triumph in his voice. He crossed his legs, leaned back in his chair, and
pushed out his chest. "That's where you didn't know C. Madeira. Young
man, I've been hammering at Bruce Grierson night and day ever since I
got you interested in this scheme,"--Steering looked at Madeira with a
little quick motion of inquiry, but Madeira's arrangement of subject and
object was evidently advised; Madeira showed that it was by repeating,
"ever since _I_ got _you_ interested, I've been trying to get Grierson
interested. We couldn't move hand or foot without him, you know that.
The land is his, you know, even though you are the heir apparent, and
there was no use trying to do anything with the land without him. I had
got you into it without much trouble,"--Madeira paused just long enough
to take the cigar that Steering offered him. (Steering could always see
better through smoke.) "Yes, I had got you!" cried Madeira, biting off
the end of the cigar with a sharp snap of his teeth, "and having got
you, the next thing was to get Grierson. Well, I got him, got him since
you left New York." He chuckled his spill-over chuckle again, swung
around to his desk and took from one of its pigeon-holes an envelope
addressed to him in a deep-gouging hand. The expression of geniality
lingered about the wings of his nose and the corners of his mouth, as
though it had been moulded there by long habit, but his eyes narrowed
and the play of light from them was by now like the whisk of a sharp
knife through the air. "You know I chased that old fellow all over
Colorado with my letters about my scheme to open up the Tigmores, until
I got him mad," he said, holding the letter up to say it, as though the
contents would be illumined by his saying it. Then he handed it to
Steering, who took it from its cover, flapped it open, and read:
"DEAR CRIT:
"Use this power of attorney to open up hell if you want to, but
don't you write to me.
"Your obedient servant,
"B. GRIERSON."
It was the sort of letter to make a man laugh, and Steering laughed.
Then the phrase "open up hell" caught his eye again, like a sign of
sinister warning.
"I've never been able to understand," he began with a questioning
inflection in his voice, "what's the trouble with the scion of the house
of Grierson. Why is he so indifferent to a project for the development
of his property that may mean a million to him?"
"Aw, you know he's cracked!" replied Madeira quickly and harshly.
"No, I don't know him at all, you will remember. Never saw him, never
had a line from him."
"Well, he's cracked. He fooled around here in the Tigmores for twenty
years hunting silver, God bless you! Spent everything he had riding that
hobby, then got another hunch, for zinc this time, borrowed money, sank
it, borrowed more, sank that, then got a feeling that he was abused and
went away from here declaring that the Canaan Tigmores could slide into
the Di before he would ever raise a finger to stop them. That's why he
wouldn't write you. I've handled his affairs--what's left of them--for
years, and I've had enough trouble handling them, let me tell you." He
took the letter from Steering and replaced it in the pigeon-hole. "But
I've got him settled now," he said, "and we can go right on--oh! for the
matter of going on, things are pretty far on already." He began
rummaging through his desk in other pigeon-holes. "I'll just show you
what I've drawn up."
Steering found himself unable to keep up with Madeira. He took his cigar
from his mouth, conscious of a sensation that he was being jerked along
by the hair. He tried to get the best of the sensation by leaning back
comfortably in his chair and observing Madeira leisurely. He tried to
feel that he was following Madeira voluntarily, that he didn't have to
if he didn't want to. When he had quitted New York he had been sustained
by an idea that he had, in his correspondence, put before Madeira a plan
that had some merit and promise in it, in the way that it got around the
terms of a will, under which he was heir apparent to a vast acreage of
land whose title now rested in another man, his relative. He and
Carington had worked the thing over conscientiously, and, there in New
York, they had taken some pride in the thought that they had hacked out
a good base for the operations of a potential Steering-Grierson Mining
and Development Company. Here, in Missouri, in Madeira's office, before
the on-roll of Madeira's manner, Steering was no longer sure that he
and Carington had had anything to do with the case.
"Here's my prospectus," Madeira was saying, his voice ringing
triumphantly again, "and here are the articles. God bless you, we are
right up to the point where we can effect the organisation and issue the
first one hundred thousand shares of stock. There are some Tigmore
County men that I want you to meet, some fellows who can be used to fill
out the directorate, and, first thing you know, we'll be filing an
application for a charter, my boy."
"Just so," said Steering absently. He had the papers in his hand, and
was running them over. Both men were pulling at their cigars with strong
puffs, and the room was so vaporous with smoke that Steering was
beginning to see very clearly indeed, as he went through the papers.
They were couched in good, clear English, the succinct English that
Carington used, with admirable changes here and there, which brought out
Carington's points still more clearly. "I am familiar with these," said
Steering, looking up presently. "You seem to have let it stand about as
we drafted it in the New York office. What changes you have made I
like."
"Oh, God bless you! you can rely upon liking the things of this kind
that I do." Madeira's assumption was comprehensive and bland. There was
absolutely no sense in going against that manner of his at this stage of
developments. Steering began to ask questions and to wait.
"Now, according to what we set forth here,"--Steering tapped the
paper,--"the object and purpose of our corporation will be the mining of
zinc and lead ore in the Canaan Tigmores. We are projecting upon the
hypothesis that there is ore in the Tigmores, but we can't go too far
upon hypothesis. There in New York it seemed worth while to take up the
idea that, as there was ore all around through southwestern Missouri,
there might be ore in the Canaan Tigmores. Then, being equipped for
theorising only, Carington and I passed easily into the consideration of
the possibilities _if_ there were ore in the Canaan Tigmores. You say
that we are ready to organise, but it looks to me just now as though
before we organise it might be in order to solidify hypothesis into
fact. I don't think organisation is the next step at all; the next
step, according to my notion, is to get off paper into the ground.
Question now is, _is_ there any ore in the Canaan Tigmores?"
"Question now is," interrupted Madeira baldly, "are there enough fools
in the United States to donate us a fortune while we are finding out
whether there is or isn't ore in the Canaan Tigmores? Oh, God bless you,
my boy, you must bear in mind that gold isn't the only thing that can be
minted! You can mint a man's thirst for gold, if you are up to it. The
Southwest is zinc crazy right now. The time is as ripe as a nut----"
"Well, one minute--what's your private opinion about the chance for ore
in the Canaan Tigmores, Mr. Madeira?"
"I d'n know a thing about it. And God bless you, I don't care a thing
about it. I know that old Bruce Grierson butted his brains out on the
Tigmore rocks, on the jack-trail, for twenty years, and I know, that all
over the country,--not here in Tigmore County, but farther
southwest,--men are drilling into rock that looks rich, and cuts blind,
quick enough to ruin them; and I know that we are not going into this
thing to lose money, but to make it, coming and going; I know that we've
got to stand to win, coming and going. That's business."
Face to face with this sort of frank self-commitment to "business,"
Steering was impressed into silence, and Madeira took advantage of the
silence to push on in the big way he had that was like the
broad-paddling, tooting vehemence of a river steamer. "I'm for getting a
drill into the hills right away, just as much as ever you can be, my
boy, understand. It will look better. We'll do it. But Lord love you, we
won't hold back the organisation for that. Just leave these things to
me. I've got a programme arranged here that will suit you, I think.
First thing is to take you around and let you see that document in the
recorder's office,--I believe you said you wanted to read the Bruce
Peele will,--then you can come out and have dinner with Sally and me.
I've got a nice place three miles out, and I've got a daughter that is
not to be beat, in New York or out of it. Then this evening we'll get
together some of the fellows that I handle around here, and take up some
of the preliminary business."
Madeira had risen, preparatory to conducting Steering to the recorder's
office in accord with the first number of his programme, and Steering
got up, too. While Madeira shut up his desk, Steering threw away the
stump of his cigar and brought his flexed arms back to his shoulders
with an expansive pull on his chest that sent a big influx of air into
his lungs. After his seance with Madeira he felt as though he had been
pummelled down flat. Madeira had to open his desk again for something he
had forgotten and Steering passed on to the door, impatient for some
outside air. As he opened the door, with his eyes rather thoughtfully
fixed upon the floor, he saw, peeping around the curve where the Force's
cage elbowed its way out into the room, a foot. Being a slender foot, in
a well-fitting walking boot, it held him an unconscionably long time,
then drew him on mandatorily, up the little space between the Force's
cage and the wall, until he had rounded the curve and had come out by
the Force's window, where a bare-headed girl leaned, talking merrily,
gouging a hat-pin into the hat that she had taken off.
"Oh, it's Mr. Steering,--isn't it?" she asked at once, and put her hand
out to him. "I heard Father say that he was expecting you. And then,
too, a friend of yours, who seemed much concerned about your fate over
at Poetical, rode to our house last night and made me promise to welcome
you to Canaan. I am Sally Madeira."
"Hi, Pet, you there?" Madeira's big voice came through the door of the
private office and took possession of the minute and the
girl--"entertain the New Yorker until I get through here, will you? I
got to monkey with this blasted lock again."
"Yes, Father, I'm entertaining him," Madeira's daughter called back,
while Bruce held helplessly to the hand she had given him. A peculiar
mistiness had come over his senses. He could have sworn that through it
he saw a picture that had been with him a good deal during the past year
of his life, a picture of a woman's flower face, her fluffiness,--as of
silk and lace,--lose colour, outline, significance, like a daguerreotype
in the sunlight. A swift joy that he was in Canaan possessed him. All he
could say was, "So you are Miss Sally?" It sounded very dull, so dull
that he hastened to add, "So you know Piney?--Awfully kind of Piney to
attract your attention to me." Remembering with horror some of his
conversation with Piney about Miss Madeira, he repeated solemnly,
"Awfully kind."
"Well, I think you can give the little vagabond credit for a kind
heart." Miss Madeira laughed softly.
"I give him credit for much more than that," said Bruce. He was envying
Piney, seeing that the tramp-boy's intuitive appreciations matched his
vigorous young beauty, that he was far more poet than vagabond, that he,
Bruce, had attempted to play clownishly upon what was a worthy and
lovely idyl in the boy's heart. As though she, too, had some faint,
perturbing consciousness of Piney, the girl flushed a little, laughed a
little, and turned the subject readily.
"I know yet another friend of yours," said she.
"I am glad of that." Bruce had released her hand, forgotten the business
that had brought him to Missouri, forgotten Crittenton Madeira, and
stood with his arms folded, looking down upon her, glad that she was so
tall, glad that he was taller, glad about everything.
"Yes, another friend," she nodded with fleeting meaning, "I was at
Vassar with Elsie Gossamer."
Face to face with a woman like Sally Madeira the thought of a woman like
Miss Gossamer must necessarily stay hazy in a man's brain. As with
another Romeo, Rosaline had but laid the velvet up which came the surer
feet of Juliet. "Well," said Steering happily, "all this is going to
make us acquainted, isn't it?"
"It may, if you like." She had a splendid comradeship of manner. Her
father's energy stopped short of bluster in her. Borne up on her breezy
westernism was a fragrant reserve, a fine reticence that disengaged a
tantalising promise.
"Oh, I'll like!" cried Bruce with conviction. "Do you live in Canaan?"
"Out at Madeira Place. Father said you were to come out to dine with us
to-day. I hope you will."
"He will, he will! Trust me for that!" Madeira came through the space
between the wall and the Force's cage noisily. For the first time that
morning Steering felt no repugnance to that disposition of Madeira's to
take charge of him, and he went off with Madeira, a moment later, across
Court House Square to the recorder's office, with tread elastic and eyes
sparkling.
When the two men had left her, the girl moved over to the plate-glass
window and watched Steering, a little smile on her lips, an adequate
enjoyment of his undoing dancing mercilessly in her long amber-hued
eyes.
Steering stopped behind Madeira at the door of the recorder's office
and, looking back at the plate-glass window unexpectedly, saw the girl's
eyes fixed demurely on the floor where her boot showed under the hem of
her long straight gown. It was a very little moment that they stood
thus, he with his eyes on her, she with her eyes on her boot, but it was
an electric moment. With him it was a cycle of self-abuse for the
unadvised rot that he had talked to Piney, an era of gratitude to Piney
for being the sort who would not report any of it to Miss Madeira. (Even
so little did Steering understand that a boy like Piney would
necessarily have to tell a woman like Miss Madeira about all that he
knew; tell it exuberantly, bubblingly, without ever being quite
conscious that he was telling anything.) Steering followed Madeira
inside the recorder's office slowly, and the girl went on standing at
the plate-glass window, studying her foot.
"Yes, indeed, sir," she began calling to him soundlessly, and broke off
abruptly and stood there at the window for a time, motionless and
thoughtful. She was a tall girl, of a broad-shouldered, athletic type, a
college girl by the sign of the austere cut of her gown, but a western
girl by the sign of the flying ends of the scarf about her throat, the
unafraid looseness of her bright hair. Her face, lit by her amber eyes
and crowned by those loose masses of hair, had a rare, dusky-gold
beauty. Despite her hair she was dark-skinned, smooth and warm like
bisque, and that same gold-dusted radiance that was in her hair and that
same amber-gold light that was in her eyes glowed ineffably from beneath
her skin. She was a pulse of light, colourful and vibrant. "Yes, indeed,
sir," she resumed after a while, jabbing the hat-pin into the hat
relentlessly, "_this_ is what a Missouri girl is like!"
_Chapter Four_
FOR THE BENEFIT OF CARINGTON
My dear Carry:
I should have written you sooner, save that the developments here have
given me so little that is pleasant to write about. My experience with
Grierson's agent has been too exasperating for description, and I should
have given up and have got out at once had it not been for the Missouri
in me, and had I not got a feeling of encouragement from other
experiences.
To begin with: When I reached Missouri, I lit out for the southwestern
part of the State by train. At Springfield I fell in with some English
fellows who are over at Joplin in the interests of a Welsh company. They
had an expedition all planned to take in some of the Southwest by team
on their way back to Joplin, and as they were going to push down pretty
close to my objective point, I joined the expedition. There was a great
deal of enthusiasm among us about zinc,--jack they call it down
here,--and the talk at first was all of the stupidity of Missourians in
not getting at this part of their State, as well as the section about
Joplin, in the search for ore. I noticed that as we got into the
rough-going of the ridge roads, and the hills got steeper and the woods
denser and the rocks thicker, the opinion seemed to grow upon us that
Missourians might understand their country better than we did. We had a
driver who knew the roads well, when he could find them. We had a
geological expert who got sadder and sadder every time we spilled out of
the waggons and speared around in the rocks for a little while. And we
had a great deal of bacon. Still, when we reached Bessietown, where we
struck the steam-cars, the Joplin crowd broke for the train on a run.
From Bessie there was a straight trail over the Ridge to Canaan and I
decided to make the trip on horseback. I had got stubborn.
Well, by and by, and more and more full of bacon, I was at Canaan, and
had found Crittenton Madeira, that agent with whom we had the
correspondence. I walked in upon Madeira with a pretty little notion
that you and I had had something to do with the projection of a plan
for developing and mining the Tigmores; I could have sworn that we
originated the idea of hypothecating my heirship to the Canaan Tigmores;
I remembered that in New York the fact that I would inherit from
Grierson seemed to make my association with any enterprise for the
development of the Tigmores of vital importance. I had not forgotten
that that was our argument, and I was nursing a feeling that I was
fairly necessary to any permanency of operations in the Tigmores. I am
all straightened out on that score now, thanks to Madeira. The situation
that I find here is this: Madeira has calmly taken over our ideas, and
his plans of organisation are about complete. He is qualified to act for
Grierson absolutely. The company that he will organise is to be known as
The Canaan Mining and Development Company. He appreciates stingily that
it may be some advantage to have me associated with the company, for the
purpose of imparting a feeling of confidence to investors, but he does
not begin to attach the importance to me that you and I did. He will let
me in if I want to come in, but it is quite evident that he can get
along without me, and yet more evident that if he takes me in, I must
resign myself to his dictation,--dictating is his strong suit. To the
gentleman who expected to be the president of the Steering-Grierson
Company, that is not a pleasant programme; yet, my dear Carington, my
circumstances are so precarious that I might attempt to fill it, if I
did not see through Madeira's lack of principle, negatively
speaking,--rascality, positively speaking. Now, I may have winked one
eye occasionally during my business career, but I have never yet been
able to shut both at once. It may be taste and it may be morals.
Heretofore I have taken business too casually really to know how I am
equipped for it. I have never before really met myself, spoken to
myself, as I hustled through the few commercial hours of each day of my
life. But out here business has become a thing of wider import on the
instant, and already I am face to face with something stiff and hard on
the inside of me that promises not to be very malleable under Madeira's
hands. Madeira's hands, my dear boy, are pot-black. The plan that with
us was a fair and square enterprise has become with him a clap-trap
scheme to rob investors. I don't know how he means to do it, but he will
do it. There is a chance that the company may get good money out of the
Canaan Tigmores in zinc, but there is a much richer chance that Madeira
will get good money out of the company, zinc or no zinc.
So here I am in a pleasant situation. I can take my choice between a
block of shares in the new company, my vote to be in Madeira's control,
and a place far back, where I can watch Madeira operate my land to his
profit while I wait for old Grierson to die. I am holding off as yet,
dazzled by both prospects. Meantime the organisation of Madeira's
company is being effected among the local capitalists, the store-keepers
and the substantial farmers, and it's only a question of a few days
until the directorate shuts in my face. Madeira is to take me over to
Joplin to-morrow,--to let the showing there have its effect upon me, to
let me catch the ore fever, I suspect.
Immediately upon my arrival here, I looked into the history of my
relationship to Grierson, and also looked up the record of the Peele
will. Grierson is the grandson of one of the sisters of old Bruce
Peele, while I am the great-great-grandson of another sister. My
great-grandfather did not like pioneer life and went back East to live
and cultivate the Steering family-tree into me, as the last, topmast,
splendid blossom. The Grierson family stayed in Missouri and petered out
into this Bruce Grierson. He is of my grandfather's generation, though
he is a much younger man than a grandfather of mine could possibly be
with the record of my age and my father's age to be accounted for.
[Illustration: Two branches of the family tree.]
I got profoundly excited in studying out the two branches of the family
that are involved in the entail. Here is a map of the relationship for
your benefit.
You can understand from that, can't you, Carington?[1]
The Peele will is simple. Old Bruce Peele lived a long life as a
bachelor, with a strong aversion to matrimony. Toward the end he
suffered one of those revolutions in valuations that sometimes upturn
people of extreme prejudices. His will sets forth emphatically that he
came tardily to realise that posterity is the best thing a man can leave
behind him. He had two sisters, both of whom were well along in life,
unmarried, and possessed of their brother's disinclination to marry. To
encourage them to cross the Rubicon he made the will that entailed the
Canaan Tigmores to the heirs, first of one and then the other, under the
following provisions: the land was to go to the male heirs of his sister
Nancy Peele, from oldest son to oldest son so long as there were male
heirs, provided that in each generation the oldest male representative
of Nancy married before he reached the age of thirty-five. If, in any
generation, Nancy's representative fails to marry at thirty-five, the
Canaan Tigmores pass to the male representative of Kate Peele, upon the
death of the man who failed. Nancy Peele married a Grierson, and so
pronounced was the inherited aversion to matrimony in the house of
Grierson that compliance with the terms of the will has lasted through
two generations only. The present Bruce Grierson let the time-limit
overtake and pass him twenty years ago, but, unmarried and grouchy, he
has stood between me and the Canaan Tigmores ever since. I don't count
until he dies, and not then unless I am married before I am thirty-five.
(However, I feel that I might be more disposed to meet the will's
requirements than the Griersons have been.)
The present Grierson is utterly unapproachable. He has not lived in this
section for many years. He is particularly unapproachable on the subject
of the Canaan Tigmores because he spent a great part of his youth
prospecting through these hills, hoping and being disappointed. At last
he turned his back upon Canaan, bitterly disillusioned, and he has been
a wanderer upon the face of the earth ever since, sometimes hunting gold
in the Rockies, sometimes after silver in Mexico. Half the time even
Madeira does not know where he is.
The queerest thing about the mining business, Carington, is the
"hunches." The Englishmen told me that down at Joplin a man would rather
have a dream that he walks two miles sou'-sou-west, turns around three
times on his heels and finds ore under his left heel, than to have a
geologist assure him that his house sits on a ledge of Cherokee
limestone that ought to be all right for zinc. I have met great numbers
of miners who are hunchers. The most interesting is a man named
Bernique, an old chap of education and refinement from St. Louis. He has
a hunch about the Canaan Tigmores--at least so far in my intercourse
with him I have not found anything more tangible than a hunch. I fell in
with him just before I reached Canaan, and though he then declared his
intention of being absent for some days, he did not go away, sought me
out in Canaan next day and has spent a good deal of time with me ever
since. He is a splendid old character. Missouri is chuck full of
character, for the matter of that. Besides old Bernique, I have made
another friend, named Piney. Isn't that a pretty nice name? He is a sort
of gipsy lad who roams the woods in company with old Bernique. I have
seen him nearly every day since I have been here, because old Bernique
and I ride about the Tigmores, and Piney is sure to fall in with us
somewhere along the road. I have also met some others.