his way, following him up the bridle-path into the long shadow of the
Canaan Tigmores. On the top of the first bluff they tied their horses
again and took a foot trail where the bluff, having rolled back a mile
from the river, tumbled precipitately into a deep yawning gully. From
the timbered eminence the prospect below was as dank and gloomy as a
paleolithic fern forest. Sodden, mossy, and almost impenetrable, the
hill split and dropped into Choke Gulch. From far down within the black
and tangled fastnesses came the solemn ripple of slow-running water. A
veil of weird loneliness hung over the cavernous place and the air that
shivered up to the three was cool and laden with damp, sweet odours. Old
Bernique began to descend. As they proceeded, the old man's sense of
something stupendous impressed itself more and more upon his companions.
Farther on down, the solemn quiet of the Gulch became unbearable, but no
one spoke. Little sunlight penetrated the dense curtain of brown and
red leaves overhead, and what little flickered through had an electric
brightness against the dead brown of the leaf-carpeted ground and the
grey and hoary tree-trunks. Every bird that came to the tree-tops sang
once, but it was only when he discovered his mistake, lifted his wings
and careened away gladly into the upper light.
"Whayee!" Piney found a shivering voice at last, "ef I never git rich
till I come down into an ugly hole fer riches I'll be mighty pore all my
days." Bruce smiled absently at the boy's susceptibility, but threw a
reassuring arm about his shoulder. He smiled again when presently Piney
drew away. That was Piney's habit, as affectionate in instinct as a
kitten, and as timid of manifestation as a wild doe.
Old Bernique called his little party to a halt at the bottommost dip of
the Gulch, where a deep, clear and rock-bound spring wound murmurously
over a rocky bed. Two red spots came out in the old man's cheeks, his
eyes began fairly to flame again, his breath came in wheezy gasps, and
his old face pinched up sharp and sensitive as a pointer's nose. He
pointed to the debris of shattered rock about the spring. "The wataire
fell over a cap-rock here," he said brusquely, the nervous constriction
of his throat making it hard for him to say anything. "The strata
underneath were soft and had been worn away by the wataire. I put a
duck-nest of dynamite in there this morning,--and--see--there!"
Anybody could see; the zinc and lead ores were disseminated, rich and
warm, in the loose rocks of the out-cropping. "It's a vein thirty inches
thick and it runs,--it runs str-r-aight through the Canaan
Tigmores,--sometimes sinking many feet from the surface,--but always
there,--I am vair' sure of that,--str-r-aight through the Canaan
Tigmores----" The old man's breath began to jerk with a sick, sobbing
sound.
"Well,"--Steering was not so unaccustomed a miner by now but what the
sight there in the Gulch had its effect upon him,--"Well," he said
gingerly, "if you are right, Uncle Bernique, if the face doesn't cut
blind, why, Mr. Crittenton Madeira and old Grierson have a good thing,
haven't they?"
"Urg-h-h!" Old Bernique made a gnashing sound and leaned his head
listeningly. The thud of the stream-drill reached them faintly from its
place afar in the Canaan Tigmores. "They come fas'!" he said mournfully.
"Wisht I wuz aouter this," interrupted Piney, shivering.
"I have been track' thees mother lode,"--began old Bernique again, his
feverish gaze again seeking out Bruce,--"I think,"--he stopped and fell
to musing,--"What you gawn do, Mistaire Steering," he queried suddenly,
with his weary old head twisted to one side, "what you gawn do about
thees?"
"Lord, Uncle Bernique, I can't do anything. You might do something for
yourself. You might sell your rights of discovery, might not you?"
"Non! Non! There is othaire thing,--there is a most good
possibilitee,--thees mother lode, Mistaire Steering, it come out,--I
think it come out somewhere, eh?--Mistaire Steering, have you got leetle
mawney?"
"That's exactly how much, Uncle Bernique, a little."
"Mistaire Steering, eef you got leetle mawney to buy leetle land, I
think I know good land to buy."
"I have told you all along to consider my money your money, Uncle
Bernique."
"We must be vair' quiet about all thees, Mistaire Steering,--Piney, you
compr-r-ehend that we tr-r-us' you, as I have always tr-r-us' you,
absolutement! We must be vair' quiet. Thees leetle piece land run down
close to the rivaire, below Poetical, at those Sowfoot Crossing, and eet
ees not vair' good land for the farming----"
Thud! Thud! The old man caught his temples with both hands. "I am 'most
craze' by that steam-drill," he whispered. "Eet come so close to our
secret. Let us get away. That sound cr-r-aze me. Found! Found! Vair'
large lode, Mistaire Steering.--Sacre! The sound of that steam-drill is
to me the most worse thing. That lode run through and come out by the
rivaire, eef I am not mistake', Mistaire Steering. I go to buy that land
to-night. You go back with Piney, please sair. Eef you come with me, you
excite the question and the price. To me it will be sold without
question. I am eccentrique, they say. You return to Canaan and have
your mawney ready for me, Mistaire Steering. That bat Grierson, Mistaire
Steering! When I think----"
Old Bernique was still throwing out riches of castigation at Grierson,
Madeira, himself, fate, still half incoherent, when the three friends at
last got back to their horses, and separated. Down at the foot of the
bluff again, Steering, a little sore-headed with the ache of
anticipation, hope, doubt, sat his horse in Piney's company and watched
the old man ride off up the river unattended. Steering felt excited and
exalted himself, but the old Frenchman was really, as he said, "craze'."
Piney was the only sensible one left. Piney was not at all enthused and
stayed very quiet until he parted with Bruce some distance out from
Canaan. Bruce went on back to town to wait for Old Bernique at the
hotel.
Piney took the path that led up to the bluff behind Madeira Place. As he
came through the Madeira grounds Crittenton Madeira came out of the
house and stood on the back porch, regarding him quizzically. Piney had
a peculiar, poorly hidden dislike of Madeira that, taken with the boy's
charm of personality, more or less amused the Canaan capitalist.
"Where have you been, young man?"
"In the woods."
"Look here, learning anything when you are out with that man Steering?"
"Yep."
"What, for instance?"
"Not to talk."
Madeira laughed carelessly. "You go and get Miss Madeira to sing, young
Impudence," he said. "I'd just as soon hear the tenor, too. I am going
to rest,"--he sighed deeply,--"I'm going to try to rest out here in the
garden. I'd like some music."
Madeira went to the garden and stretched out on a bench, the smile that
he had given Piney staying on his face, crinkling in automatically with
the grievous strain that was about his eyes and mouth in these days.
After a little he closed his eyes softly, enjoyingly. From the library
came the carolling sweetness of Piney's tenor. And by and by, following
it, soaring up with it, the glorious fulness of Salome Madeira's velvety
soprano.
Bruce, far down the river road, heard, too.
_Chapter Twelve_
THE COLOSSUS OF CANAAN
After Crittenton Madeira had organised the Canaan Mining and Development
Company the _Canaan Call_ sent him in one leaping, exultant paragraph
out of his position as "our esteemed fellow townsman" into a position of
far more classic significance by naming him the "Colossus of Canaan."
Madeira was a man of lightning-like execution of a plan, once he had got
hold of his plan, and Bruce Steering, sharpened by circumstances into a
consideration of every chance about him and even beyond him, had brought
Madeira the plan from far away New York. Throwing his immense energies
toward the prospect of ore in the Canaan Tigmores, bringing forward
every dollar of his fortunes,--as usual not so large as they were
accredited with being,--to finance his new projects, Madeira had
accomplished wonders within an incredibly short time. There were those,
unacquainted with the contents of an envelope in Madeira's vest pocket,
who marvelled that a sharp man should let his projects be entangled with
entailed property, but for the most part Canaanites were too accustomed
to follow where Madeira led to marvel, or to ask foolish questions. Even
for those so inclined Madeira had good answers. On the one side, he
could show, from the progress already made, that there must be such a
great quantity of ore in the Canaan Tigmores that it would be possible
to take fortunes out of them during old Grierson's possession of the
hills, even though the old man lived but a few years. On the other side
he could show that it was not in the Canaan Tigmores alone that he was
pushing the search for ore, but in the outlying land that had passed
into his control as well. It was true that he had put a steam-drill into
the Canaan Tigmores, but it was equally true that he had put
steam-drills up the Di at two or three points far beyond the Tigmores.
He made it as plain as day that the operations of the Canaan Mining and
Development Company would extend all over that section, and that the
Company's chances could not be taken away even by the death of
Grierson. And he made it equally and cheerfully plain that Grierson
would not die.
Out on the streets of Canaan, among the puppets who danced at his touch
upon the strings, Madeira never faltered in his exposition of the
Company's affairs and enterprises, and in the Company's offices behind
the Bank of Canaan, his direction was steady, resourceful and
comforting. He could build up potential profits for the investing
Canaanites and build down potential failure in a manner so satisfying
that the Canaanites gladly gave him their money and fondly hung upon
him.
It was Mr. Quin Beasley, that conclusive reasoner, who said, "Simlike ef
you talk to Crit fer abaout th'ee bats of your eye he cand show you that
ef innybody,--don't keer who,--would putt, wall say,--wall, don't keer
haow much you say,--as much as tin thousand,--in the Comp'ny an' leave
it slumber fer say--wall, don't keer haow long you say,--as much as fo',
five months,--it 'ud be wuth,--be wuth,--wall, I don't keer to
over-fetch, but I reckin f'm whut Crit says, th'aint no tellin' whut it
_would_ be wuth."
And it was the _Canaan Call_ that endorsed Mr. Madeira in that emphatic
editorial, which is herewith reproduced, just as it was doled out
relentlessly to the few Canaan sulkers, under the caption of
"IT WILL BE DRAMATIC, BY GOSH!
"When Crit Madeira, the Colossus of Canaan, accomplishes what he
surely shall accomplish, when the roar of mill machinery begins to
reverberate through the hills of the future Joplin, arousing the
vast energies and resources of We-all, Pewee and Big Wheat, let us
be generous. If there was a sponge, kicker, shirk or drone, let us
cover his selfishness with the mantle of charity. Leave him under
the beating light of progress to wrestle with whatever remnant of a
conscience he may happen to have. If he can stand by and coolly
watch us work our gizzards out for the common good, and then reach
out to share the fruits of our sacrifices, energies and enterprise,
without a qualm, we can remember that there are many things in this
world worth far more than money, one of which is that sense of
having done our neighbour's share as well as our own. It will be
enough for us to watch when, bewildered by the lusty life and
growth and the maze of new-made streets of the future city, the
laggard stands debating with that other self, that genius that has
kept him what he is. Fancy his striking attitude, thumbs in
arm-pits and eyes rolling up to some tall spire, crying out to his
other self, 'Thou canst not say I helped do this! Shake not thy
towseled locks at me!'--By gosh, it will be dramatic!"[2]
Within a month after Bruce Steering had entered the portals of Missouri,
Madeira had put his first steam-drill into the hills. Within two more
weeks he had put in another. It took him less time to do the things that
other men think about and talk about and put off than any man Steering
had ever known. One day, not so very long after old Bernique's find in
Choke Gulch, word had gone over Canaan like an eagle's scream that ore
had been struck in the Canaan Tigmores. Old Bernique had wrung his
hands, and Steering had gone grimly back to a little up-river shack, at
Redbud, below Sowfoot Crossing, where he was spending a great deal of
his time these later days.
As the winter broke, Madeira's ability to seize the pivotal point on
which to turn theory into practice wrought so surely and so swiftly as
to be inexplicable to anyone unaware of the fever that drove him on. His
first face of ore had cut blind, but he only put two more drills to
work, and in the early spring one of the drills struck ore again, a
small face, but ore. They had not found the big lode yet, but every
indication was that much to the good. The _Canaan Call_ became so
jubilant over the second find that even the sulkers lost sight of the
fact that the find was on entailed property. Confidence in Madeira went
to high pitch, a supreme tension that a touch might snap.
All Canaan was waking up in these days, all Tigmore County was nervous.
Town and county were in a pleased, tortured, ante-boom consciousness
that, first thing you know, there would be a new Canaan. Some new
streets were laid out; a number of people bought chenille portieres; and
though Crittenton Madeira quietly drew his money out of the Grange, for
other and weightier uses, the Grange secured new capital elsewhere and
flourished mightily. For farmers from We-all Prairie and Pewee and Big
Wheat Valley, cotton raisers from the "Upper Bottom" and corn and cattle
men from the "Lower Bottom" came into Canaan "to trade," and filled the
aisles of the Grange, gossiping, getting information about the ore
developments, then crossing swiftly and determinedly to Madeira's bank
to leave their money with the president of the Canaan Mining and
Development Company.
Out at his house, in his office, in the garden, on horseback, on foot,
Madeira kept his daughter Sally near him. He watched his daughter almost
constantly, just for the satisfaction of seeing her. As the girl went
about her household duties, or walked in the garden with her long,
supple stride, or rode the high-tempered horses from the stable, or
drove with him, the fine glow on her face, her magnificent health and
honesty and strength radiating from her, she was, for Madeira, a
continual justification.
"Catch me taking anything away from a girl like that to give it to a
damn Yankee like Steering," he would tell himself over and over. "Won't
she do the most good with it? It'll be hers soon. Won't she do the most
good? Answer me that, now."
So much for the outside where Madeira lived in the world of realities
and met the various demands of each day's relations capably and coolly.
Inside his private office behind the bank, at his desk, he lived in
another world, a world where shadow became substance, possibility became
actuality and fear made facts out of fancy.
At night, after Canaan had put its lights out and had lapsed into the
shroud-like stillness of a country town's sleep, Madeira was there, with
his ghost, in his office,--figuring, figuring. On the roll-top of his
desk he kept a letter spread out in front of him. It always happened
that he took that letter out of his vest pocket for the purpose of
destroying it, and it always happened that when he got up, far into the
night, he picked the letter up and replaced it in his pocket. If the
words of the letter had been seared across eternity with the red-hot
iron of fate they could not have been more indestructible.
Besides the letter, Madeira always had on the desk maps, geological
surveys, time estimates. Von Moltke never figured half so carefully nor
on half so many shaky hypotheses as did Madeira in his office during
these nights. He came to know, through awful, blood-sweating hours, that
with so much blasting, so much pick-and-shovel work, allowing for so
many back-sets from water and blind rock, so many shifts of men could
progress to certain points, in so many days. He sometimes realised that
all this was unnecessary; that it was aging him and crazing him; that he
could put his work through on the Tigmores long before word of old
Grierson's death would, by any unfortuitous accident, leak into Canaan,
if it ever got there; that he would never have to resort to the subways
that he was figuring on to steal the ore out of the Canaan Tigmores;
that all this ceaseless, merciless calculation was but the reaction of a
conscience, stalking, gaunt and lunatic, through the charnel-house of
its own experience. But for all that he had to go on crossing bridges
that he was never to reach, covering black tracks that he was never to
make. Often at his desk there, his mind became strangely obtunded and he
babbled vapidly; his big face pinched up till it seemed lean and grey,
and he pitched forward, face down, upon the desk.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] The author acknowledges a conspicuous indebtedness to a Southwestern
weekly for this editorial.
_Chapter Thirteen_
MISS SALLY MADEIRA'S SWEETHEART
Miss Sally Madeira, trying to make her way down Main Street one Saturday
afternoon, in the early spring of the year 1900, had to go very slowly
because of the country people in front of the Grange. Occasionally some
of the farm-wives called to her shily. The road was noisy and dusty with
the passing of mule-teams, buggies, buckboards, riders on horseback. Out
of the continuous rattle a child's voice piped shrilly. The owner of the
voice was a little girl who wore a hat with a bunch of cherries on it.
She stood up in the bed of a farm-waggon and screamed at Miss Madeira,
who at once made her way to the edge of the side-walk of broken bricks
and waited for the little girl's waggon to come in to the curb. The
waggon was full of children, but Miss Madeira was somehow able to call
them all by name.
"He gimme fifty cents!" was what the cherry-hat little girl said
immediately, with some genius for steering conversation toward the
things that interested her.
"You rich thing!" cried Miss Madeira, and then foolishly, and
unnecessarily, inquired, "who is he?"
"Yo' sweetheart."
Miss Madeira lowered her voice in such a suggestive manner that when the
little girl spoke again her voice was lowered, too.
"When did you see him?" asked Miss Madeira.
"See him ev' day. I cand go daown to Sowfoot by myse'f. He's sick." Miss
Madeira looked quickly at some of the older members of the family in the
waggon. They were a hill farm family from Sowfoot Crossing
neighbourhood. "Yep, he's been sick,--with the malary simlike," was what
the older members had to say upon the subject. Miss Madeira quickly left
the subject and talked about the corn crop and the price of chickens for
a little while, then presently went on down Main Street toward her
father's bank, where her black horses were hitched.
Far down Main Street, in front of one of the frame houses that edged
the street on either side, some children were enjoying a bonfire of dead
leaves, front doors were opening and women were coming out to watch the
fire; and, by their interest-lit eyes and by what they called to each
other across the slumberous afternoon air, were showing that they were
skilled in getting diversion out of smaller things than bonfires. It was
the neighbourhood of Canaan's biggest and best. The doors that had
opened had shown glimpses of the finest three-ply carpets in all Tigmore
County, and though the women who had come out on the porches had
grammatical peculiarities of their own, they were distinctly
unapologetic and assured. You could easily imagine them laughing, with a
consciousness of advantage, at the other grades of grammar and carpets
in Canaan.
"Smells real good, don't it?" called one who was comfortable and portly,
and who had her apron wrapped about her hands, "always makes me feel
that spring's came when the rakin' and burnin' begin."
"Mrs. Pringle told me that they had some big fires aout toward the Ridge
las' night. Burned the rakin' aout to Madeira Place. I missed that.
D'you see it? I mighta seen it just as well's not from my back porch,
tew!" shrilled another woman, in whose words a well-defined jealousy was
patent, the jealousy of the person whose life is too small for her to
afford to miss any of it.
"Yes, you oughta saw it," chimed in another. "Cert'n'y was no
little-small flame. I could see Sally movin' araoun' in the flare. Had
that tramp-boy taggin' abaout with her. I declare, if he di'n' look like
a gipsy!"
The neighbourly throng was at this moment augmented by the appearance of
two ladies who fluttered out on the porch of a rose-trellised cottage,
like small, proud pouter pigeons. They were the Misses Marion,
twin-sisters, quite inseparable, and, because their minds had run in
exactly the same groove for all of their lives and because they were of
about equal mental readiness, apt to get the same impression at exactly
the same time, and apt to attempt expression in exactly the same breath.
Occasionally this was trying, both to the Misses Marion and to their
hearers, and it was particularly trying when the two now called
simultaneously from the rose-embowered porch to the women in the
neighbouring yards:
"Have you heard----"
"Have you heard----"
Miss Shelley Marion turned to Miss Blair Marion with delicate courtesy:
"Continue, sister," she said, just as Miss Blair said, "Sister,
continue."
"Have we heard what, for goodness' sake?" snapped one of the would-be
hearers, breaking in rawly upon the soft waves of the hand and the
imploring taps with which each of the two gentlewomen was endeavouring
to make way for the other.
"I continued last time, sister."
"I think not, Blair; I think I did. Proceed."
"Have you heard the news?" Miss Blair having yielded with great
self-rebuke to Miss Shelley, the question gurgled liquidly from yard to
yard, like a small twisting brook.
The two women whose yards adjoined the Misses Marions' yard came down to
the separating fences and leaned their arms on the paling rails
waitingly; the third woman moved up to the corner of her yard which was
nearest the Misses Marion. She was the woman who had deplored missing
the hill fires, and there was a resolute look on her face.
"Talk loud, Miss Blair," she said commandingly. But before Miss Blair
could get her mouth open to talk at all there was the sound of horses'
hoofs from up toward Court House Square, and a light vehicle, drawn by
two powerful Kentucky blacks, rolled into view.
"Lawk, it's Sally Madeira!" cried Miss Blair impulsively, and then
looked immediately convicted, for Miss Shelley had got only as far as
"Lawk!"
When the slender equipage, with its spirited, long-tailed horses, and
its high springy seat, with the erect young figure on it, had gone by,
the women looked at each other, with pursed lips and knowing eyes.
"There, aint I been sayin'," cried the fat one, "she's a-lookin'
peaked!"
Then somebody noticed that the Misses Marion were in the throes of
another spasm of courtesy, and, reminded by that of the critical
juncture where Miss Blair had left off a few minutes before, one of the
women called to her:
"What news was that, Miss Blair? Say, you! Miss Blair! What news?"
"Why," said Miss Blair, having finally effected some sort of
affectionate compromise with Miss Shelley, "why, these news,--they say
that that N'York man _is_ Sally Madeira's sweetheart, tew!"
"Lan' alive! I've heard that m'self!" said Mrs. Beasley, the wife of the
Grange storekeeper. She had heard no such thing, but Mrs. Beasley was an
idealist of no mean order, and she at once got a feeling about the
matter that was little short of knowledge, and went on with headlong
impetus, "I've heard that m'self. Yes, he's her sweetheart."
"The men up to the Grange said not, at first."
"Men never know."
Meantime, out beyond the town, Miss Madeira had circled around to the
river road, and, coming up behind Madeira Place, passed it at a smart
clip.
Farther along, the river road left the river to bend through Poetical on
its little plateau, and the gait at which Miss Madeira went through
Poetical was disturbing to the geese and hogs there. East of Poetical
she got back to the river. It was very still along the Di. She could
hear her own heart beating. Once it occurred to her that life would have
been much simpler if she had gone to Europe the past fall, as Miss Elsie
Gossamer had insisted upon her doing. Once she murmured, "It would be
all right if he would only tell me,--I can't do anything until he tells
me--what _can_ a woman do until he tells her!" On ahead of her she could
see a little shack perched up the bluff, and in front of the shack, on a
log that served for a bench, a man sat, making something out of
something. His hands were busy.