WHEREIN POWER TRAVELS EAST
One summer's day at high noon a man rode into Bison from the direction
of the railway, and, judging by the critical yet interested glances he
cast right and left while his drowsy mustang plodded through the dust,
he seemed to be appraising recent developments keenly. As the horseman
was Francis Willard, and as this was the first time he had visited Bison
since leaving the ranch, there were many novelties to repay his
scrutiny. The number of houses had been nearly doubled, the store had
swollen proportionately, not to mention the Bison Hotel, which had
sprung into being on the site of the ramshackle lean-to where once
MacGonigal's patrons had stabled their "plugs," and a roomy omnibus
rumbled to and fro in the main street before and after the departure of
every train from the depot.
These unerring signs of prosperity spoke volumes; but it was only when
the rider drew rein near the mouth of the Gulch that he was able to note
the full measure of Bison's progress. Deep in a hollow to the left were
two mills instead of one, and the noise of ore-crunching rolls was
quadrupled in volume. Two long rows of recently erected cyanide vats
betokened the increased output of the mine, and, even while Willard sat
there, gazing moodily at a scene almost strange to his vision, an
engine snorted by, seemingly hauling a dozen loaded trucks, but in
reality exerting its panting energy to restrain the heavily freighted
cars from taking headlong charge of the downward passage. Another
engine, heading a similar string of empty wagons, was evidently on the
point of making the ascent; so Willard jogged an unwilling pony into
movement again, and entered the Gulch.
Beyond the two sets of rails, nothing new caught his eye here until he
had rounded the curve leading to the watershed. Then he came in sight of
the original entrance to the mine--a shaft was being sunk nearly
three-quarters of a mile away, but he was not aware of that at the
moment--and noticed that a stout man, jauntily arrayed in a white canvas
suit and brown boots, who had a cigar tucked into a corner of his mouth,
had strolled out of a pretentious-looking office building, and was
obviously surprised by the appearance of a mounted man in that place at
that moment.
MacGonigal had, in fact, recognized Willard the instant he swung into
view, because none of the ranchers rode that way nowadays, a more
circuitous but safer trail having been cut to avoid the rails.
Mac had certainly remarked that he was dog-goned when he set eyes on
Willard, and a similar sentiment was expressed more emphatically by the
visitor; for there was no love lost between those two, and, in
consequence, their greetings were unusually gracious.
"Wall, Mr. Willard, ef this don't beat cock-fightin'!" cried MacGonigal,
when the other halted at the foot of an inclined way leading to the
level space from which rock had been blasted to provide room for the
various structures that cluster near the outlet of a busy mine. "Now,
who'd ha thought of seein' you hereabouts terday?"
"Or any other day, Mr. MacGonigal," said Willard, forcing an agreeable
smile. The prefix to MacGonigal's name was a concession to all that had
gone before during a short half-hour's ride. The ex-storekeeper was now
the nominal head of a gold-producing industry which ranked high in the
state, and the bitterness welling up in Willard's mind had been quelled
momentarily by sheer astonishment.
"That's as may be," returned Mac affably, rolling the cigar across his
mouth. "But, seein' as you air on this section of the map, guess you'd
better bring that hoss o' yourn into the plaza. A bunch of cars is due
here any minute."
Willard jogged nearer, and dismounted, and a youth summoned by
MacGonigal took charge of the mustang.
"Hev' yer come ter see Power?" inquired the stout one, with just the
right amount of friendly curiosity.
"Well, no, not exactly. I shall be glad to meet him, of course. Is he
somewhere around?"
"No. He went East two days sence."
Now, the movements of local financial magnates are duly chronicled in
the Colorado press, and MacGonigal was sure that Willard had not only
read the announcement of Power's departure, but had timed this visit
accordingly. Still, that was no affair of his. Willard was here, and
might stay a month if he liked, because he would have to pay for bed and
board in the Bison Hotel, which MacGonigal owned.
"Ah, that's too bad," said Willard, feigning an indifference he was far
from feeling. "Still, I have no real business on hand. I happened to be
at a loose end in Denver, and didn't seem to know anybody in the Brown
Palace Hotel; so I came out here, to take a peep at the old shanty, so
to speak."
"You'll hev' located an alteration or two already?" chuckled the other.
"Every yard of the way was a surprise."
"Guess that's so; but what you've seen is small pertaters with the
circus on the other side of the hill."
"On the ranch! Things can't have changed so greatly there?"
"You come this-a way, an' survey the park."
MacGonigal led the visitor through a check office, and along a corridor.
Throwing open a door, he ushered him into a well furnished room, with
two French windows opening on to a spacious veranda.
"This yer is Derry's den," he said. "He likes ter look at the grass
growin'; but my crib is at the other side, whar I kin keep tab on the
stuff that makes most other things grow as well. Not that it ain't dead
easy ter know why Derry likes this end of the outfit--an' nobody livin'
'll understand that better'n yerself, Mr. Willard, when you've looked
the proposition over fer ten seconds by the clock."
Willard had never found MacGonigal so loquacious in former days; but he
was too preoccupied by the tokens of success that met his furtive gaze
in every direction to give much heed to any marked change in his guide's
manner. Moreover, he had scarcely set foot in the veranda before he
yielded to a feeling which, at first, was one of undiluted amazement.
The annual rainfall had been normal since he abandoned ranching; but
Colorado in June is not exactly the home of lush meadows during the best
of years, and he was staring now at a fertile panorama of green
pastures, and thriving orchards, while the ranch itself was set in the
midst of smooth lawns embosomed in a wealth of shrubs and ornamental
trees. Greatest miracle of all, a tiny stream of pellucid water was
flowing down the Gulch.
"I don't quite grasp this," he muttered thickly, while his eyes roved
almost wildly from the dancing rivulet to the fair savannah which it had
made possible.
"A bit of a wonder, ain't it?" gurgled MacGonigal placidly. "Jest
another piece of luck, that's what it air. Derry can't go wrong, I keep
tellin' him. I had a notion the hull blamed show was busted when we
struck a spring at the end o' the fust dip of two hundred feet; but
Derry jest laughed in his quiet way, an' said, 'There oughter be tears
round about any place called Grief, an' now we have Dolores weepin'.
We've tapped a perennial spring, Mac, an' it's the very thing I wanted
ter make the ranch a fair copy of Paradise.' There you hev' it--Derry's
luck--a pipe line laid on by Nature--an' him raisin' apples, Mr.
Willard, raisin' pippins as big as your fist, on land whar _you_
couldn't raise a bundle of alfalfa!"
Willard had to find something to say, or he would have choked with
spleen. "Evidently the inrush of water did not injure the mine?" he
blurted out; but, for the life of him, he could not conceal the envy in
his voice.
"Did good, really," chortled MacGonigal. "We had to drive a new adit,
an' that cleared away enough rock ter give us elbow-room. The fust
intake was up thar," and he pointed to that part of the Gulch where
Power had once wrought with death on a long-vanished ledge. "Now we go
in about a hundred feet west of this yer veranda, an' the haulin' is
easier."
"Mr. Power and you have created a marvelous property here," said Willard
after a long pause.
"Not me," said MacGonigal quickly. "I helped Derry with my wad; but he
did all the thinkin', an' it's like a fresh chapter outer a fairy tale
when I wake up every fine mornin' an' remember that my third share is
bringin' me in close on five hundred dollars a day."
"So Power's interest is worth three hundred thousand dollars a year?"
"More'n that, I reckon. The output keeps on pilin' up, an' Derry's
horses 'll add a tidy bit to his bank balance this year."
"His horses?"
"Yep. Hain't you heerd? One-thumb Jake is manager of the plug
department. Nigh on fifty two-year-olds 'll be sold this fall at two
hundred dollars an' more a throw. I suspicioned Derry was goin' crazy
when he bought up so many mares; but I allow he has the bulge on me now.
An' Jake! Dang me if he didn't show up at a dance t'other evenin' with a
silver fringe on his chaps!"
Willard turned reluctantly into the darkened room, and, by some
mischance, when his eyes had recovered from the external glare, the
first object they dwelt on was a framed pencil sketch of the Dolores
homestead as he had last seen it--a dreary, ramshackle place, arid and
poverty-stricken. In the corner was written, "Nancy," and a date.
"The ways of fortune are mysterious," he said, making shift to utter the
words calmly. "I endured ten long years of financial loss in the house
which my daughter has shown there. She used to know Mr. Power, and gave
the drawing to him, I suppose."
"Derry thinks a heap of that picter," commented MacGonigal.
"I wonder why?"
"He never tole me."
Willard laughed disagreeably. He had not forgotten Mac's peculiarities,
one of which used to be blank ignorance concerning any subject on which
he did not wish to be drawn.
"By the way," he said, "why did you give the new mine such a queer
name--El Preço--I guess you know it means, 'The Price'? Why was it
called that?"
"It was jest a notion of Derry's."
"Rather odd, wasn't it?"
"Derry's mostly odd, size him up anyways you hev' a mind ter."
"I could have understood it better had he christened the place, 'The
Bargain.' He shook me up good and hard when he grabbed Dolores for five
thousand dollars."
"He sure had his wits about him, had Derry," said MacGonigal admiringly.
"And he has gone now to New York, you tell me," went on Willard.
"East, I said."
"Well, East stands for New York all the time. Is he making a long stay
there?"
"He never said a word. Jest, 'So long, Mack,' an', 'So long, Derry.'
That's all thar was to it. Kin I get you a drink? Thar's a chunk of ice
somewhar in the outfit."
"No, thanks. Time I got a move on. How about those freight cars of
yours? Have I a clear road back through the Gulch?"
"Thar's a half-hour's off spell right now," was the prompt answer, and a
minute later the resident manager of El Preço mine was watching Willard
descend the canyon in the direction of Bison.
"I'd give a ten-spot ter know jest why that skunk kem nosin' round
here," he mused, gazing contemplatively after the slow-moving mustang
and its rider. Then he called the youth who had held the horse during
Willard's brief visit.
"What sort of an Indian air you, Billy?" he grinned.
"Purty spry, Boss, when the trail's fresh," said the boy.
"Well, hike after old man Willard, an' let me know when he's safe off
this yer section."
Within a couple of hours Billy reported that Willard had entered a train
bound for Denver, and MacGonigal blew a big breath of relief. It was not
that he had the slightest misgiving as to the effect of Willard's ill
will against either his partner or himself, but he was intensely anxious
that Power should not come in contact with anyone who would remind him
of the existence of Mrs. Hugh Marten. Power himself never mentioned her;
so his faithful friend and trusted associate in business could only hope
that the passing years, with their multiplicity of fresh interests, were
gradually dimming the memory of events which had altered the whole
course of his life.
MacGonigal did not think it necessary to tell Willard that Power had
brought his mother from San Francisco soon after the mine proved its
worth. Mother and son occupied the Dolores ranch. The presence of the
gentle, white-haired woman was a positive blessing to Bison; for she
contrived to divert no mean percentage of her son's big income into
channels of social and philanthropic effort in which she took a close
personal interest. A library and reading-room had been established; a
technical instruction class offered an excellent supplement to the state
school; a swimming bath was built close to the mills; two churches were
in course of erection; a wideawake theatrical manager at Denver had
secured a site for a theater and the township already boasted its ten
miles of metaled roadway. In the self-satisfied phrase of the
inhabitants, Bison was becoming "quite a place," and everyone testified
that it was to Mrs. Power rather than her son that all these civic
improvements were due. Men had even ceased to consult Power himself on
such matters.
"You run and see my mother about that," he would say, with a quiet
smile, when someone had endeavored to arouse his sympathy in behalf of a
deserving object. "It's my affair to make the money which she spends.
Get her to O. K. your scheme, and it goes."
In business he was equally unapproachable.
"Put it before MacGonigal," was his regular formula. "I can't do a thing
without his say-so. But I warn you he is a terror. If there's a kink in
your proposition, he'll find it, as sure as Jake can run his fingers
onto a splint."
For all that, the stout manager of mine and mill realized his
limitations.
Once, and once only, did MacGonigal act in the belief that Power had
referred a point to him for final settlement. A glib agent for mining
machinery persuaded him to purchase a new type of drill, which proved
absolutely useless when asked to disintegrate the hard granite of
Colorado. Power laughed when he heard of its failure.
"You must have thought it was meant for cutting cheese, Mac," he said
lightly. But the barbed shaft struck home, and "the terror" bought no
more drills without first consulting the man who understood them.
Thus, slowly but effectually, Power contrived to isolate himself from
Bison. With an almost uncanny prescience he gave occasional directions
in the mine, or suggested some modification in the milling process which
invariably resulted in a higher percentage of extraction. For the rest,
he devoted his days to the improvement of the stud farm, and his
evenings to books. His mother tried vainly to dissipate this recluse
trend of thought and habit. On one memorable occasion she invited a
friend and her two cheerful and good-looking daughters to visit the
ranch for a week. Timidly enough, she had sprung a surprise on her son,
warning him of the forthcoming invasion only when it was too late to
stop travelers already en route from San Francisco. Then she, like
MacGonigal, had to learn her lesson. Derry agreed she had acted quite
rightly. He merely expressed a suave doubt that the ladies would enjoy
the enforced seclusion of a place like Dolores, but they might
appreciate the air. Then he strolled out, and a telegram from Denver
apologized for a sudden departure to Chicago. He explained in a letter
that he was in need of a number of books, and thought it best to look
through the bookstores in person rather than trust to catalogues. He
returned two days after the guests had left, and there were no more
experiments in that direction. Be sure that an anxious mother had long
ago formed a remarkably accurate opinion as to the circumstances
attending Nancy Willard's wedding; but, being a wise woman, she said no
word to her son concerning it, and was content to pray that the cloud
might lift from off his soul, and that he might yet meet a girl who
would make him a good and loving wife. For that is the way of women who
are mothers--they find real joy only in the well-being of their
offspring. Though this gentle-hearted creature knew that she was risking
some of her own belated happiness in bringing about her son's marriage,
she was ready to dare that, and more, for his sake. She longed to renew
her own youth in fondling his children. She was almost feverishly
desirous of seeing him thoroughly established in a bright and cheerful
home before the gathering mists shut him out forever from her sight. So
she waited, and watched, and wondered what the future had in store for
her loved one, and often, in her musings, she tried to imagine what
manner of girl Nancy Willard was that she should have inspired such an
enduring and hopeless passion.
The upheaval, when it came, was due to the simplest of causes. Power had
foreseen the tremendous industrial development which lay before
Colorado, and indulged his horse-breeding hobby on lines calculated to
produce a large income wholly apart from the ever-increasing profits of
the mine. The state needed horses, which must be strong of bone, with
plenty of lung capacity; yet not too heavy, for mountain tracks and
dusty valleys are anathema to the soft Belgian. They must be presentable
animals, too, symmetrical, of untarnished lineage, and of a type fitted
either for saddle or harness, because Colorado was making money in a
hurry. Thus, it chanced that, shortly before Willard's ill-omened visit
to Bison, an Eastern agent wrote advising Power to attend a sale in New
York. A noted breeder of hackneys, who had imported some of the best
sires from England and Russia, and owned several fine Percherons, was
breaking up his stud, and the chance thus presented of securing some
magnificent stock might not be repeated during another decade.
Power asked his mother to accompany him; but she was afraid of the long
journey in the torrid temperature then obtaining. Yielding to his
wishes, she telegraphed a second time to her San Francisco friends, and
they accepted an invitation joyously and promptly. Moreover, seeing that
she was regarding with some misgivings his prospective absence from the
ranch for a period which could not well be less than three weeks, he
made a great concession.
"If Mrs. Moore and her girls can arrange to stay so long, keep them here
until I return," he said, and the pleasure in the worn, lined face fully
repaid the effort those words cost him. So they kissed, and parted, and
the weary years which have passed since that sunlit morning in Colorado
have contained no diviner solace for the man than the knowledge that he
left his mother well satisfied with her lot, and smiling a farewell
without the slightest premonition of evil or sorrow. It is well to part
thus from those whom we love; for no man knows what the future may have
in store--and horror would have been added to the burden of Power's
suffering if recollections of the last hours of companionship with his
mother were clouded by an abiding sense of unkindness or unfilial
treatment.
So Power hied him to New York, which meant that he passed three hot
nights and two hotter days in a fast-speeding train. The Rock Island
Railroad took him across the rolling prairie to Omaha and Chicago, and,
in the city which no steer nor sheep nor hog can visit and live, he
entered the palatial Pennsylvania Limited, which, in those unregenerate
days, dumped him out early in the morning on the New Jersey shore. Then,
for the first time, he saw New York, and saw it from the river, which is
the one way to see New York for the first time. Crossing by the ferry to
23d Street, he did not, it is true, secure that wondrous initial glimpse
of a city, unequaled, in many respects, by any other, which is
vouchsafed to the traveler arriving by sea. But, even twenty-two years
ago, the busy Hudson was no mean stream, and when Power's unaccustomed
eye turned bewildered from the maze of shipping which thronged that
magnificent waterway it found fresh wonders in the far-flung panorama
stretching from Grant's Tomb to the Battery. At that time Trinity Church
was still a landmark, for New York had hardly begun to climb into the
empyrean; so the prospect was pleasing rather than stupefying, as it is
today.
A hot wind already hissed with furnace-breath over the fourteen miles of
serried streets that lined the opposite shore; for, in the long years
which have sped since Power first crossed the Hudson, New York has
neither lengthened nor broadened. Even mighty Gotham cannot achieve the
impossible; so, in the interim, several new cities have been
superimposed on the older one which spread its beauties before his
bewildered vision. The _Paris_--who of the middle generation does not
remember the _Paris_, with her invariable list to starboard, after an
ocean crossing?--was creeping slowly upstream, and Power was amused by
the discovery that the big ship, like himself, moved with a limp. The
_City of Rome_, whose yacht-like lines suggested the poetry of motion,
but, as is the mode on Parnassus, adhered strictly to suggestion, lay at
anchor near the Jersey shore, and when the ferry churned around her
graceful stem, the grim walls of the Palisades completed a picture which
admits of few peers. Disillusionment came later; but the spell of that
thrilling first impression was never wholly lost. Driving through 23d
Street, on his way to the Waldorf Hotel, Power could not help comparing
this important thoroughfare with Market Street, San Francisco, and State
Street, Chicago, and the architectural stock of the metropolis
experienced a sudden slump. Nor did it wholly recover lost points when
his carriage entered Madison Square, with its newly erected campanile,
almost a replica of the stately Giralda tower in Seville, its glimpses
of Broadway, south and north, its stolid Fifth Avenue Hotel, and its
chastely elegant, though still towerless, white Metropolitan building.
Even the Waldorf, then less than a fourth of the Waldorf-Astoria, though
notable already among the public palaces of the world, failed to strike
his imagination with the appeal of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco; the
truth being that New York, first in the field by a couple of centuries,
had not yet begun, like Milton's eagle, to mew her mighty youth.
It would assuredly be interesting to those who knew and loved the queen
city of the Atlantic nearly a quarter of a century ago if Power's
revised and corrected opinions might be quoted now. But the chronicle of
a man's life ought to be accurate before it is picturesque, and the
truth is that the heat-wave which was then withering the whole Eastern
seaboard kept this visitor from breezy Colorado pent within the marble
halls of the Waldorf Hotel, save when urgent need drove him forth. That
particular scourge of high temperature was destined to become
historical. The thermometer soared up beyond 100 degrees Fahrenheit;
hundreds of people were stricken daily by heat apoplexy; the hospitals
were crammed to their utmost capacity; the asphalt pavement, where it
existed, showed ruts like a muddy road in the country; and it is easy to
understand why a man who had cheerfully endured 110 degrees and 115
degrees in the dry heat of the nearer Rockies should gasp for air here
like a fish out of water.
Worst of all, the horse sale was postponed. The owner of the stud and
his prospective patrons alike had flown to sea and mountain for relief.
As inquiry showed that the horse-breeder himself had gone to Newport,
Power made haste to secure a stateroom on one of the Fall River line of
steamboats, and it was on this quest that the _Puritan Maiden_, a vessel
on which folk would travel merely for the sake of describing her to
their friends, brought him to the chief summer resort of fashionable
life in America.
He had not the slightest notion that Mrs. Hugh Marten was disporting
herself daily on that particular stretch of Rhode Island beach. For all
that he knew, she might as well have been at Trouville or Brighton.
Indeed, had anyone dared the lightning of his glance by mentioning her,
and if he were compelled to hazard a guess as to her possible
whereabouts, he would certainly have said that, to the best of his
belief, she was in Europe. Such was the fact; but there are facts in
every life which assume the guise of sheer incredibility when analyzed,
say, in the doubtful atmosphere of a law-court. In the dark days to
come, during those silent watches of the night when a man looks back
along the tortuous ways of the past, John Darien Power could only lift
impotent hands to Heaven and plead in anguish that he might at least
have been spared an ordeal which he not only did not seek, but would
have fled to the uttermost parts of the earth to have avoided. Such
moments of introspection were few and far between, it is true. His was
too self-contained a nature that he should rail against the Omnipotent
for having tested him beyond endurance. He made a great fight, and he
failed, and he paid an indemnity which is not to be measured by any
other scale than that alone which records the noblest effort.
To his own thinking, the tragedy of his life began that day in Bison
when the sympathetic storekeeper told him of Nancy Willard's marriage.
But he was wrong in that belief. A man may lose the woman he loves, and
recover from the blow, but he peers into abysmal depths when he meets
her as another man's wife, and finds that love, though sorely wounded,
is not dead. It is then that certain major fiends, unknown to the
generality, come forth from their lairs--and there must have been a rare
awakening of crafty ghouls on the day Power reached Newport.