In the morning, when he descended to the bar-room of the Waldorf in
search of nourishment, the old miner greeted him.
“I thought,” he said suggestively, “maybe you’d like to see the mine.
The Limited don’t reach Defiance until evenin’. The mine ain’t but a
little ways out from here. You might be interested in lookin’ it over.”
“All right!” Brainard exclaimed. “Let’s see the mine.” He had been so
much preoccupied with Melody, the girl, that he had altogether forgotten
about Krutzmacht’s interest in the Melody mine. “How far is it?” he
asked.
“About three miles back in the hills. The old man was building a trolley
from the mine to the smelter here beside the river.”
The miner pointed out the rusty rails and bleached sleepers of the
trolley road as their horses picked the way over the rough ground up to
the opening of the main shaft of the mine.
“Defiance lies off there,” the miner said, pointing to the blue horizon,
“twenty-five miles in a straight line north. He meant to run a railroad
right across the sagebrush. It’s down grade all the way, so the cars
could go out by gravity. They reckoned on gettin’ power for the trolley
from the river, by damming it above the smelter.”
“It was to be developed on a big scale!” Brainard exclaimed, impressed by
the scope of Krutzmacht’s plans.
“You bet!” the miner agreed. “It ain’t no use to do things in a small
way in this country. Krutzmacht knew that.”
Brainard scanned the steep, savage mountains above the shaft. They were
devoid of all vegetation on the lower slopes, dull brown in color, with
their flanks seamed by little gullies. Behind, the higher peaks lifted
their heads in broken lines of serrated edges; and in the far distance,
glittering in the cloudless sky, were snowy tips of dazzling white.
The miner picked up a piece of purplish ore from the pile heaped high
about the mouth of the shaft.
“Look at that!” he said admiringly. “There’s enough ore of that sort
right under our feet to pay almost to tote it out to Defiance. And they
had just scratched the surface, here and there. The old man didn’t
reckon to begin mining until he had things fixed right.”
They descended from the ore pile and proceeded to the entrance of the
main shaft. It was cluttered with timber and abandoned machinery, some
of which had never been installed. They spent a couple of hours
examining the mine, stumbling about the dark tunnels by the light of a
candle which the old miner had brought, looking at the ore bodies already
exposed, ready to be worked.
When at last they emerged into the dazzling sunlight, and were resting,
Brainard remarked wonderingly:
“It’s queer that a man like Krutzmacht should have abandoned a large
property such as this, when he had gone so far with it.”
“He hain’t abandoned it, I tell you. He paid the taxes up to last year.
It takes an awful sight of money, stranger, to develop a big mine so far
from the railroad. Krutzmacht’s pile wasn’t big enough, and he wasn’t
the kind who’d take anybody in with him. All or nothing for him—that was
his way. So he went back to California to get his stake. If he’s alive
still, he’ll be coming in here some day ready to work this bonanza!”
“I am afraid that will never be,” Brainard said slowly. “Krutzmacht died
in New York two months ago.”
The miner stared in astonishment, exclaiming at last:
“Well, well! So the old man died before he made good!” Brainard nodded.
“Maybe you are looking at the property for yourself?”
“Do I look like a miner? No, I came to Monument to find out if the old
man left an heir.”
“I reckon the only folks he had was that girl and her mother, and one is
dead and the other gone goodness knows where,” the old miner replied.
“So the Melody mine don’t belong to nobody now!”
“It belongs to that girl, if we can find her.”
“It may be sold for taxes before that.”
“Then I’ll buy it in,” Brainard said promptly.
They ate the bread and bacon they had brought with them for lunch under a
pine tree on a slope of the steep hill above the mine. The old miner
shook his head from time to time, and muttered to himself over the
strange dispensations of Providence that left a rich mine like the Melody
abandoned. Brainard thought of the girl who had escaped him, and planned
vaguely what his next steps should be.
“There’s an old crater up among them hills,” the miner vouchsafed, when
the last slice of bacon and bread had disappeared, “and some sulfur
springs. There’s another fortune, maybe, if you could get at the
sulfur.”
“I’ll take a look at it,” Brainard said. “How do you go?”
And so, while the old man turned back to look after their horses, which
they had left tethered far below, Brainard clambered on among the sharp
peaks toward the snow beds that lay in drifts along the ragged edge of
the mountains. He passed the circular depression of which the miner had
spoken, and noticed the yellow crust upon the earth; but for a long time
he kept on upward. He wanted to be alone, to think over a certain daring
idea that had seized hold of him while the miner was showing him the
neglected riches of the Melody mine. Perhaps the keen mountain air,
blowing dry and fresh from the desert below, had its part in stirring his
brain to unwonted excitement. Perhaps it was the reaction from his
disappointment of the evening before in not finding his young mistress
waiting to receive her fortune. However that might be, his idea kept
teasing him, expanding all the time in reasonableness and urgency.
Why should he not take up Krutzmacht’s purpose—use part of the money he
had obtained from the bankers in developing this great property? While
he was prosecuting the search for the young girl, which he foresaw might
take much time, might indeed end in failure, this work would give a new
incentive, a new meaning to his long adventure.
“Give it all to Melody!” the old adventurer had whispered with his last
breath. Yes, all to Melody in one form or another, as soon as possible.
He would dive deeper than the letter of Krutzmacht’s word—he would do as
the old man might have done himself, if his life had gone on. He would
fulfill his inmost purposes.
He had humor enough to smile at his own daring. “One Edgar Brainard,” as
he had described himself to Krutzmacht, unsuccessful playwright, scrub of
the city streets, to run a mine! But why not? For that old self, that
“one Edgar Brainard,” buffeted, discouraged human chip on the muddy
surface of the stream of life, had completely disappeared, never again to
exist, he earnestly hoped. These eventful weeks of vital living,
constant and quick decision, of prompt, forceful execution, of vivid
feeling and yet calm self-reliance, had made a totally other man of
him—one whose possibility he had never suspected, but one whom he liked
and respected an infinite deal more than that old, familiar “one Edgar
Brainard.”
Thanks to Krutzmacht and the elusive Melody, he could never again become
the timid, inefficient struggler earning his precarious crust of bread by
humiliating tasks, dreaming futile dreams and putting them into equally
futile words. He had tasted of life, action, power, and he found them
sweet. He would not resign them! Thus Krutzmacht had bestowed on the
chance stranger who had befriended him in his last need more than those
millions he was leaving to Melody.
His rapid thoughts swept over these last weeks. Everything in them, it
seemed, had prepared the way for this decision, had fitted him to dare,
to take the responsibility. If it had confronted him a month before,
when he and Melody had passed each other unknown, he would not have been
ready; if it had come a fortnight before while he was in Paris, he would
not have risen to the opportunity. It had come Now, at the fertile
moment. . . . His thin, weak body had filled out, just as his harassed
face had taken on firm lines of real manhood. He was no longer afraid of
life, nor of any of its chances. He would act for this girl as he would
act for himself; he would be her trustee, her faithful servant, and the
guardian of her property until such time as it could be given into her
hands. And the idle millions should set about their proper task of
breeding more millions.
At this point in his thinking he gave a boyish whoop that even caught the
ear of the old miner below and made him look up. Brainard waved his hat
and laughed from the glorious fun of it all,—the risk and the joy of
life,—living at last! . . .
As was characteristic of the new man, having projected an idea, committed
himself to a decision, his mind at once bent quickly to filling in the
details of the pattern in action. He should go to-morrow across the
mountains to look for his old friend Gunnison, to learn what more he
could, if anything, about the girl’s sudden departure. Gunnison might
also give him information of value concerning the mine. Then he should
take the evening train for San Francisco, and there first of all he would
look up the friendly reporter Farson, to enlist his aid in the search for
the girl. In this he must exercise great caution, because San Francisco
might not yet be a perfectly salubrious climate for him, nor did he wish
to stir cupidinous desires in the breasts of possible claimants to
Krutzmacht’s fortune. What he should do afterwards was not clear as yet,
but he thought that Farson might be helpful in suggesting the best
methods for prosecuting such a search as was before him. Hollinger, if
he had returned to the States, might also be useful. He would willingly
confide in the “fight-trust magnate.” In any case he should try to find
the grizzled miner from Union,—just why, he could not say. But he felt
that the old man who had searched fortune in the earth for thirty years
might be useful in “handling the Melody proposition.” He would run
across him either at the Palace in San Francisco or, if not there, could
stop at Winnemucca on his way east and make the journey to Union. He had
the man’s name written down somewhere. And then he must call for that
trunk in Chicago, in which he hoped to find the title deeds to the mine
and other interesting documents. There was much to be done, and to be
done speedily. Yet he felt no haste, no nervous anxiety to be adoing.
Time for thought was needed also. . . .
So he climbed on rapidly toward the glittering banks of snow until he
reached a small plateau gleaming like a jeweled robe in the sunlight.
Beneath him lay the little valley about the shaft, scarred by the ore
pits with their abandoned rock piles. Far down, the old miner was
leading the horses from the shed where they had been tied. Above
beckoned the peaks, reaching into the steely heavens like naked icicles.
A broad-winged bird circled majestically, tracing its dark shadow on the
gleaming snow field, as with a brush.
Not a sound upon the earth nor in the sky! A broad, deep silence! The
clear light, the lofty peaks pointing heavenward—nothing more, except his
own beating heart!
The man stood there in the immense silence, his soul poised like the hawk
above his petty world, surveying in one swift rush of thought that little
self of his past, with its small ambitions and desires. Up to this level
the road that Krutzmacht had opened for him had led.
He gazed steadily upward into the wonderful sea of blue sky, deeper than
the blue depth of the Gulf Stream, above the snowy peaks, beyond the
world, into his future. What he saw there was a vision of will, man’s
will. He was all will—a vitalized mass of glorious energy to conceive,
to create, to do!
He laughed in the cloudless amplitude of snow and blue heavens, laughed
at the small self he had left behind, writing play pieces, making tiny
scenes for a tiny stage. The world was the great stage upon which he
would present his masterpiece! Krutzmacht had played on that stage, and
Brainard had helped him to put up a rousing melodrama at the close. His
own play thereon should be something different.
Krutzmacht’s will had made the fortune; his will should take it, if need
be, reshape it, and speed it to some more perfect end than the old
buccaneer of the West had ever dreamed of. Where Krutzmacht’s will had
ended, his will would start.
There rose, too, a vision of art as he had felt it in Paris at dawn,
beneath the towers of the old cathedral. And sweetly the two united in
his fecund mind. He laughed softly in the joy of this vision, and his
laugh tinkled strangely among the silent mountain peaks. Throwing up his
head to the dazzling rampart of snow that broke the wavering azure lines
of the heavens, he exclaimed:
“That, too, will come true! That will be! We’ll make life our stage,
and write the play in life, as God writes upon the snows up here. That
is creation!”
Brainard could see the old man below holding the horses by their bridles
and shielding his eyes with his free hand, as he searched for his
companion. And faintly, very thinly, through the valley came the old
man’s hail.
Brainard gave a last, lingering look to the immensity above, beyond,
around him—the place where his great idea had been born. Then he turned
his steps downward, the light of distant thoughts in his eyes, a smile
upon his lips which said:
“I have seen. Now to _do_!”
* * * * *
“You will meet me again before long,” he said to the old miner, when they
parted. “And then we’ll make the Melody sing!”