For a moment the two men stood in silence, listening to the sullen beat
of surf beyond the black edge of forest. Then Philip led the way back
into the cabin.
Gregson followed. In the light of the big oil-lamp which hung suspended
from the ceiling he noticed something in Whittemore's face he had not
observed before, a tenseness about the muscles of his mouth, a
restlessness in his eyes, rigidity of jaw, an air of suppressed emotion
which puzzled him. He was keenly observant of details, and knew that
these things had been missing a short time before. The pleasure of
their meeting that afternoon, after a separation of nearly two years,
had dispelled for a time the trouble which he now saw revealing itself
in his companion's face and attitude, and the lightness of Whittemore's
manner in beginning his explanation for inducing him to come into the
north had helped to complete the mask. There occurred to him, for an
instant, a picture which he had once drawn of Whittemore as he had
known him in certain stirring times still fresh in the memory of
each--a picture of the old, cool, irresistible Whittemore, smiling in
the face of danger, laughing outright at perplexities, always ready to
fight with a good-natured word on his lips. He had drawn that picture
for Burke's, and had called it "The Fighter." Burke himself had
criticized it because of the smile. But Gregson knew his man. It was
Whittemore.
There was a change now. He had grown older, surprisingly older. There
were deeper lines about his eyes. His face was thinner. He saw, now,
that Philip's lightness had been but a passing flash of his old
buoyancy, that the old life and sparkle had gone from him. Two years,
he judged, had woven things into Philip's life which he could not
understand, and he wondered if this was why in all that time he had
received no word from his old college chum.
They had seated themselves at opposite sides of the table, and from an
inside pocket Philip produced a small bundle of papers. From these he
drew forth a map, which he smoothed out under his hands.
"Yes, there are possibilities--and more, Greggy," he said. "I didn't
ask you up here to help me fight air and moonshine. And I've promised
you a fight. Have you ever seen a rat in a trap with a blood-thirsty
terrier guarding the little door that is about to be opened? Thrilling
sport for the prisoner, isn't it? But when the rat happens to be
human--"
"I thought it was a fish," protested Gregson, mildly. "Pretty soon
you'll be having it a girl in a trap--or at the end of a fish-line--"
"And if I should?" interrupted Philip, looking steadily at him. "What
if I should say there is a girl--a woman--in this trap--not only one,
but a score, a hundred of them? What then, Greggy?"
"I'd say there was going to be a glorious scrap."
"And so there is, the biggest and most unusual scrap of its kind you
ever heard of, Greggy. It's going to be a queer kind of fight--and
queer fighting. And it's possible--very probable--that you and I will
get lost in the shuffle somewhere. We're two, no more. And we're going
up against forces which would make a dozen South American revolutions
look like thirty cents. More than that, it's likely we'll be in the
wrong locality when certain people rise in a wrath which a Helen of
Troy aroused in another people some centuries ago. See here--"
He turned the map to Gregson, pointing with his finger.
"See that red line? That's the new railroad to Hudson's Bay. It is well
above Le Pas now, and its builders plan to complete it by next spring.
It is the most wonderful piece of railroad building on the American
continent, Greggy--wonderful because it has been neglected so long.
Something like a hundred million people have been asleep to its
enormous value, and they're just waking up now. That road, cutting
across four hundred miles of wilderness, is opening up a country half
as big as the United States, in which more mineral wealth will be dug
during the next fifty years than will ever be taken from Yukon or
Alaska. It is shortening the route from Montreal, Duluth, Chicago, and
the Middle West to Liverpool and other European ports by a thousand
miles. It means the making of a navigable sea out of Hudson's Bay,
cities on its shores, and great steel-foundries close to the Arctic
Circle--where there is coal and iron enough to supply the world for
hundreds of years. That's only a small part of what this road means,
Greggy. Two years ago--you remember I asked you to join me in the
adventure--I came up seeking opportunity. I didn't dream then--"
Whittemore paused, and a flash of his old smile passed over his face.
"I didn't dream that fate had decreed me to stir up what I'm going to
tell you about, Greggy. I followed the line of the proposed railroad,
looking for chances. All Canada was asleep, or too much interested in
its west, and gave me no competition. I was alone west of the surveyed
line; east of it steel-corporation men had optioned mountains of iron
and another interest had a grip on coal-fields. Six months I spent
among the Indians, French, and half-breeds. I lived with them, trapped
and hunted with them, and picked up a little Cree and French. The life
suited me. I became a northerner in heart and soul, if not quite yet in
full experience. Clubs and balls and cities grew to be only memories.
You know how I have always hated that hothouse sort of existence, and
you know that same world of clubs and balls and cities has gripped at
my throat, downing me again and again, as though it returned my
sentiment with interest. Up here I learned to hate it more than ever. I
was completely happy. And then--"
He had refolded the map, and drew another from the bundle of papers. It
was drawn in pencil.
"And then, Greggy," he went on, smoothing out this map where the other
had been, "I struck my chance. It fairly clubbed me into recognizing
it. It came in the middle of the night, and I sat up with a camp-fire
laughing at me through the flap in my tent, stunned by the knockout it
had given me. It seemed, at first, as though a gold-mine had walked up
and laid itself down at my feet, and I wondered how there could be so
many silly fools in this world of ours. Take a look at that map,
Greggy. What do you see?"
Gregson had listened like one under a spell. It was one of his careless
boasts that situations could not faze him, that he was immune to
outward betrayals of sensation. This seeming indifference--his
light-toned attitude in the face of most serious affairs would have
made a failure of him in many things. But his tense interest did not
hide itself now. A cigarette remained unlighted between his fingers.
His eyes never took themselves for an instant from his companion's
face. Something that Whittemore had not yet said thrilled him. He
looked at the map.
"There's not much to see," he said, "but lakes and rivers."
"You're right," exclaimed Philip, jumping suddenly from his chair and
beginning to walk back and forth across the cabin. "Lakes and
rivers--hundreds of them--thousands of them! Greggy, there are more
than three thousand lakes between here and civilization and within
forty miles of the new railroad. And nine out of ten of those lakes are
so full of fish that the bears along 'em smell fishy. Whitefish,
Gregson--whitefish and trout. There is a fresh-water area represented
on that map three times as large as the whole of the five Great Lakes,
and yet the Canadians and the government have never wakened up to what
it means. There's a fish supply in this northland large enough to feed
the world, and that little rim of lakes that I've mapped out along the
edge of the coming railroad represents a money value of millions. That
was the idea that came to me in the middle of the night, and then I
thought--if I could get a corner on a few of these lakes, secure
fishing privileges before the road came--"
"You'd be a millionaire," said Gregson.
"Not only that," replied Philip, pausing for a moment in his restless
pacing. "I didn't think of money, at first; at least, it was a
secondary consideration after that night beside the camp-fire. I saw
how this big vacant north could be made to strike a mighty blow at
those interests which make a profession of cornering meatstuffs on the
other side, how it could be made to fight the fight of the people by
sending down an unlimited supply of fish that could be sold at a profit
in New York, Boston, or Chicago for a half of what the trust demands.
My scheme wasn't aroused entirely by philanthropy, mind you. I saw in
it a chance to get back at the very people who brought about my
father's ruin, and who kept pounding him after he was in a corner until
he broke down and died. They killed him. They robbed me a few years
later. They made me hate what I was once, a moving, joyous part
of--life down there. I went from the north, first to Ottawa, then to
Toronto and Winnipeg. After that I went to Brokaw, my father's old
partner, with the scheme. I've told you of Brokaw--one of the deepest,
shrewdest old fighters in the Middle West. It was only a year after my
father's death that he was on his feet again, as strong as ever. Brokaw
drew in two or three others as strong as himself, and we went after the
privileges. It was a fight from the beginning. Hardly were our plans
made public before we were met by powerful opposition. A combination of
Canadian capital quickly organized and petitioned for the same
privileges. Old Brokaw knew what it meant. It was the hand of the
trust--disguised under a veneer of Canadian promoters. They called us
'aliens'--American 'money-grabbers' robbing Canadians of what justly
belonged to them. They aroused two-thirds of the press against us, and
yet--"
The lines in Whittemore's face softened. He chuckled as he pulled out
his pipe and began filling it.
"They had to go some to beat the old man, Greggy. I don't know just how
Brokaw pulled the thing off, but I do know that when we won out three
members of parliament and half a dozen other politicians were honorary
members of our organization, and that it cost Brokaw a hundred thousand
dollars! Our opponents had raised such a howl, calling upon the
patriotism of the country and pointing out that the people of the north
would resent this invasion of foreigners, that we succeeded in getting
only a provisional license, subject to withdrawal by the government at
any time conditions seemed to warrant it. I saw in this no blow to my
scheme, for I was certain that we could carry the thing along on such a
square basis that within a year the whole country would be in sympathy
with us. I expressed my views with enthusiasm at our final meeting,
when the seven of us met to complete our plans. Brokaw and the other
five were to direct matters in the south; I was to have full command of
affairs in the north. A month later I was at work. Over here"--he
leaned over Gregson's shoulder and placed a forefinger on the map--"I
established our headquarters, with MacDougall, a Scotch engineer, to
help me. Within six months we had a hundred and fifty men at Blind
Indian Lake, fifty canoemen bringing in supplies, and another gang
putting in stations over a stretch of more than a hundred miles of lake
country. Everything was working smoothly, better than I had expected.
At Blind Indian Lake we had a shipyard, two warehouses, ice-houses, a
company store, and a population of three hundred, and had nearly
completed a ten-mile roadbed for narrow-gauge steel, which would
connect us with the main line when it came up to us. I was completely
lost in my work. At times I almost forgot Brokaw and the others. I was
particularly careful of the funds sent up to me, and had accomplished
my work at a cost of a little under a hundred thousand. At the end of
the six months, when I was about to make a visit into the south, one of
our warehouses and ten thousand dollars' worth of supplies went up in
smoke. It was our first misfortune, and it was a big one. It was about
the first matter that I brought up after I had shaken hands with
Brokaw."
Philip's face was set and white as he stood in the middle of the room
looking at Gregson.
"And what do you think was his reply, Greggy? He looked at me for a
moment, a peculiar twitching around the corners of his mouth, and then
said, 'Don't allow a trivial matter like that to worry you, Philip.
Why--we've already cleaned up a million on this little fish deal!'"
Gregson sat up with a jerk.
"A million! Great Scott--"
"Yes, a million, Greggy," said Philip, softly, with his old fighting
smile. "There was a hundred thousand dollars to my credit in a First
National Bank. Pleasant surprise, eh?"
Gregson had dropped his cigarette. His slim hands gripped the edges of
the table. He made no reply as he waited for Whittemore to continue.