie O’Byrne was done to death for
his wad. Say, those boys are right if they just stick right to the
game they started on. The danger is, when they got Beacon where
they need it and have cleaned up the tougher stuff of the place,
they may be looking for payment.”
Ivor shook his head.
“You never can tell, Victor,” he said seriously. “They’re a terror
to the muck of this place now, I agree. Maybe later they’ll be a
terror, anyway, that’s the way of these things. So long as they
act the way they are we’re all glad, we must be. Any feller with
a wide mind would be crazy to feel bad about them, but,” he shook
his head and flung the stump of his cigar almost viciously into the
stove, “maybe it’ll just drift into the usual. With the others out
of the way they’ll do the hold-up. Then the Government, thousands
of miles away’ll butt in. The Aurora Clan will get cleaned right
up and back we’ll fall into the muck those boys did their best to
haul us out of. No, I’ve a brief for them. I surely have. But when
they’ve done their work and start getting gay for themselves, I’ll
be as ready as any one to start cleaning them up. It’s a hell of a
place, anyway!”
McLagan remained gazing into the stove with eyes that had lost
their usual twinkle. He was a man of immense resolution and
capacity. A brilliant mining engineer, he yearned for wider scope
in the affairs of life. So far all his energies had been directed
to the earth’s remote places, seeking those treasures for his
Corporation which at any cost must be acquired for the purposes of
satisfying voracious shareholders. And Victor Burns, watching him,
understood something of the restless, dissatisfied spirit driving
him. He was a shrewd judge of men, as are most real bankers, and
this burly, plain creature, all energy and capacity, more than
usually interested him.
“How’s oil?” he asked quietly, as the other remained silent.
“Just about the same.” Ivor laughed in his short way. “Oh, it’s
there all right. It’s there plenty. The Alsek valley’s full of
it--when we can reach it. That’s one of the things makes me feel
bad for this place. When we strike it, as we’re sure to, the old
gold boom that bred this city won’t be any sort of circumstance.”
“When’ll that be?”
Burns’ eyes were shrewdly inquiring. It was his business to be
well-informed.
“Any old time, maybe a month, maybe two years.” McLagan shook his
head. “You can’t just say. But two years from now is our limit.
That’ll make a seven-year prospect.”
“I see.” Burns nodded and glanced round. The door had opened to
admit the first arrival of the boarders. “Well, we need it. There’s
some gold flowing in slowly from the country. But things are dead
flat, and I can’t even begin to guess where the folks collect
the dollars spent at the Speedway every night. Max, there, tells
me he’s looking to a big spending winter, but I don’t see how he
figures it. Howdy, Tilbury,” he nodded at the new arrival. “Where’s
your partner, Allison?”
The newcomer, slight, short and with greying hair, nodded back a
greeting.
“Oh, I guess he’s on the bum around. He’ll be along. Glad to
see you, Mr. McLagan,” he said, turning quickly and almost
deferentially to the engineer. “Opened up a gusher yet?”
McLagan’s eyes twinkled as he rose from his protesting chair.
“Guess I’ll be asked that haf a century of times before the night’s
out. No, boy,” he said. “The old earth’s holding up her secrets
and looks like holding ’em years. An’ say, you’ll be doing me real
service putting that news around when the boys come in to feed. Put
it round quick, while I go and wash. Travelling’s a mighty dirty
pastime around Beacon Glory, which is only reasonable.” And he
passed out of the office just as a distant bell rang announcing the
evening meal.
* * * * *
“Bad” Booker was sitting in his private room behind the outer
office. It was a comfortable apartment, almost sumptuous, and
seemed to be the natural setting for the personality of this real
estate man. He was a heavy creature with a flowing moustache, of
which, to judge by the inordinate care he bestowed upon it, he was
exceedingly proud. He was fat and everything about him was gross.
His general appearance and manner were of extreme good nature,
and his smile to this end was of a quality admirably calculated
to emphasise it. But Beacon Glory knew the man because, whatever
other things Beacon Glory may have lacked, it had a swift estimate
of those who were part of its public life. Those whose misfortune
made it necessary to come into business contact with Bad Booker
hated and detested the man, and more particularly his smile, for
they quickly found that the real estate mask was incapable of long
concealing the ugly features of the usurer underneath.
He was smoking a pungent Turkish cigarette liberally besprinkled
with gold lettering, and the while he was studying the extensive
deed of title relating to a corner block in the chief avenue of the
city. An air of calm satisfaction pervaded the man, for he knew
that the property under consideration was about to fall into his
hands at a price which even he regarded as advantageous. It was
what he desired.
He was a shrewd creature with a wide vision in the matter of
self-interest. Whatever others might think of Beacon Glory, he, at
least, had no doubts. He realised with absolute certainty that the
place was there to stay. It was within twenty miles of a fine, wide
harbour for shipping from the South. It was built on the shores
of a large lake whose name, since the city’s building, had become
associated with the place, and it occupied a site in the heart of
a splendid valley which ran right down to the sea and was the
highway to the interior of Alaska through the otherwise almost
impassable world of the southern hills. It was the centre of a gold
region that was as yet in its infancy. Furthermore, there was coal
and iron, and undoubtedly oil in abundance in the broken world
about it. The place was “flat” now as a reaction from its original
boom, but it was moving steadily if slowly, and the right men were
drifting in with a view to exploring its resources.
Very quietly and unostentatiously he was acquiring every property
that fell into the market so long as the price met his ideas of
investment. He was ready to mortgage for any town property. Smiling
at all times, his purse was always open for any proprietor of a
town lot who needed temporary assistance. The man was a merciless
money-spinner of the worst type. Disaster and misfortune to others
were the conditions under which his real business prospered.
He laid the documents aside and lit a fresh cigarette from the
remains of the other, which he dropped thoughtfully into the
silver-mounted ash-tray on the desk beside him. Then he sat
back in his chair, and, with his fleshy hands clasped over his
ample stomach, gave himself up to a few moments of rapid mental
calculation.
But his efforts were broken in upon. There was a light tap on the
opaque glass of the door that shut him off from the outer office,
and a clerk pushed his way in.
In an instant his smiling habit returned, but his tone of greeting
was sharp.
“What in hell is it this time, Jake?” he demanded, while his hands
fell away from his stomach.
Jake Forner was a mild-looking creature whose face gave no true
indication of the man behind it. He was broad and angular, with
shoulders that looked sizes too big for the rest of his body. He
was clean-shaven, with the wide brow and big dark eyes of the
student. But his mouth and jaws were firmly set and suggested
possibilities.
“It’s an open letter,” he said, “and it was handed in by a kid I
just didn’t seem to rec’nise. I didn’t feel like worrying you with
it till I opened it, then I guessed I’d best pass it in to you
right away.”
He came over to the desk and held out an open sheet of paper, while
his dark eyes closely scrutinised the smiling features of his
employer.
Booker took the paper without interest for all the other’s quietly
impressive manner. He glanced at the open sheet casually, and, in a
moment, his attention became profoundly absorbed.
Jake Forner was watching him. His eyes had something in them that
suggested smiling thought behind them. He was noting his employer’s
expression and saw it change rapidly from its habitual smile to
complete seriousness, and, finally, to something that seemed to
suggest anger not undriven by alarm.
It was a curious document, littered with a scrawling writing made
up of rough block capital letters and evidently indited by some
rough instrument, possibly a piece of sharpened wood. The lettering
was red and at the bottom of it, underneath the signature, was the
rough outline of a skull and crossbones, a flamboyant, melodramatic
finish that might well have inspired derision. But somehow, the
thing inspired nothing of the sort in the mind of the man to whom
it was addressed. He read it carefully:
BAD BOOKER,
You are trying to steal a city block from a helpless client. You
have a mortgage on it for two thousand dollars. You are offering
two thousand dollars more to wipe out the mortgage and possess
the lot. The lowest market value of the property is ten thousand
dollars. You will pay the difference between your mortgage and ten
thousand dollars, namely, eight thousand dollars for the site. You
have twenty-four hours in which to make a written offer of this
amount. If you fail to do this, and to complete the deal in one
week from this date, you will be hanged on the site in question.
Sgd. CHIEF LIGHT OF THE AURORA.
Booker did not look up as he finished the reading. He sat gazing at
the paper, and once or twice Jake Forner observed that he swallowed
drily. Then, as the man remained furiously silent, the clerk
cleared his throat.
“That’s about as ugly as I’ve known ’em to play,” he said in a tone
of mild sympathy.
Booker laid the paper down and raised a pair of angry eyes. The
clerk saw the storm in them and waited for it to break. It came on
the instant.
“The swines!” Booker’s body was squared in the well-padded chair.
He was sitting up and breathing heavily. “The dirty, low-down
swines!” he cried. Then a heavy fist was raised and fell with a
crash on the ill-drawn sign of the skull. “If they think they can
scare me with a bluff like that I reckon they’re crazy. It’s a
hold-up, and I’m falling for no hold-up. By God! I’ll fight them!
Eight thousand? Not on your life. I’ll press that two thousand home
right away and show ’em they can’t throw a bluff at me and get away
with it. They want a written offer. Well, I guess they’ll get it.
I’ll write it now an’ you can beat it out to the Carver woman, and
put it right into her hands. But it’s for two thousand dollars.
And I guess she’ll fall for it quick or--starve.”
He pushed the Aurora Clan’s document roughly aside and started to
write out his offer, but Jake anxiously intervened; he quickly
raised a white hand and passed it across his broad forehead.
“I wouldn’t act in a hurry,” he said quickly. “You’re bucking a
tough game with the ‘aces’ against you. The Aurora bunch have been
mighty busy in the past weeks. Is it worth it? Just look back an’
see. Bernard’s gone. Clean wiped out, an’ he’s had to beat it out
of Beacon looking like a black rooster that hasn’t moulted right.
Then there was Pat Herne who robbed Len Sitwell when he was soused
at the Speedway. They hanged him right outside the town limits.
Then don’t forget Dick Mansell, who held up the stage coming in
from Ranger. He was left pumped full of lead till you couldn’t tell
his guts from an ash riddle. I’m scared for you, boss. I surely
am. Ther’s a terror creepin’ through this place scares me plumb
to death. These guys are a citizen bunch and no sort of ordinary
toughs. They’re acting seemingly with some sort of slab-sided
purpose. They’re wise to every move going on, an’ I can’t reckon
how they get hold of things. But there it is, and when they hand
in a brief on a boy they put through the thing it says. We’re a
business enterprise, boss, and it’s our job to beat the other
feller if we can. But I sort of feel when ther’s a hanging bee at
the end of it, business goes right out. Don’t you jump, boss. Sure
I’m scared. I haven’t your nerve. But I got it right here,” and he
tapped his forehead with a forefinger, “this is no sort of bluff.
It’s dead straight. An’ I’m not yearning to see you swinging on the
wrong end of a rawhide rope.”
Jake spoke quietly but urgently, and his usually mild eyes were a
match for his manner. He was Booker’s confidential clerk, a man of
quiet efficiency and whose vision was unusually clear. So, for all
his swift wrath, Booker had let him talk. Now, however, the usurer
leapt uppermost and his reply was swift and biting.
“You want me to hand out eight thousand at the orders of this
gang?” he cried, furiously. “You want me to pass eight thousand
good dollars to Rebecca Carver when she’s ready to close for two?
You’re crazy, Jake! Crazy as a bed-bug! If that’s the sort of
business we’re to do, I guess the sooner we close our doors and
beat it the better. Besides----”
“And the hanging bee?”
The eyes of the clerk were steadily regarding his furious chief,
and somehow the quiet reminder was not without effect. Booker
shifted his gaze and it fell on the lamentable design of the skull.
“This thing sets me crazy mad,” he protested, and his tone had
somehow fallen from its original bluster.
“But you’ll be madder--for a while--at the hanging bee.”
Booker broke into a short, harsh laugh at his clerk’s persistence
in dwelling upon the thing he saw lying ahead.
“That stunt has got you scared all right, Jake,” Booker said, with
a world of contempt in the quick look he raised to the man’s pale
face. “Maybe you’re guessing, seeing you’re my clerk, they’ll need
you to be present to share in the game.”
A flush mounted to the clerk’s cheeks.
“You can guess that way if you fancy, boss,” he retorted, in
a pronounced change of tone. Then his eyes searched the fat,
unsmiling face before him. “But you best get this right now and
get it quick. I’m out for your profit as well as my own. I’m out
to see this business go right on without any interruption in the
nature of a hanging bee. If you collected that chunk of real estate
for two thousand dollars on top of the mortgage it would be a swell
profit. Some folks might call it robbery, seeing they ain’t in it.
But ten thousand dollars is bedrock just now as they say in that
brief, and, when boom time comes again, you won’t miss the six
thousand dollars’ difference they’re demanding. Well, I guess I’d
buy off a hanging bee, with me as the centrepiece, any old time for
six thousand dollars. And if you’re wise, I guess you’ll act that
way, too.”
“But you’re forgetting the bluff of it all,” Booker said, without
looking up. Then he raised his hard eyes. “Gee, haven’t you any
sort of old guts makes you want to kick? Can you stand for a thing
like that?” he cried, holding up the ill-written document. “Are we
men, or----?”
“We certainly wouldn’t be men for long if we didn’t stand for it.
You don’t seem to get a grip of this thing, boss. I’ve watched it
all the time. This Aurora bunch is as real as the old Ku-Klux Klan,
that cleaned up the south in the nigger days. You’re wondering if
we’re men. Well, I’d say right here, let’s be. Don’t write your
offer in a hurry. Think awhile. An’ when you’ve thought good I’ll
saddle my pony and ride out to Rebecca Carver with the result. It
won’t hurt us to get that block at the price they say. But it will
at any other. I’m making that tracing of the new city limits and
need to get right on with it. Maybe in a while you’ll let me know
the thing you’ve decided.”
Jake turned away and passed quickly into the outer office, closing
the partition door carefully behind him. Booker watched him go
with eyes which had doubt in them for the first time. Yielding was
utterly foreign to his nature where advantage in a transaction
lay within his grasp. But the mild-eyed clerk had driven home his
argument in a fashion all the more relentless for its sobriety. And
for once in his life Bad Booker, the usurer, was thinking more of
the vision of a hanging as conjured by his subordinate than he was
of robbing a helpless widow of six thousand dollars.