lately acquired habit.
"You are very ready with your answers, Mr. Ford; very ready, indeed. Let
us see if you can continue as you have begun."
It was Miss Alicia who resented this final speech of the president's
when the buckboards were once more in motion, following the unrailed
grade around the swelling shoulders of the huge hills.
"I think that last remark of Uncle Sidney's was rather uncalled for,"
she said, after Ford had driven in grim silence at the tail of the
procession for a full mile.
"It is one of a good many uncalled for things he has been saying to me
since the day before yesterday," was Ford's rejoinder.
"Yet you can still assure me that you are not vindictive."
"I am not--at the mere actors in the play. But I confess to an unholy
desire to get back at the prompter--the stage manager of the little
comedy. I am only waiting for your decision."
"Please!" she said; and he saw that the blue eyes were growing wistful
again.
"I'm done," he said quickly. "I shan't put it up to you any more. I'll
do what I think I ought to do, on my own responsibility."
But now, woman-like, she crossed quickly to the other side.
"No; you mustn't deprive me of my chance," she protested soberly. "After
a little while I shall tell you what I think--what I think you ought to
do. Only you must give me time."
His smile came from the depths of a lover's heart.
"You shall have all the time there is--and then some, if I can compass
it. Now let's talk about something else. I've been boring you with this
despicable business affair ever since you gave me leave on that
foot-race down Plug Mountain Tuesday afternoon."
"What shall it be?" she inquired gaily. And then: "Oh, I know. One day
last summer--just as we were leaving Chicago in the Nadia--you had begun
to tell me about a certain young woman who had money, and who was--who
was--"
"--who was without her peer in all this world," he finished for her.
"Yes; I remember."
"Do you still remember her, as you do the conversation?" she went on
teasingly.
"I have never lost a day since I first met her."
"Good Sir Galahad!" she mocked. "And is she still worth all those
sacrifices you said you would be willing to make for her?"
"All, and several more."
Silence for a little time, while the hoof-beats of a horse fox-trotting
behind them drew nearer. It was the sinister-faced Mexican who ambled
into view, and when he overtook the rearmost of the buckboards he was a
long time in passing.
"That dreadful man!" murmured Alicia; and she did not go back to the
suspended subject until he had trotted on past the caravan. Then she
said slowly, taking her companion's complete understanding for granted:
"It must be delicious to be away out over one's depth, like that!"
"It is," said Ford solemnly. "It's like--well, I've never been sick a
day in my life since I can remember, but I should think it might be like
a--a sort of beneficent fever, you know. Haven't you ever had a touch of
it?"
"Possibly--without recognizing it. Can you describe the symptoms?"
"Accurately. One day I awoke suddenly to the realization that there was
one woman, in the world: before that, you know, there had always been a
good many, but never just one. Then I began to discover that this one
woman was the embodiment of an ideal--my ideal. She said and did and
looked all the things I'd been missing in the others. I wanted to drop
everything and run after her."
"How absolutely idyllic!" she murmured. "And then?"
"Then I had to come down to earth with a dull, stunning swat, of course.
There were a lot of commonplace, material things waiting to be done, and
it was up to me to do them. Before I saw her, I used to think that
nothing could divide time with a man's work: that there wouldn't be any
time to divide. Afterward, I found out my mistake. Sleeping or waking,
every day and all day, she was there: and the work went on just the
same, or rather a whole lot better."
The long drive was in its final third, and the wagon track, which had
transferred itself to the top of the level railroad grade, admitted
speed. By degrees the caravan became elongated, with the president still
in the lead, the man on horseback indifferently ahead or behind, and the
other two vehicles wide apart and well to the rear. Their isolation was
complete when she said:
"Do you want me to say that I don't recognize any of the symptoms, Mr.
Ford?"
"Do I--No! Yes!--that is, I--Heavens! that is a terrible way to put it!
Of course I hope--I hope you are in love--with the right person. If
you're not, I--"
She was weeping silently; weeping because it would have been a sin to
laugh.
"You--called it a comedy a little while--ago," she faltered. "In another
minute it will be a tragedy. Don't you think we are getting too far
behind the others?"
He whipped up obediently, but the horses were in no hurry. At the
rounding of the next shouldering hill the railroad grade entered a high,
broad valley, the swelling hills on either side dotted with the dumps
and tunnel-openings of the Copah gold-diggers. Ford had not been through
the upper part of the district since the previous summer of
pathfindings, and at that time it was like a dozen other outlying and
hardly accessible fields, scantily manned and languishing under the dry
rot of isolation. But now--
He was looking curiously across at the opposing hillsides. Black dots,
dozens of them, were moving from ledge to ledge, pausing here and there
to ply pick and shovel. Now and then from some one of the dry arroyos
came the echoes of a surface shot; dynamite cartridges thrust into the
earth to clear away the drift to bed-rock. Ford called his companion's
attention to the activities.
"See what it does to a mining country when a railroad comes within
shouting distance," he said. "The last time I was over here, this valley
was like a graveyard. Now you'd think the entire population of Copah
was up here prospecting for gold."
"Is that what they are doing?" she asked. Then suddenly: "Where is your
mine?--the mine with my name?"
He laughed.
"I told you the simple truth. I don't know where it is; though I suppose
it is up this way somewhere. Yes, I remember, Grigsby said it was on Cow
Mountain."
The hill on their side of the valley threw out a long, low spur and the
railroad-grade driving track swept in a long curve around the spur and
crossed over to the foot of a slope dotted with the digging manikins.
"By Jove!" said Ford, still wondering. "There are twice as many
prospectors out here as there were inhabitants in Copah the last time I
was over. The camp ought to vote bonds and give the railroad company a
bonus."
Farther along, the grade hugged the hillside, skirting the acclivity
where the shaft-houses of some of the older mines of the district were
perched on little hillocks formed by their own dumps, within easy
tramming distance of the railroad. Opposite and directly below the
nearest of these shaft-houses the two leading buckboards had stopped;
and the president was once more standing up and beckoning vigorously to
the laggards in the single-seated vehicle.
Ford spoke to his horses and grimaced as one who swallows bitter herbs.
"I wonder what I've been doing now--or leaving undone?" he queried.
He was not kept long in suspense. When they drove up, the president was
still standing, balancing himself with a hand on the driver's seat in
front. His thin face was working nervously and the aggressive chin
whiskers moved up and down like an accusing finger.
"Dear me!" said Alicia, under her breath; "Uncle Sidney is really angry,
this time! What could have hap--" She glanced up at the mine buildings
perched above the roadway and smothered a little cry. Ford's eyes
followed hers. All across the slab-built shaft-house and the lean-to ore
sheds was stretched a huge canvas sign. And in letters of bright blue,
freshly painted and two feet high, ran the boastful legend:
THE LITTLE ALICIA MINE
THE ONLY PAYING PRODUCES IN THE DISTRICT
Stuart Ford & John Grigsby, Props.
The white-haired old man standing in the leading buckboard was trembling
with righteous indignation. Pointing a shaking finger at the
incriminating sign, he broke out in a storm of accusation.
"So, Mr. Ford! This is why you changed the route of the extension and
added twelve miles to its length!" he raved. "This explains why you
suddenly found the shorter route impracticable! Answer me sir: when did
you become interested in this mine?"
There was a little stir of consternation among the listeners; and it did
not help matters that the man on horseback ambled up at the moment and
drew rein behind the doctor's vehicle. Ford's hands were gripping the
reins until the stiff leathers were crumpled into strings; but it was
Alicia's touch on his arm that enabled him to reply coldly:
"It was something over two months ago, I believe. I can give you the
exact date when we reach Copah, though you will permit me to say that it
is none of your business."
Mr. Colbrith exploded like a hastily fired bomb.
"I propose to make it some of my business! Was it before or after your
purchase here that you decided upon the change of route? Answer me that,
Mr. Ford!"
Ford wheeled his bronchos and closed the shouting gap.
"Sit down, Mr. Colbrith," he said half-menacingly. "If it is your
purpose to humiliate me before your guests, I shall drive on and leave
you."
"You don't answer my question; you can not answer it! You instructed
your assistant to change the line of this railroad _after_ you had
bought this mine!"
[Illustration: "Answer me, sir! When did you become interested in this
mine?"]
"And if I did?"
"You did. And by so doing, Mr. Ford, you diverted the company's money to
your own personal ends as wrongfully as if you had put your hands into
the treasurer's strong-box. In other words, you became what you have
accused others of being--a common grafter!"
Ford's face was very white, and his lips were drawn into thin lines when
he opened them to reply. But the restraining hand was on his arm again,
and he obeyed it.
"I don't care to talk with you, about this matter or any other, here and
now. Later on, perhaps, when you can speak without being abusive, I
shall take the liberty of telling you what I think of you." And at that,
he gave his horses the rein and drove on, swiftly, abruptly, leaving the
president and his guests to follow as they would.
For some minutes neither of the two in the flying buckboard could find
words wherewith to bridge the miserable chasm so suddenly opened between
them. Miss Alicia's eyes were tear-brightened and unfathomable; Ford's
were hard, and there was a steely light in them. It was Alicia who spoke
first.
"I know it is not true, of course--what Uncle Sidney accused you of,"
she offered. "But tell me how it happened?"
"I don't know--unless the devil planned it," said Ford bitterly. "I
bought the mine one day last summer when I was in Copah, without
premeditation, without seeing it--without knowing where it was situated,
just as I have told you. Some little time afterward, Frisbie came to me
with the plan for the change of route. I had considered it before, but
had made no estimates. Frisbie had made the estimates, and we decided
upon it at once. I haven't been over here since: it wasn't necessary,
and I had other things to do."
"Did Mr. Frisbie know about your purchase of the mine?"
"No. I don't think he knows of it yet. To tell the truth, I was a little
ashamed: it was a touch of the mining fever that everybody gets now and
then in a mining country. Dick would have guyed me."
"But Mr. Frisbie must have been over the line a great many times: how
could he miss seeing that enormous sign?" she persisted.
Ford shook his head.
"I venture to say that the paint isn't yet dry on that sign. It was put
there for a purpose, and your uncle was told to look for it. Grigsby is
just the sort of fool to jump at the chance to advertise the mine, and
somebody suggested it and gave him the tip that the president of the
railroad was coming in this way. Mr. North is a very careful man. He
doesn't neglect any of the little details."
The high valley was falling away into a broken gulch, and the
railway-grade driving-path clung closer to the hillsides. At the next
turn the town of Copah came into view, and the road became a shelf on
the slope two hundred feet above the main street and paralleling it.
Alicia was looking down upon the town when she said:
"What shall you do?"
Ford's laugh was not mirthful.
"I have already done it. I shall perhaps be permitted to see you all
safely back to the Nadia, and over the rough track to Saint's Rest. More
than that I fancy Mr. Colbrith will not allow--and possibly not that
much."
Miss Adair was still looking down upon the town; and now Ford looked.
Instantly he saw that something unusual was going on. Notwithstanding
the number of men afield on the hills, the main street of the camp was
restlessly alive. Horsemen were galloping back and forth; in front of
the outfitting stores freighters were hastily loading their pack
animals; at every gathering place there were knots of excited men
talking and gesticulating.
Ford was puzzled. At another time he would quickly have put the obvious
two and two together to make the equally obvious four. But now he merely
said: "That's curious; mighty curious. Where do you suppose all those
people came from?"
Alicia's rejoinder was not an answer to the half-mechanical query.
"Mr. Ford, a little while ago I told you I must have time to consider:
I--I have considered. You must fight for your life and your good name.
You must make Uncle Sidney see things as they are--that they are not as
he thinks they are."
"I can't," he said stubbornly. "Your condition reverses your decision.
If I am to fight with any hope of winning, after what has transpired
to-day, Mr. Colbrith will have to be eliminated."
He had pulled the broncos down to a walk. There was a soft thudding of
hoofs on the yielding earth of the grade behind, but neither of them
heard.
"You are disappointing me," she protested, and now the hesitation was
all gone. "A few minutes ago, before this miserable thing happened, you
were telling me of your ideal ... a woman may have an ideal, too, Mr.
Ford."
"Yes?" he said eagerly.
"My ideal is the knight without fear and without reproach--and also
without limitations. He will never say, 'I can not.' He will say, 'I
will,' and not for my sake, but because his own sense of justice and
mercy and loving-kindness will go hand in hand with his ambition."
"One word," he broke in passionately; and now the soft thudding of hoofs
had drawn so near that the presence of the overtaking horseman might
have been felt. "My little allegory didn't deceive you; you are the one
woman, Alicia, dear. I didn't mean to tell you yet, though I think you
have known it all along: I had an idea that I wanted to do something
worthy--something big enough to be worth while--before I spoke. But you
have given me leave; don't say you haven't given me leave!"
"You have taken it," she said softly, adding: "And that is what a woman
likes, I think. But you mustn't spoil my ideal, Stuart--indeed, you
mustn't. You are young, strong, invincible, as my knight should be. But
when you strike you must also spare. You say there is no way save the
one you have indicated; you must find a way."
He smiled ruefully.
"You give the cup of water only to take it away again. I'd rather build
ten railroads than to attempt to smash North and his confederates
through your uncle. You see, I'm frightfully handicapped right at the
start--with this mine business hanging over me. But if you say it has to
be done, it shall be. I'll win Mr. Colbrith over, in spite of all that
has happened; and he shall fire North and the MacMorroghs first and
prosecute them afterward. I've said it."
It was just here that the broncos shied--inward, toward the hill. Ford
gathered the slack reins, and Miss Adair looked up and gave a little
shriek. Noiselessly, and so close upon the buckboard that he might have
touched either of its occupants with his rawhide quirt, rode the
Mexican. When they discovered him he was leaning forward, his
half-closed eyes mere slits with pin-points of black fire to mark them,
and his repulsive face a stolid mask. Ford's hand went instinctively to
the whip: it was the only available weapon. But the Mexican merely
touched his flapping sombrero and rode on at the shuffling fox-trot.
"That man, again!" shivered Alicia, when the portent of evil had passed
out of sight around the next curve in the grade.
But Ford's concern was deeper than her passing thrill of repulsion.
"Did you notice his horse's hoofs as he went by?" he asked soberly.
"No," she said.
"I did. He dismounted somewhere behind us and covered them with
sacking."
"What for?" she asked, shivering again with the nameless dread.
"You recall what I was saying when the broncos shied: his object was to
creep up behind us and listen. He has done it more than once since we
left the end-of-track, and this time--"
"Yes?"
"This time he heard what he wanted to hear."
Beyond the curve which had hidden the Mexican, the wagon-road left the
grade, descending abruptly upon the town. Ford looked back from the turn
and saw that the other two vehicles were not yet in sight.
"Shall we wait for your aunt and the others?" he asked.
Her smile was a sufficient reward for the bit of tactful forethought.
"I'm sure we have left the conventions far enough behind not to be
unduly terrified by them. I am not afraid to go in unchaperoned.
Besides, I heard Uncle Sidney telling Doctor Van Bruce that our rooms at
the hotel had been engaged for us."
Ford drove carefully down the steep side street which was the approach
to the hotel. An excited throng blocked the sidewalk, and the lobby
seemed to be a miniature stock exchange. Single-eyed, Ford fought a
passage through the crowd with Alicia on his arm, heeding nothing until
he had seen her safely above stairs and in the sitting-room of the
president's reservation, with a cheerful fire in the big sheet-iron
stove for her comforting. Then he went down and elbowed his way through
the clamorous lobby to the clerk's desk.
"Suppose you take a minute or two off and tell me what this town has
gone crazy about, Hildreth," he said, with a backward nod toward the
lobby pandemonium.
"Why, Great Scott! Mr. Ford--have you got this far into it without
finding out?" was the astounded rejoinder. "It's a gold strike on Cow
Mountain--the biggest since Cripple Creek! We've doubled our population
since seven o'clock this morning; and by this time to-morrow.... Say,
Mr. Ford; for heaven's sake, get your railroad in here! We'll all go
hungry within another twenty-four hours--can't get supplies for love or
money!"
Ford turned away and looked out upon the stock-selling pandemonium with
unseeing eyes. The chance--the heaven-sent hour that strikes only once
in a life-time for the builders of empire--had come: and he was only
waiting for the arrival of the president to find himself rudely thrust
aside from the helm of events.
XXIII
THE DEADLOCK
"No, Mr. Ford; there is no explanation that will explain away the
incriminating fact. This is a matter which involves the good name of the
Pacific Southwestern company, through its officials, and I must insist
upon your resignation."
The battle was on, with the two combatants facing each other in the
privacy of the president's room in the Copah hotel. Since Alicia had
made him exchange the sword of extermination for the olive branch, Ford
was fighting on the defensive, striving good-naturedly and persistently
to keep his official head on his shoulders.
"I've admitted that it looks pretty bad, Mr. Colbrith; but you will
concede the one chance in a hundred that no wrong was intended. I merely
did, on the ground, what thousands of investors in mining chances do the
world over--bought an interest in a mine without knowing or caring
greatly into what particular mountain the mine tunnel was driven."
Mr. Colbrith frowned. He was of that elder generation of masters which
looked with cold disapproval upon any side ventures on the part of the
subordinate.
"The company has paid you liberally for your time and your undivided
attention, Mr. Ford. No man can serve two masters. Your appointment as
assistant to the president did not contemplate your engaging in other
business."
Ford carefully suppressed the smile which the bit of industrial
martinetry provoked.
"As to that," he said placably, "I can assure you that the gold-digging
has been purely an investment on my part."
"But an investment which you should not have made," insisted the
president judicially. "If it had not tempted you to the breach of trust,
it was still inexpedient--most undeniably inexpedient. An official high
in the counsels of a great corporation should be like Cæsar's
wife--above suspicion."
This time Ford's smile could not be wholly repressed. "I grant you it
was foolhardy, in the economic point of view," he confessed. "I took a
long chance of going ten thousand dollars to the bad. But mine-buying is
a disease--as contagious as the measles. Everybody in a mining country
takes a flyer, at least once. The experienced ones will tell you that
nobody is immune. Take your own case, now: if you don't keep a pretty
tight hold on your check-book, Mr. Colbrith, Cow Mountain will--"
The president frowned again; more portentously, this time.
"This levity is most reprehensible, Mr. Ford," he said stiffly. "I trust
I know my duty as the head of a great railway company too well to be
carried away on every baseless wave of excitement that fires the
imagination of the mining-camp I chance to be visiting." Mr. Colbrith
was not above mixing metaphor when the provocation was sufficiently
great.
"Baseless?" echoed Ford. "Surely you don't doubt ... Why, Mr. Colbrith,
this strike is the biggest thing that has happened in the mining world
since the discovery of the wedge-veins in Cripple Creek!"
The president shrugged his thin shoulders as one whose mission in life
is to be sturdily conservative after all the remainder of mankind has
struck hands with frenzied optimism.
"Nonsense!" he rasped contemptuously. "What happens? Two men come to
town with certain rich specimens which they claim to have taken out of
their prospect hole on Cow Mountain. That was at seven o'clock last
night, less than twenty-four hours ago, and some two or three thousand
lunatics have already rushed here in the belief--founded upon a mere
boast, it may be--that a great gold reef underlies Cow Mountain. By this
time to-morrow--"
Ford took him up promptly. "Yes; and by this time to-morrow the Denver
Mining Exchange will be howling itself hoarse over Copah mining shares,
like those curb-stone fellows down-stairs; the hunt will be up, and
every feeder the Pacific Southwestern system has will be sending its
quota of gold-seekers to the new field. That isn't what you were going
to say, I know; but it is what is going to happen. Mr. Colbrith, it's
the chance of a century for the Pacific Southwestern company, and you
are deliberately trying to fire the one man who can make the most of
it."
The president's lack of sense of humor made it hard for him at times. He
was sitting very erect in the straight-backed hotel chair when he said:
"Mr. Ford, there are occasions when your conceit is insufferable. Do you
imagine for a moment that you are the only engineer in the United States
who can build railroads, Sir?"
"Oh, no."
"Then perhaps you will be good enough to explain your meaning?"
"It was a poor attempt at a jest," said the young man, rather lamely.
"Yet it had the truth behind it, in a way. I predict that this is the
beginning of one of the biggest mining rushes the world ever saw. We are
within one hundred and forty miles of Copah with a practicable railroad;
we are within twelve miles with a track which must be made practicable
while the band plays. If you discharge your entire engineering corps at
this crisis--"
"I beg your pardon," interrupted the president crustily. "I have not
asked your force to resign."