read:
For the Redwood Coal and Iron Company; Guilford Duncan, Manager and
Attorney at Law and in Fact for the Company.
That subscription was intended as an intimation.
When on the next afternoon the General Freight Agent, who had several
times met Duncan at Captain Hallam's house, read the letter, his
attention was at once attracted--precisely as Guilford Duncan had
intended that it should be, by the elaborate formality of the signature.
"So Hallam's got that smart young man of his at work, has he?" the
Freight Agent muttered. "Well, we'll see what we can do with him." But
he deliberately waited till nine o'clock that night before responding.
Then opening the telegraph key at his elbow, he called Duncan, and
Duncan, who had learned telegraphing, as he had learned many other
things, as a part of his equipment for work, promptly went to his key
and answered the call. The General Freight Agent spelled out this
message:
"Simply impossible to furnish cars you ask. Haven't got them."
Duncan responded:
"The Quentin mine gets all cars needed. We demand our share and I shall
insist upon the demand."
The reply came:
"I tell you we can't do it. I'll run down to your place to-morrow or
next day and explain."
"Don't want explanations," answered Duncan. "I want the cars."
"But we simply can't furnish them."
"But you simply must."
"What if I refuse?"
"Then I'll adopt other measures. But you won't refuse."
"Why not?"
"Because I know too much," answered Duncan. "I shall send to you by
special messenger, on the train that will pass here within an hour, a
letter making a formal tender of the freight. I make that tender by
telegraph now, and you may as well accept it in that way. Your road is
a chartered common carrier. Your lawyers will advise you that you cannot
refuse freight formally tendered to you for carriage, unless you can
show an actual inability; in that case you must show that you are doing
your best by all shippers alike; that you are treating them with an
equal hand. You perfectly well know you are not doing that. You know you
have cars in plenty. You know you are deliberately discriminating
against this mine, and in favor of its rival. I make formal demand, on
behalf of the company I represent, for all cars needed for the shipment
of this freight. If they are not forthcoming, as you say they will not
be, I give notice that I will dump the coal by the side of your loading
side-track and leave it there at your risk. Good-night." And Duncan shut
off the telegraph instrument and devoted himself to the preparation of
his letter of demand.
It should be explained that the young man was not "making a bluff"--in
the figurative phrase of that time and country--when he telegraphed in
this way to the General Freight Agent. He had his facts well in hand. As
soon as Davidson's intimation had come to him to the effect that the
railroad officials were "standing in" with the proprietors of the
Quentin mine, he had telegraphed for Joe Arnold to come to him by a
train that would arrive at midnight. Joe Arnold was a detective of rare
gifts and, incidentally, a reporter on a Chicago newspaper. Captain
Will Hallam often had occasion to employ Joe, and thus Duncan had come
into acquaintance with the young man's peculiar abilities for finding
out things. Joe Arnold had an innocent, incurious, almost stupid
countenance that suggested a chronic desire for sleep rather than any
more alert characteristic. He had a dull, uninterested way of asking
questions which suggested the impulse of a vacuous mind to "keep the
talk going," rather than any desire to secure the information asked for.
Indeed, when he asked a question and it was not promptly answered, he
always hastened to say:
"Oh, it's of no consequence, and it's none of my business."
But before he quitted the presence of the man to whom the question had
been put, Joe Arnold usually had his answer.
To this man, when he came by the midnight train, Duncan said:
"I must know who are the stockholders in the Quentin mine--both those of
record and those whose names do not appear on the stock books. If
possible I must know also what each stockholder actually paid for his
shares. You must hurry. I must have this information by noon to-morrow.
You'll need to use money perhaps. Here's stake for expenses. Come back
on the noon train to-morrow."
And Joe Arnold came back, bringing with him quite all the information
that Guilford Duncan wanted, and considerably more. For he brought with
him transcripts of all the correspondence that had passed between the
railroad people and the mine proprietors, including a dispatch which the
General Freight Agent had sent a little after midnight that morning to
Napoleon Tandy, saying:
Hallam has got that sharp young fellow Duncan at work and, as you
are aware, he knows his business and his rights. I'm afraid he'll
make a formal proffer of freight and a demand for cars. I wish you
could come here, but of course you can't so long as you wish your
stockholdings in that mine down there and your relations with us to
be kept secret. Please telegraph any instructions you may wish.
That dispatch, of course, had been sent not from the mines, but from the
General Freight Agent's office in another town. But there were always
men in those days who were deeply interested to learn what was going on
among the masters of finance, and one of these over-curious ones was a
certain telegraph operator. It was his practice to take off the wires
whatever dispatches there might be passing between Napper Tandy and the
railroad people.
Thus it came about that Joe Arnold brought to Guilford Duncan a mass of
accurate and detailed information which enabled him to take the high
hand in his telegraphic controversy with the General Freight Agent, when
that person, late in the evening, called him up on the wire in answer to
his letter, received the night before. Thus was Duncan armed,
_cap-a-pie_, for the telegraphic controversy. And thus it came about
that during the next six days there were a hundred cars shunted to
Redwood side-tracks, where they were rapidly loaded with the coal output
of the Redwood mine.
XVII
AN OLD FRIEND
From that hour forth the Redwood mine became a paying property and, as
Guilford Duncan liked to think, one which was contributing its share to
the public benefit and the welfare of the people.
But Duncan's work there had only begun. Having solved the problem of
shipping coal as fast as the miners could dig it, he gave his attention
next to the equally pressing problem of increasing output. In the
solution of that a great help unexpectedly came to him.
He was sitting late one night over the books and correspondence, when,
near midnight, a miner sought speech with him.
He bade the man enter and, without looking up from the papers he was
studying, asked him to take a seat. Still without taking his eyes from
the papers, he presently asked of the man, who had not accepted the
invitation to sit:
"Well, sir, what can I do for you?"
"Nothing," answered the man. "I came to serve you, not to ask service."
The voice seemed familiar to Duncan--almost startlingly familiar. He
instantly looked up and exclaimed:
"Why, it's Dick Temple!"
"Yes," answered the other. "You and I quarreled very bitterly once. The
quarrel was a very foolish one--on my side."
"And on mine, too!" responded Duncan, grasping his former enemy's hand.
"Let us forget it, and be friends."
"With all my heart. It was in that spirit that I came hither to-night--I
want to render you a service."
Meanwhile Duncan had almost forced the miner into a chair.
"Tell me," he said, "how is it that you----"
"That I'm a miner? You think of me as an educated engineer, eh? Well,
that's a long story and not at all so sad a one as you might suppose.
I'll tell you all about it at another time. But it can wait, while there
are some other things that should be said now--things that vitally
affect the affairs you have in charge."
"It is very good of you to come to me with suggestions, and they will be
very welcome, I assure you, and very helpful, I've no doubt. For I have
faith in your skill as an engineer."
"My skill still remains to be proved," answered the other with the
merest touch of sadness in his utterance. "But, at any rate, I've had
the very best engineering education that the schools can give. Never
mind that--and never mind me. I didn't come here to talk of myself. I
want to talk to you about this mine."
"Good. That is what I am here for. Go on."
"Well, everything here is wrong. With your readiness of perception you
must have seen that for yourself. With the general management I have
nothing to do. I'm only one of the miners. But there is a problem of
ventilation here that ought to be solved, and I have come simply to
offer a solution, in the interest of the company that pays my wages and
still more in the interest of the miners. Two of them were killed by
choke-damp a little while ago, four of them are now ill from the same
cause, while all of them are earning less than they should because the
best and most easily accessible headings are closed."
"Is there any very serious difficulty involved in the problem of
ventilating the mine?"
"None whatever--at least no engineering difficulty."
"Just what do you mean?"
"I prefer not to say."
"Perhaps I can guess," said Duncan. "I have myself discovered a very
serious difficulty in the personal equation of Mr. Davidson. He does
not want to ventilate the mine--he has his own reasons, of course. That
difficulty shall no longer stand in the way. I shall eliminate it at
once. Go on, please, and tell me of the engineering problem."
"It scarcely amounts to a problem. The mine lies only about seventy-five
feet below the surface. At its extreme extension the depth is
considerably less, because of a surface depression there. What I suggest
is this: Dig a shaft at the extreme end, thus making a second opening,
and pass air freely through the mine from the one opening to the other.
The cost will be a mere trifle."
"But will the air pass through in that way?"
"Not without help. But we can easily give it help."
"How? Go on. Explain your plan fully."
"Well, we have here three or four of those big fans that the government
had made for the purpose of ventilating the engine rooms and stoke holes
of its ironclads. They utterly failed and were sold as junk. Captain
Hallam bought a lot of them at the price of scrap iron, and sent them
out here. Davidson tried one of them and reported utter failure as a
result. The failure was natural enough, both in the case of the
ironclads and in that of the mine."
"How so?"
"Why, in both cases an attempt was made to force air down into spaces
already filled with an atmosphere denser than that above. That was
absurdly impossible, as any engineer not an idiot should have known."
"And yet you think you can use these fans successfully in ventilating
the mine?"
"I do not think--I know. If Mr. Davidson will permit me to explain----"
"Never mind Davidson. If this experiment is to be tried you shall
yourself be the man to try it. Go on, please."
"But, Duncan, I simply mustn't be known in the matter at all."
"Why not?"
"I have a wife to care for. I can't afford to be discharged. Besides,
the miners like me and they think they have grievances against Davidson.
If he were to discharge me--as he certainly would if I were to appear in
this matter--the whole force would go on strike, no matter how earnestly
I might plead with them not to do so. I don't want that to happen. It
would be an ill return to the company that gave me wages when it was a
question of wages or starvation with me. Worse still, it would mean
poverty and suffering to all the miners and all their helpless wives and
children. No, Duncan, I must not be known in this matter, or have
anything to do with the execution of the plans I suggest. I want you to
treat them as your own; suggest them to Davidson, and persuade him to
carry them out. In that way all of good and nothing of harm will be
done."
"Why, then, haven't you suggested your plans to Davidson?"
"I have, and he has scornfully rejected them. Coming from you he may
treat them with a greater respect."
"Now, before we go any further, Dick--for I like to call you by the old
nickname that alone I knew before our foolish quarrel came to separate
us--before we go any further, let me explain to you that I am absolute
master here. My word is law, to Mr. Davidson as completely and as
absolutely as to the old fellow who scrubs out this office--or doesn't
scrub it, for it's inexcusably dirty. Davidson can no more discharge you
than he can discharge me. I don't know yet what I shall do with
Davidson. But at any rate he has no longer the power to discharge you,
so you need have no fear in that direction. Go on, now, and tell me how
you purpose to ventilate the mine. I'm mightily interested."
"Thank you," said Temple. "My plan is perfectly simple. You can't force
air down into a mine with any pump that was ever invented, or any pump
that ever will be devised by human ingenuity. But you can easily and
certainly draw air out of a mine. And when there are two openings to the
mine--one at either end--if you draw air out at one end fresh air will
of itself rush in at the other end to take its place. My plan is to sink
a shaft at the farther end of the mine, and to build an air-tight box at
the surface opening, completely closing it, except for an outflow pipe.
Then I shall put one of the big ironclad fans into that box _upside
down_. When it is set spinning it will suck air out of the mine, and
fresh air will rush in at the main shaft to take the place of the air
removed."
Duncan was intensely interested. Very eagerly he bent forward as he
asked:
"You are confident of success in this?"
"More than confident. I'm sure."
"Quite sure?"
"More than quite sure; I'm absolutely certain. I've tried it."
"Tried it? How?"
"I've reconstructed the mine in miniature. I've made a little fan whose
suction capacity is in exact proportion to that of the big fan which I
propose to use in the mine. I have fully experimented, and I tell you
now, Guilford Duncan, that if you permit me to carry out the plan, I'll
create a breeze in that mine which will compel you to hold on to your
hat whenever you go into the galleries."
Duncan rarely showed excitement. When he did so, it was in ways peculiar
to himself. At this point he rose to his feet, and with an unusually
slow and careful enunciation, said:
"Go to work at this job early to-morrow morning, Dick--or this morning,
rather, for it is now one o'clock. Your wife is Mary, of course?"
There was a choking sound in Duncan's voice as he uttered the words.
"Yes, of course," answered the other, instinctively grasping Duncan's
hand and pressing it in warm sympathy.
"Will you bear her a message from me?"
"Yes, any message you are moved to send."
"Tell her that Guilford Duncan has appointed you sole engineer of these
mines, with full salary, and that if you succeed in the task you have
undertaken, a far better salary awaits you."
Temple hesitated a moment and at last resumed his seat before answering.
Then he said:
"This is very generous of you. I will go to her now, and deliver your
message. She will be very glad. She was in doubt as to how you would
receive me. But may I come back? Late as it is, I have a good deal more
to say to you--about the mine, of course. You and I used often to talk
all night, in the old days, long ago, before--well before we quarreled."
"Go!" answered Duncan with emotion. "Go! Tell Mary what I have said.
Then come back. One night's sleep, more or less, doesn't matter much to
healthy men like you and me."
XVIII
DICK TEMPLE'S PLANS
When Richard Temple returned to the office of the mining company, his
always cheerful face was rippling with a certain look of gladness that
told its own story of love and devotion. Had he not borne good tidings
to Mary? Had he not, for the first time in months, been able to stand
before her in another character than that of a working miner, and to
offer her some better promise of the future than she had known before?
Not that Mary ever thought of her position as one unworthy of her
womanhood, not that she had ever in her innermost heart allowed herself
to lament the poverty she shared with him, or to reproach him with the
obscurity into which her life with him had brought her. Richard Temple
knew perfectly that no shadow of disloyalty had ever fallen upon Mary
Temple's soul. He knew her for a wife of perfect type who, having
married him "for better or for worse," had only rejoicing in her loving
heart that she had been able to accept the "worse" when it came, to make
the "better" of it, and to help him with her devotion at a time when he
had most sorely needed help.
He knew that his Mary was not only content, but happy in the miner's hut
which had been her only home since her marriage, and which, with loving
hands, she had glorified into something better to the soul than any
palace is where love is not.
O, good women! All of you! How shall men celebrate enough your devotion,
your helpfulness, your loyalty, and your love? How shall men ever repay
the debt they owe to wifehood and motherhood? How shall civilization
itself sufficiently honor the womanhood that alone has made it possible?
But while Richard Temple knew that there was never a murmur at her lot
in Mary's heart any more than there was complaining upon her lips, he
knew also how earnestly she longed for a better place in the world for
him, how intensely ambitious she was that he should find fit opportunity
and make the most of it in the way of winning that recognition at the
hands of men which her loving soul knew to be his right and his due.
It was with gladness, therefore, that he had gone to her after midnight
with his news. It was with joy that he had wakened her out of her sleep
and told her of the good that had come to him.
She wept as she sat there on the side of her bed and listened while the
moonlight, sifting through the vines that she had trained up over the
window of the miner's hut, cast a soft fleecy veil over her person, in
which Temple thought an angel might rejoice. But her tears were not born
of sorrow. They were tears of exceeding joy, and if a drop or two
slipped in sympathy from the strong man's eyes and trickled down his
cheeks, he had no cause to be ashamed.
When he re-entered the company's office, Temple stood for a moment,
unable to control the emotion he had brought away from Mary's bedside.
When at last he regained mastery of himself, he took Duncan's hand and,
pressing it warmly, delivered Mary's message:
"Mary bids me say, God bless you, Guilford Duncan. She bids me say that
two weeks ago to-night a son was born to us; that he has been nameless
hitherto; but that to-night, before I left, she took him from his cradle
and named him Guilford Duncan Temple."
It is very hard for two American men to meet an emotional situation with
propriety. They cannot embrace each other as women, and Frenchmen, and
Germans do, and weep; a handclasp is all of demonstration that they
permit themselves. For the rest, they are under bond to propriety to
maintain as commonplace and as unruffled a front as stoicism can
command. So, after Guilford Duncan had choked out the words: "Thank you,
old fellow, and thank Mary," he turned to the table, pushed forward the
pipes and tobacco, and said:
"Let's have a smoke."
* * * * *
"Now tell me the rest of it," said Duncan, after the pipes were set
going. "About the mine, I mean."
"Well, it all seems simple. There are two hundred and seventy blind
mules in the mine----"
"Blind? What do you mean?"
"Blind; yes. Not one of them has seen the light of day since he entered
the mine, and some of them have been there for more than a dozen years.
Living always in the dark, they have lost the power to see."
"Go on. What were you going to say?"
"Why, that those mules represent an investment of twenty or twenty-five
thousand dollars, all absolutely needless. Their use involves also a
wholly unnecessary expense for stablemen, feed, and general care, while
the yearly deaths among them add heavily to the profit and loss account,
on the loss side. Not one of those mules is needed in the mine. The work
they do can be better done at one-tenth the cost--yes, it can be done at
no cost at all; while if the mules are brought out and sold, they will
bring from twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars."
"Go on. Explain. What do the mules do, and how is their work to be done
without them?"
"They do just two things; they haul coal to the bottom of the inclined
shaft, where it must be reloaded--at wholly unnecessary expense--in
order to be hauled by machinery up the incline to the surface. Half the
time they are employed in hauling water. The mine, you must understand,
declines from the foot of the shaft to the end of the main heading. The
very lowest level of all is there, where I propose to put in a
ventilating shaft, with a fan; all the water flows to that point,
flooding it. Under the antediluvian methods in use in this mine, all
this water must be pumped into leaky cars and hauled by mules to the
bottom of the the sloping shaft, whence it is drawn up by the engine,
spilling half of it before it reaches the surface. Now, when I sink that
ventilating shaft out there on the prairie, I must have an engine to
turn the fan. Very well, I've got it. Among the junk that Captain Hallam
bought when the war ended and the river navy went out of commission,
there are parts of many little steam engines. I've busied myself at
night in measuring these and fitting part of one to parts of another.
The result is that I have made an engine out of this rubbish, which will
not only drive the ventilating fan, but will also pump all the water out
of the mine."
"But will not the mules be needed for hauling coal to the bottom of the
shaft?"
"Not at all, if you are willing to spend a little money in an
improvement--say a fourth or a third of what the mules will bring in the
market--or considerably less than it costs to feed and curry them for a
year."
"What is the nature of the improvement?"
"Why, simply an extension to every part of the mine of the cable system
by which the engine now hauls the coal and water up the slope."
"But where are we to get power?"
"By using what we already have. Our great engine is a double one. We are
using only one of its cylinders. We have only to connect the other in
order to have all the power we need."
"But what about steam?"
"That's easy to make. We have several unused boilers, and as we burn
nothing under our boilers but culm--the finely slaked coal for which
there isn't a market, even at a tenth of a cent a ton--it will cost us
absolutely not one cent to make all the steam we need."
"You seem to have thought it all out."
"I have done more than that. I have _worked_ it all out. I must work all
day in a heading, of course, in order to make bread and butter. I have
worked at night over these problems."
"And you are sure you've got the right answers?"
"Greatly more than sure--absolutely certain!"
"Very well. You are now chief engineer, or anything else you please, at
a chief engineer's salary. You are to go to work at once digging the new
ventilating and pumping shaft. You are to proceed at once to install
your other improvements, and, when you report to me that there is no
longer any use for the mules in the mine, I'll bring them all out and
sell them. I'll look to the payments incidental to your work. My mission
here is to make this mine a paying property. To that end, you are to
bear in mind, I have an entirely free hand, and all the money needed is
at my command. Now let that finish business for to-night. I want you to
spend the rest of the dark hours in telling me your story and Mary's. I
want to know all that has happened to both of you since--well, since she
told me she loved you and not--me. You don't mind sitting up for the
rest of the night?"
"Certainly not. I've sat up with you on far smaller provocation."
"But how about Mary?"
"She will sleep, or, if she doesn't--and I suppose she won't--she is
entirely happy. She will be glad to have me spend the night with you."
"Very well, then. Tell me the story of what has happened to you and Mary
since the day when we quarreled like a pair of idiots, and--like men of
sense--decided not to fight. I want to hear it all."
"I'll tell it all," said the other. And he did.
XIX
DICK TEMPLE'S STORY