I NEVER DID LIKE TO BE BEATEN
Stephen O'Mara found Hardwick Elliott lunching alone in the East Coast
Company's main Morrison office, a big unpainted shack that stood half
lost in a maze of high-piled ties, midway between the saw-mills at the
river edge and the first snarled network of switches converging on one
reddish streak of steel that lanced into the north. With moodily
indifferent interest Elliott scarcely more than glanced up at the
horseman's approach across the open plot of raw earth, hard-packed to a
cement-like surface by the endless passage and repassage of countless
hob-nailed, heavy-booted feet, but with that first glance his forehead
began to smooth a little. His face had lost something of its hint of
gauntness, even before his chief engineer had swung down from the
saddle. Elliott had been exhibiting scant appetite for the cold food
half buried in the pile of papers on his desk top; and though he smiled
his characteristically courteous, mildly abstracted greeting when Steve
loomed in the doorway, his attitude was still very patently that of a
man who attempts to conceal his own perplexities lest they compound
those of another whose perplexities are already more than enough. He
rose and held out a finely tapered hand.
"Now, this is fine," he exclaimed. "This is really fine, Mr. O'Mara.
Rather odd, too--coincidence and that sort of thing, I mean. Because I
was just this instant wondering whether I had better send for you or
wait until you just happened down river again."
In many ways the president of the East Coast Company reminded Steve of
Caleb Hunter, even though there could be no two things more in contrast
than the latter's calm and comfortable bigness and Elliott's thin and
wiry and extremely nervous exterior. It was a similarity due entirely
to the innate honesty of both men--such honesty as makes of every
attempt at dissimulation an assured non-success. And Miss Sarah had
never anticipated her brother's clumsiest finesse with greater ease
than did Steve sense, that afternoon, the weight of worry behind his
employer's first effort at jauntiness. He nodded, hopefully, it seemed.
"Something else gone wrong?" he asked. "Or are you going to tell me
that McLean is still having trouble with that curve of his."
Elliott, too, shook his head, but his negative nod was less brisk, less
hopeful.
"No," he replied. "No, we've got that laid, or at least practically
so. It's not anything so satisfyingly material that I wanted to talk
about. I wish it were, because--well, the fact is, now that you are
here it appears I may have considerable trouble in making you believe
that I'm not merely developing a most womanish case of nerves. Cold
feet, I suppose, might not be far from correct, if we put it in the
proper gender. No, it's not the work itself. You know the first few
miles at this end afford pretty plain sailing. We figured on that: or
we wouldn't stand any chance of finishing the job. And we are quite
nicely ahead of our schedule, so far. But have you--I was wondering if
you, by any chance, have noticed any signs of discontent in your own
squad at Thirty Mile?"
Elliott eased himself back into his chair at the finish of the
question. Repugnantly he jerked a thumb in silent invitation toward a
plate of sandwiches. It indicated most clearly the state of his
appetite--that gesture--and Steve could not help but smile a little as
he refused.
"No more than the usual disturbances," he answered. "I have more or
less trouble holding them--some of them--over the week-ends, of course.
But then that's always to be expected. They aren't the sort of men
that go to make up the general run of construction squads. One of my
main reasons for wanting them was the fact that they were rivermen,
hardened to swamping and white-water work and that kind of thing. In a
pinch they're good for twenty-four hours a day, over stretches that
would take the heart out of most gangs. I don't know of anything that
can beat a lumber-jack on a squeeze job, once you get him to realize
that he's up against long odds. It's this ten-hour-a-day thing and too
much ready money every pay-day; it's a town too temptingly close that
makes them a--a trifle temperamental, Mr. Elliott. Is that what you
mean?"
Elliott pondered for a moment.
"That entirely duplicates what McLean said just a day or so ago." On
any other lips Elliott's deliberate neatness of phrase might have
sounded solemnly funny. "Thoroughly logical, of course,--thoroughly
possible. And yet, somehow it doesn't fit the case. We've had the
usual Monday morning vacancies, right along, as you know; but the
delinquents always turned up before the five o'clock whistle blew, or
at least reported Tuesday morning. But this is the end of the week and
we're short right this minute very close to thirty men. They aren't
coming back, Mr. O'Mara; on the contrary, they continue to dribble
away, a few every day. And though they appear to do nothing but talk
their time away in the saloons in the lower end of the town, they seem
to have just as much money to spend, as they did when they were getting
their time checks from us."
Steve leaned over and with nice deliberation selected a sandwich.
"What sort of talking?" he wanted to know, suddenly.
Again Elliott smiled in self-deprecation.
"That's just it," he exclaimed. "Their talk leads nowhere. I went
down and attempted to find out what their grievance might be, but they
close up like clams whenever I come within earshot. They stare at the
ceiling, rub their chins, and laugh when there's nothing to laugh at.
This morning, however, I finally convinced McLean that something was
radically wrong. So he took one of them who had just decided to quit
and pinned him up against the embankment--but you know McLean and his
methods! He shoved his jaw up within an inch of the other's nose and
invited him to talk, and--well, he found out enough to make him begin
to worry, too. Somebody's been talking to them, Mr. O'Mara; somebody
has put the fool notion into their heads that this strip of railroad
will mean the end of all lumber operations in this country--the
old-time river drives, of course. And some of them are beginning to
believe--whoever was responsible for that statement.
"You know and I know how absurd it is. We know that this road will
mean work for every riverman in this section, as often as he wants to
work. But it isn't going to help us any if they can't see it that way.
It isn't going to replace the men who quit. I've been deliberating one
point. Don't you suppose we might import a regular squad of
construction men now, before it's too late?"
"It's too late now," Steve told him, his words none the less final for
all that they were absently quiet. "It was too late the day we began
operations. And yesterday at this time I wouldn't have given much
worry to this particular brand of trouble. They're an odd lot; they're
the hardest working, hardest living crowd of big men that ever failed
entirely to grow up." Steve stopped and looked down at the sandwich
untouched in his hand, much as though he were surprised to find it
there. "But since yesterday--since yesterday--who, did you say, was
responsible for that statement, as you call it?"
"I didn't say." Elliott brushed away a persistent bluebottle fly, a
lonesome survivor which the unseasonably warm day had reawakened. The
insect's droning wings as it persisted again and again back to the
sandwich plate made the only sound in that big, bare room. "And if
I--if I had to guess----" The hand passed across his eyes now.
"O'Mara, do you know how deeply Mr. Ainnesley and myself are involved
in this prospect?"
After a long search the engineer of the East Coast Company had finally
located his pipe.
"I don't believe I have ever given it much actual thought," he said.
"I never viewed it as any of my affair. But I haven't forgotten the
last time we talked the plans over, that you couldn't go into it to
lose."
Punctiliously Elliott proffered a lighted match for the other's filled
pipe; he lighted a long and thin and very black cigar for himself.
Steve noted then for the first time that the man's hand was shaking a
little.
"Of course," the latter answered quickly. "Of course--of course!" He
seemed groping for a fresh beginning, then gave up suddenly all attempt
at circuity and blurted it out much as though he had lived with the
thought too long to endure it longer alone.
"I'm in up to my last dollar," he stated. "And Ainnesley--why,
Ainnesley wouldn't have a roof over his head if we failed in our
obligations! You must know as well as I do why the banking interests
took our paper to those amounts which made it possible for us to drive
the first spike."
When he failed to go on Steve understood that the last sentence had
been a question.
"Mr. Allison, I suppose." His voice became utterly impersonal.
"Without doubt you mean Mr. Allison?"
"They would have laughed at us," the older man came back instantly.
"And what is more, they did! They wouldn't touch the proposition,
until Allison came in with us. And then--but you know what Dexter
Allison has done already in this country. I don't know what he started
with. I do know that all that Ainnesley and I had scraped up between
us looked like a shoe-string to him.
"We couldn't move until he, of his own accord, expressed his enthusiasm
for the plan and asked for a share in the holdings. You know, perhaps,
how he can laugh, too. Well, he laughed that way and confessed that we
had just beaten him to it. He said it would tap a gold mine--this
'strip of steel,' as he called it. He even told us that he'd parallel
our road with a competitor, jokingly to be sure, if we hadn't tied up
the only available and practicable right of way.
"He came in. He opened up, merely through his own name and all there
is behind it, loan possibilities for which we might have struggled
uselessly the rest of our lives without his help. Between us Mr.
Ainnesley and I just managed to hold the balance of stock control
and--and that's how deep we are in, Mr. O'Mara."
Both men sat and smoked, each avoiding, elaborately, the other's eyes.
After a long pause, Elliott cleared his throat, laboriously.
"This morning," he continued slowly, "this morning I am in receipt of a
communication from Mr. Ainnesley himself, advising me that another
right of way has been applied for, for a single track road here in the
north. The gossip which chanced to come his way was rather obscure.
Little could be learned about the whole affair save that it was being
put forward with a view to tapping the ore and timber lands all the way
to and beyond the border. But as nearly as he could ascertain the
southern terminus of such a road would seem to be about--about at the
mouth of that valley southernmost in the Reserve Company's timber
holdings. Rather a remarkable choice for a railroad terminus, Mr.
O'Mara--wouldn't you say so?"
Steve leaned toward him.
"Do you mean that they've thrown out your earlier application for just
such a grant?"
"That would be a rather harshly definite way of putting it," Elliott
smiled wryly. "Ours is apparently just tabled--oh, tabled pending
certain immaterial changes in the form! You asked me a moment ago--or
did I offer to guess who might be responsible for the report which is
costing us our men? I wonder if I need to tell you who controls this
new northern route?"
"Maybe you've been telling me," Steve came back coolly. "You have
already mentioned----"
"Wickersham!" Hardwick Elliott corrected. "Wickersham--that is,
through allied interests which he represents or controls. O'Mara, I
doubt if I would even insinuate this to anyone else; I haven't even
intimated it to Ainnesley as yet. Wickersham is reputed to represent
huge moneyed foreign interests. But have you ever stopped to wonder
whether he might not represent big local interests as well?"
The tanned face opposite him was so gravely blank that Elliott once
more laughed nervously, deprecatingly.
"Doubt of any man's loyalty such as that query would imply is not one
of my characteristics. I would rather have left this thing unattempted
than to have undertaken it in partnership with any man whom I felt I
had to watch. But I just thought that I'd better put it all on the
table for you to consider. I'd like to ask you--what do you think?"
The man in blue flannel and corduroy tapped the sodden heel from his
pipe and loaded it afresh.
"Yesterday," he answered, "yesterday--Well I couldn't guarantee just
what I might have thought, twenty-four hours back. But doesn't one
fact remain unchanged still, no matter what we think? Suppose we admit
that some one else does want this stretch of track we're laying?
Suppose somebody is figuring on picking it up cheap, at a bankruptcy
price, if we forfeit to the Reserve Company? You know yourself that
you would never have begun it simply for the profit there will be in
moving the Reserve logs and the millions on millions of feet of lumber
both to the east and west, which can't be touched at anything but a
prohibitive figure, without this road. We were going through to the
border, too. And if some one else is betting that we don't; if some
one else is betting that we can't yank a trainload of logs down to this
end of the line, before the first of May, that doesn't alter our case
any, does it? Even though we suspect that some man is playing us to
lose, do we have to know exactly who he is?"
Slowly but very surely the older man's face began to smooth.
"Once or twice," he stated, "I've thought to anticipate you, perhaps
because I have it on you a little, as they say, in the matter of years.
I'm not going to attempt it any more. For I thought that this
conversation would be at least a surprise to you. You sit there and
take it very quietly, for a man who has been badly startled."
"Fat Joe has been preaching it for a month." Oddly enough, Stephen
O'Mara chose that point at which to laugh, softly. "And I, for a
month, have been ridiculing him. That's one of Fat Joe's pet
diversions, you know. When all other excitement fails Joe invariably
falls back upon an imagination too totally vivid to be wasted on
technical things. I laughed at him, until last night. Do you--but of
course you know Garry Devereau?" he finished.
"Knew his father," Elliott answered succinctly. "Know him well! Good
blood--good brains--big hearts! Why?"
And then, for the second time that day, Steve related the salient
points of that episode which had opened with the trio of owls along the
trail and ended with the first gray streaks of returning day. During
the recital the expressions which chased across Elliot's face were as
varied as they were full of concern.
"Then I wasn't merely hysterical, was I?" he brooded after Steve had
finished. "Who--who did you say you thought might be behind the man
who would have had your plans, had it not been for Mr. Devereau?"
"I didn't say," replied Steve, and for the first time since his
entrance there was mirth in the unison of their laughter.
"It all brings us back to the point from which we started," the younger
man went on when they were grave again. "It's a plain enough issue, so
far as we are concerned. We've got to be at the mouth of that lower
valley by May. We're going to be! And as I see it, wasting time and
energy in--shall we call it sleuthing, Mr. Elliott?--won't help us
much. We thought that lack of time and the general nature of this
country were going to be handicap enough. But now your money is in and
I--I never did like to be beaten. Can't we let it stand like that, at
least until some one else makes a plainer move? We know the cards we
hold. If others care to sit in, perhaps we'll all come to a show-down,
next spring at Thirty Mile. It'll be easy enough to explain just how
we did it. Alibis based on veiled opposition wouldn't interest the
Reserve people much, if we left their timber there to rot. . . . And
I'm trying not to overlook any bets, Mr. Elliott."
Hastily the iron-gray man thrust his hat back from his forehead. He
came to his feet and crossed and clapped one hand upon Steve's shoulder.
"Next May!" he barked. "O'Mara, I'm glad you came down this morning.
I've been carrying a lot of those ideas around in my head until they
had become nightmarish. But I'm through now. You won't hear me croak
again. I staked what I had on you, months ago; I'd do it again this
minute. What's the odds, after all, who it is that's playing us to
lose. It's only the fact that somebody may be fighting us that needs
to occupy our attention. I'm done worrying, do you hear? But what
about those men who are quitting us? You are sure it would be unwise
to import labor? It's cheaper, you know."
Steve, too, had risen.
"We'd have the prettiest kind of a scrap on our hands, the first day we
tried to use them," he explained. "It would be dear enough before we
got through. I guess I'd better run right out and have a talk with
McLean. He knows these men even better than I do, and I'm almost one
of them, you know. And I'll get a line on some of these delinquents
who are crying calamity for the countryside. I'd better, because we'll
need them. They simply haven't become thoroughly interested yet,
that's all. It will take something to jolt them; something to set them
on fire. And then--then just watch my plaid-shirted boys go! They'll
eat up your sledge-swingers!"
Something of that promised fire was reflected now in Hardwick Elliott's
eyes.
"By Gad," he exclaimed, "by Gad, if it wasn't for Ainnesley I'd say the
thing was worth it, win or lose, just for the game itself. You go
ahead and see McLean. I'll be out there later, myself. I promised
Allison that I'd show the works to some of the young folks up there on
the hill. His daughter--but I keep forgetting that you've known her
longer than I have. There's quite a party of them. She announced her
engagement to Mr. Wickersham last night, I believe. Heard that this
morning--was too busy to go up last night myself. Maybe you'll find
time to help me play the host."
Steve turned toward the door.
"So I heard," he replied, without facing around. "I'll try to be on
hand."
He stood for another instant on the threshold.
"I'm going to ask you to see that my horse is fed and watered," he
requested evenly. "And I reckon you'd better eat your own lunch,
yourself."
But the man behind him had already anticipated that suggestion.
Through a generous bite of sandwich he made answer.
"I'll see that he is taken care of," he called cheerfully. "See you
later, Mr. O'Mara---- Pshaw, the coffee's cold!"