One afternoon Trabue, the unadvertised dictator of American Oil and
Gas, sat with several of his close subordinates in a conference that
had to do with Martin Harrison, the man he assumed to ignore.
"Unless some unforeseen thing sends oil soaring," ventured Oliver
Morris, "this fellow Spurrier is having his trouble for his pains. My
idea is that he's seeking to tease us into counter activity--and trail
after us in the profits."
"And if something _should_ send oil soaring," crisply countered
Cosgrove, "he'd have us distanced with a runaway start."
"Who is this man Spurrier?" demanded Trabue himself. "What does our
research department report?"
"He's a protege of Martin Harrison's."
Trabue appeared to find the words illuminating, and a shrewd irony
glinted in his brief smile.
"If he's Harrison's man, he's out to knife me--and he has resources at
his back. Tell me more about him."
Cosgrove took from his portfolio a neatly typed memorandum, and read
from it aloud:
Former army officer who gained the sobriquet of "Plunger"
Spurrier: Court-martialed and convicted upon charge of murder,
and pardoned through efforts of Senator Beverly. Associated with
various enterprises as a general investigator and initiative
expert. Rumor has it that Harrison is grooming him as his own
successor.
"If his reputation is that of a plunger," argued Morris, "my guess is
that he's playing a long-shot bet for a killing."
"And you guess wrong. If Harrison has picked this fellow to wear his
own mantle, the man is more than a gambling tout. It is only lunacy to
underestimate him or dismiss him with contempt."
Cosgrove nodded his concurrence and amplified it. "In my judgment he's
something of a genius with a chrome-nickeled nerve, but he's adroit as
well as bold. He has operated only through others and has kept himself
inconspicuous. Except for an accident, we should have had no warning
of his activities."
"If he were to get bitten by a rattlesnake," growled Morris savagely,
"it would be a lucky thing for us. Of course, we might beguile him
into our own camp."
Trabue shook his head in a decisive negation.
"That would only notify him that we recognize his effort and fear it.
If the game's big enough, we don't want him." He paused, then added
with a grim facetiousness: "As for your other suggestion, we have no
rattlesnakes in our equipment."
The dynamic-minded master of strategy sat balancing a pen-holder on
his extended forefinger for a few moments, then he inquired as if in
afterthought: "By the way, I feel curious as to how the tip came to us
that this conspiracy was on foot. You say that except for an accident
we should not have known it."
Cosgrove smiled. "It came to this office through the regular channels
of our local agencies--and I didn't inquire searchingly into the
details. I gathered, though, that the trail was picked up by a sort of
information tout--a fellow who was hurt and compromised a damage suit
against us. It seems that he is supposed to be blind--but he could
nonetheless see well enough to read some memoranda that chanced to
come his way." The gentleman cleared his throat almost apologetically
as he added: "As I remarked I didn't learn the particulars. I merely
took the information for what it might be worth, and set our men to
watching."
"I see," Trabue made dry acknowledgment. "And what is being done
toward watching him?"
"I understand we have a man there who is assuming an enmity toward us
and who is ostensibly helping Spurrier to build up political
influence."
"I see," said Trabue once more, with even a shade more dryness in his
voice.
That conversation had taken place quite a long while before the
present, but it set into quiet motion the wheels of a large and
powerful organization.
The knowledge that John Spurrier was objectionable to A. O. and G. had
filtered through to more local, yet confidential, officials, and
through them to "men in the field," and it is characteristic of such
delegations of authority, that each department suits the case referred
to it to the practical workings of its own environment.
Gentlemen of high business standing in lower Broadway could permit
themselves no violence of language, beyond the intimation that this
upstart was a nuisance. Translated into the more candid brutality of
camp-following parasites in the wildness of the hills, that mild
declaration became: "The man needs killin'. Let's git him!"
Now, Spurrier found that the visit to Louisville and Lexington, which
had promised to be the matter of weeks, must stretch itself into
months, and that until the convening and adjournment of the assembly
itself, his presence would be as requisite as that of a ship's officer
on the bridge. In one respect he was gratified. American Oil and Gas
seemed serenely unsuspicious of any danger. Vigilance seemed lapsed.
Those men whose duty it was to watch the corporation's interest and to
hold in line the needed lawmakers, appeared to regard legislative
protection as a thing bought and paid for and safe from trespass.
And Spurrier, knowing better, was secretly triumphant, but without
Glory he was far from happy.
Had he known what influences were at work with cancerlike corrosions
upon her loyalty, what food was nourishing her anxiety, he would have
stolen the time to go to her. Hers was an anxiety which she did not
acknowledge. Even to herself she denied its existence and against any
outside suggestion of inner hurt pride would have risen in valiant
resentment.
But in her heart it talked on in whispers that she could not hush. At
night she would waken suddenly, wide-eyed with apprehension and seek
to reassure herself by the emphasis of her avowals: "He's _not_
ashamed of me. He's not leaving me because of that! He's a big man
with big business, and some day he'll take me with him, everywhere!"
When old Cappeze, a man not given to unreflecting or careless speech,
flatly questioned: "Glory--why doesn't John ever take you with him?"
she flinched and fell into exculpations that limped.
The old man was quick to note the pained rawness of the nerve he had
touched, and he began talking of something else, but when he was alone
once more his old eyes took on that fanatic absorption that came of
his deep love for his daughter, and he shook his head dubiously over
her future.
One day a neighborhood woman came by Glory's house and found her
standing at the door. Tassie Plumford neither claimed nor was credited
with powers of magic, but she, too, might have been called a "witch
woman." In curdled disposition and shrewishness of tongue, she merited
the title.
"Waal, waal, Glory Cappeze," she drawled in her rasping, nasal voice.
"Yore man hes done built ye a right monstrous fine house, hyar, ain't
he?"
"Come in and see it, Mrs. Plumford," invited the young wife. "But my
name's Glory Spurrier now--not Cappeze."
In the gesture with which the woman drew her shawl tighter about her
lean shoulders, she contrived to convey the affront of suspicion and
disbelief.
"No, I reckon I ain't got ther power ter tarry now," she declined. "I
don't git much time fer gaddin', an' be yore name whatsoever hit may,
there's them hyar-abouts es 'lows yore man lavishes everything on ye
but his own self. He's away from ye most of his time, albeit I reckon
he's got car fare aplenty fer two."
Glory stiffened, and without a word turned her back on her ungracious
visitor. She went into the house with the tilted chin of one who
disdains to answer insolent slanders, but in the tenderness of her
heart the barb had nonetheless sunk deep. So people were saying that!
Over at Aunt Erie Toppitt's the shrew again halted--and there it
seemed that she did have time to "tarry," and roll the morsel of
gossip under tongue.
"Mebby she's ther furriner's lawful wife an' then ergin mebby she
ain't nuthin' but his woman," opined Tassie Plumford. "Hit ain't none
of my business nohow, but a godly woman hes call ter be heedful whar
she visits at."
"A godly woman!" Aunt Erie's tone stung like a hornet attack. "What
has godliness got ter do with _you_, anyhow, Tassie Plumford? The
records of ther high cote over at Carnettsville hes got _yore_ record
fer a witness thet swears ter perjury."
Mrs. Plumford trembled with rage but, prudently, she elected to ignore
the reference to her legal status.
"Ef they was rightfully married," she retorted, "hit didn't come ter
pass twell old man Cappeze diskivered her alone with him--in his
house--jest ther two of 'em--an' they wouldn't nuver hev _been_
diskivered savin' an' exceptin' fer ther attack on ther furriner." In
the self-satisfaction of one who has scored, she added: "I'll be
farin' on now, I reckon."
"An' don't nuver come back," stormed Aunt Erie, whose occasional
tantrums were as famous as her usual good humor. "Unless ye seeks ter
hev ther dawgs sot on ye."
While the spiteful and forked little tongues of gossip were doing
their serpent best to poison what had promised to be an Eden for Glory
at home in the hills, the husband who was charged with neglecting her
was miserable in town.
His work had been the breath of life to him until now, bringing the
zestful delight of prevailing over stubborn difficulties, and building
bridges that should carry him across to his goal of financial power.
Now he found it a necessity that exiled him from a place to which he
had come half-contemptuously and to which his converted thoughts
turned as the prayers of the true believer turn toward Mecca.
He who had been urban in habit and taste found nothing in the city to
satisfy him. The smoke-filled air seemed to stifle him and fill him
with a yearning for the clean, spirited sweep of the winds across the
slopes. He knew that these physical aspects were trivial things he
would have swept aside had they not stood as emblems for a longing of
the heart itself--a nostalgia born of his new life and love.
But all the plans that had built one on the other toward a definite
end of making an oil field of the barren hills were drawing to a focus
that could not be neglected. He could no more leave these things
undone than could his idol Napoleon have abandoned his headquarters
before Austerlitz, and the sitting of the legislature could not be
changed to suit his wishes. Neither could the lining up of forces that
were to guide his legislation to its passage be left unwatched.
So the absence that he had thought would be brief, or at worst a
series of short trips away from home, was prolonging itself into a
winter in Louisville and Frankfort. He found himself as warily busy as
a collie herding a panicky flock, and as soon as one danger was met
and averted, a new one called upon him from a new and unsuspected
quarter.
Much of the deviousness of playing underground politics disgusted him,
and yet he knew he would have regarded it only as an amusing game for
high stakes before his change of heart. But now that it was to be a
battle for the mountain men as well as for Martin Harrison and for
himself, it could be better stomached.
The effort to pick out men who could be trusted in an enterprise where
they had to be bought, was one which taxed both his insight into human
nature and his self-esteem.
Senator Chew, himself a mountaineer, who had come from a ragged
district to the state assembly and who seemed to harbor a hatred
against A. O. and G. of utter malevolence, was almost as his other
self, furnishing him with eyes with which to see and ears with which
to hear, and familiarity with all the devious, unlovely tricks of
lobby processes.
But Senator Chew, a countryman, who had capitalized his shifty wits
and hard-won education, bent his knee to the brazen gods of cupidity
and ambition.
"I don't just see," he demurred petulantly to Spurrier, "why you go
about this thing the way you do. You've got unlimited capital behind
you and yet in going after these options you ain't hardly got hold of
any more land than just enough to let your pipe line through. You
could get all a man's property just as cheap per acre as part of
it--and when I've sweated blood to give you your charter and you've
sweated blood to grab your right-of-way, that God-forsaken land will
be a Klondike."
"I hope so," smiled Spurrier, and his ally went on.
"All right, but why have nothing out of it except a pipe-line? Why not
have the whole damn business to split three ways, among Harrison's
crowd, yourself--and the crowd I've got to handle?"
"You're a mountain man, Senator," the opportunity hound reminded him.
"You know that in every other section of the hills to which
development has come, the native has reaped only a heart-ache and an
empty belly. I am purposely taking only a part of each man's holding,
so that when the oil flows there what he has left will be worth more
to him than all of it was before."
"Hell," growled the politician. "The men you ought to think about
making money for, are the men you need--like me, and the men who back
you, like Harrison. These local fellows won't thank you, and in my
opinion you're a fool, if you'll permit me to talk plain."
"Talk as plain as you like, Senator," smiled the other. "But I think
I'm acting with right sound sense. Our field can be more profitably
developed among friends than among enemies--even if no consideration
other than the practical enters into the problem."
It was not until Christmas time that Spurrier broke away from his
activities in Louisville, and then he came bearing gifts and with a
heart full of eagerness. He came elated, too, at the fair promise of
his prospects, and confident of victory.
So Glory hid the fears that had been growing in her heart and, because
of the tidal power of personal fascination and contact, she found it
an easy task. While Spurrier was with her, those fears seemed to lose
their substance and to stand out as absurdities. They were delirious
miasmas dissipated by the sun and daylight of companionship.
Spurrier kept most of his valuable papers in a safety vault in
Louisville, but for purposes of reference here, he maintained a
complete system of carbon copies, and these must be stored in some
place where he could feel sure they were immune from any prying eye.
The entire record of his proceedings would be clear to any reader of
those memoranda.
While Glory was away one day, he removed a section of the living-room
wall and fashioned something in the nature of a secret cabinet, upon
which he could rely for these purposes. Before he went away again he
shared that secret with her, since in certain exigencies it might be
needful that some one should be able to act on wired instructions. He
showed her the bit of molding that was removable and which gave
entrance to the hidden recess.
"In that strong box," he told her, "are papers of vital importance. If
I haven't taken you entirely into my confidence about them all, dear,
it's because they concern other people more closely than myself. All
my own affairs are yours--but in the service of others, I must obey
instructions and those instructions are rigid."
He took out one envelope, though, plainly marked.
"This," he said, "is a paper to be used only in case of extreme
emergency. It is an order on the safety-deposit people in Louisville
to open my vault to the bearer. In the event of my death, or if I
should wire you from a distance, I would want you to use it."
Even that admittance into the veiled sanctum of his business life
pleased Glory, and she nodded her head gravely.
She did not tell him, and he did not guess, that tongues were wagging
in his absence, and that people said she was good enough only for that
part of his life in which he shed his white collar and his "fine
manners" and donned the rougher habiliments of the backwoods.
Even when she learned that his coming back had been only to spend the
holidays with her and that he must leave again to be gone for weeks,
at least, she let none of the disquiet that smouldered in her find an
utterance in words.
* * * * *
On a fine old Blue Grass estate, which exhaled the elegance and ease
of the Old South, lived Colonel Merriwell, a life-long friend of Dyke
Cappeze. In years long gone he had more than once sought to have
Cappeze transfer his activities to a wider field. Now, timber
interests called him to the mountains, and though the cold weather had
set in, his daughter chose to come with him. She had heard much of the
strange and retarded life of the mountains, and because it was so
different from the refinements with which she had always been
surrounded, she wanted to see it.
When they arrived after traveling conditions that warranted every
conception of quaintness, but violated every demand of comfort, the
girl from the Bluegrass found Glory a discovery.
At once she recognized that into any drawing-room this wilderness-bred
girl could be safely dropped, and that even though she stood in a
corner, she would soon become its center.
Helen Merriwell was fascinated by the anomaly of an inherent
aristocracy in an encompassing life which was almost squalid, and a
bond of sympathy sprang into instant being. The Bluegrass woman knew
by instinct, though through no utterance from the loyal lips, that the
other was lonely, and when Colonel Merriwell announced his intention
of returning home, the daughter decided to continue her visit and its
companionship.
To Spurrier's house, too, during the crisp, clear weather of late
winter came, without announcement or expectation another visitor. They
were two other visitors to be exact, but one so overshadowed his
companion in importance that the second became negligible.
At the Carnettsville station the daily train drew up one morning and
uncoupled, on a siding, the first private car that had ever run over
that piece of roadbed. Its chef and valet gazed superciliously down
upon the assembled loungers, but the two gentlemen who alighted and
gave their names as Martin Harrison and his secretary, Mr. Spooner,
were to all appearances "jest ordinary folks."
Glory was housecleaning on the day of Harrison's coming, and, in
neatly patched gingham and dust-protected crown, she came nearer
seeming the typical mountain woman than she had for many days before.
Her fresh beauty was hard to eclipse, but she was less presentable
than she wished to be when her husband's great patron saw her for the
first time and contrasted her with such women as his own daughter.
When she heard the name, without previous warning, a sort of panic
possessed her and for once she became tongue-tied and awkward, so that
after the first, Helen Merriwell stepped into the breach and did the
talking.
"My name is Martin Harrison," said the great man with simple
cordiality. "I thought John Spurrier lived here--but I seem to be
mistaken."
"He--he does live here," stammered Glory, catching the swiftly stifled
amazement of the magnate's disapproving eyes.
"Here?" He put the question blankly as if only politeness prevented a
greater vehemence of surprise. "But I expected to find a bachelor
establishment. There are ladies here."
Glory fell back a step as if in retreat under attack. If this
statement were true, Spurrier had never acknowledged her to the
employer with whom his relations were intimately close. In her own
eyes, she stood as one who had lost caste and been repudiated--and all
self-confidence abandoned her, giving way to trepidation.
Harrison stood bewilderedly looking at this country girl who had
turned tremulous and pale, and Helen Merriwell stepped forward.
"Then you didn't know that Mr. Spurrier was married?" she smilingly
inquired.
The money baron transferred his glance to her as his shadowed face
lightened into relief. This young woman had the poise and ease of his
own world, which made communication facile. If Spurrier had not been
candid with him, at all events he had, perhaps, not unclassed himself.
The other was presumably a local servant of whom he need think no
more.
"Mr. Spurrier," he answered easily, "had not mentioned his marriage,
probably because our recent correspondence has all related to
business. However, I hold it unhandsome of him not to have done so."
He paused, then added deferentially: "Of course, I am better prepared
now to felicitate him--since I have seen you."
But Helen Merriwell laughed and laid a hand on Glory's shoulder.
"You do me too much honor, Mr. Harrison," she assured him. "_This_ is
Mrs. Spurrier."
The financier's ingrained politeness for once failed him. It was not
for long, but in the breached instant he stiffened arrogantly as his
eyes went back to Glory, and betrayed themselves in half-contemptuous
hostility. The lieutenant whom he had chosen as his own successor in
the world of lofty affairs had not only deceived him but had thrown
himself wantonly away upon a stammering daughter of illiterates!
Martin Harrison bowed again, but this time with a precise formality.
"I didn't notify Mr. Spurrier of my coming, since I felt sure I would
find him here," he explained briefly, directing himself pointedly to
Helen Merriwell. "I am on my way south, so now I'll defer seeing him
until another time--unless you expect him back shortly?"
Helen turned inquiringly to Glory and Glory shook her head. The
episode, confirming her own anxieties, had unnerved her steadfast
courage into collapse.
Had any warning come to her in advance of the event her bearing toward
this stranger would have been a different one. The pride that bowed
submissively to no one except in love, would have sustained her. The
natural dignity which was the gift of her blood would have been the
thing that any observer must have first and last recognized. With a
chance to have shaped her attitude, Glory would have received Harrison
as a Barbarian princess might have met an ambassador from Rome, but no
such chance had been afforded her and she stood as distraught and as
panicky as a stage-struck child whose speech fails.
She even slid back into the rough-hewn vernacular that had been so
completely banished from her lips and custom.
"I ain't got ther power ter say," she faltered, "when he'll git back.
He's goin' ter Frankfort first."
"I'll write to him there," said the capitalist.
Harrison departed with the stiff dignity of an affronted sachem, and
Helen Merriwell, looking after him, smiled with amusement for the
incident which she so well understood, until she turned and saw
Glory.
The girl had wilted back against the wall and stood there as if she
had been stricken. Her great, violet eyes were brimming with the
spirit of tragedy and held the despair of one who has blithely
returned home--to find his house in ruin and ashes.
Glory stole away to her own room, escaping the embrace of sympathetic
arms, as soon as she could. "He's done denied me ter his friends," she
told herself wildly. "He dast'n't acknowledge me ter fine folks!"
Then through the first, torpid misery of hurt pride, crept a more
terrifying thought. Spurrier had been practically engaged to this
man's daughter. He had been diverted from his purpose by motives of
pity, and now that Harrison knew, he might be ruined--probably would
be ruined. If so disaster would come to him because of her--and at
last she rose from the chair where she had dropped down, collapsed,
with a light of new resolution in her eyes.
"If that's all I'm good for," she declared tempestuously, "he's got to
be rid of me."