In six months after Loring had taken charge, the Kay mine was producing
on a paying basis. What those six months had accomplished was little
short of marvelous. At the time of the arrival of the new manager,
everything had been in an extreme state of disorganization. Unused
machinery stood uncovered and rusting. The pumps were hardly more than
holding the water in the shafts. No new timbering had been put in place
to supplant the old, which was dangerously rotten. The costly electric
lighting plant had been almost ruined by neglect. Discord had been
reigning between the various heads of departments, and discord in a
community in which there is no recreation, and from which there is no way
of escape, is a dangerous element.
When Loring had assumed control, in explanation of failures each worker
had murmured complaints of others. At the mess there had been gloomy
silence, in contrast to the joviality which had prevailed at the old
mess in Quentin. Distrusted and disliked, Loring had firmly pursued his
course until that course was justified, and the criticism and hatred had
turned to respect and admiration. He had worked night and day, attending
to everything himself. Loring was tireless in his enthusiasm, and he had
inspired the men under him to do their work better than they knew how.
The result was that by this time, the system of a well-built machine
had supplanted the previous chaos. And though it was far from a perfect
machine, each day was adding to its efficiency.
The nervous irritability of the mess had been relieved by the arrival
of an old friend. One day Hop Wah had drifted into Stephen’s office
and after announcing solemnly: “Me canned, too,” had stood waiting
expectantly until Loring had ordered him installed as assistant cook in
the company eating-house. Within a week after this the meals had become
joyous occasions. Wah would dance from man to man as he served the
meals, murmuring insults which pleased even the insulted, and provoked
roars of laughter at the victim’s expense. When he had some particularly
bold insult to deliver, he would sing it from the kitchen window. The
singing lent impersonality and the distance safety. Soon the refrain and
interlude of his old song, “La, la, boom, boom,” were as well known, and
as popular in Kay, as they had been in Quentin.
Radlett had told Loring that there would be much work for him to do, and
he had not been guilty of exaggeration. Night after night the electric
light beneath the green tin reflector in the office had burned until well
into the morning. Then a watcher might have seen it go out suddenly,
before a tired man turned the key in the office door.
The increase of efficiency in the work at the Kay mine was due to one
thing,—the ceaseless vigilance of Stephen Loring, and the outward
circumstances were only the manifestation of the changed conditions
within himself. One who had known Loring, the failure, would scarcely
have recognized Loring, the success. The chin line no longer drooped, his
smile showed honest pride in the goodness of his work, his movements were
alert, his head thrown back. His skin was ruddy and his eyes clear, yet
the marks about his mouth showed traces of the struggle through which
he had passed, and there were new lines of care lying in furrows across
his forehead. He had aged under responsibility, and something of the old,
lazy charm which had endeared him to his friends was gone; but a stranger
looking at him would have appreciated at once that here was a man of
force, one who meant to be master, and who was fitted to be.
It is possible that the change in his dress contributed as much as the
more subtle developments, for Loring, in his blue suit, soft white shirt,
and well-oiled tan boots, was a very different looking man from the
shabbily clothed wanderer who had sought work last year in Phœnix.
On one autumn afternoon Stephen sat at the desk in his office, engaged
in dictating a report to the directors of the Company. Above the rattle
and click of the typewriter his voice rose and fell monotonously: “The
construction work alone is behind. Within the workings three new stopes
have been opened since last report, at positions marked on the enclosed
print. The ore in these has been running high, averaging”—(he paused
and glanced at the assayers’ report lying on the table beside him)
“averaging twelve per cent copper. If the contact vein continues to
run in its present direction, the ore from the new stopes which we are
opening may be reached cheaply by means of winzes from the three hundred
foot level.” Loring verified this carefully from the foreman’s report,
then nodded to the stenographer to proceed. “The cost of production has
been reduced five per cent in the last month. If the present favorable
prices for the coke continue, I hope to reduce this still more. I enclose
for the first time a detailed statement of expense distributed per
department, made possible by the new system of bookkeeping which has been
adopted.” Here he paused. “That is all for the present,” he said.
Then he picked up the construction report and with a frown reread it.
“That is bad work,” he murmured. “With all the men whom Fitz had under
him, he should have done better, and accomplished more.”
“Oh, Reade!” he called to the stenographer who had gone into the back
room, “come back here! I have something to add to that report.”
The stenographer came in, and again took his place before the typewriter.
“Owing to the slowness of the work on the exterior construction, I have
found it necessary to dispense with the services of Mr. Fitz.”
Reade looked up in surprise. “Are you going to ‘can’ him?”
Stephen made no answer, but continued to dictate: “I have secured the
services of a very good man, who until recently has been at the head of
that work in the Quentin Mining Company and who, I think, will fill the
position very satisfactorily.” “That is all, Reade.”
The stenographer left the room, whistling softly. “He sure acts with
precision,” murmured Reade, as he closed the door. “When Fitz answered
back at mess the other night, I knew he’d get into trouble. The Boss
never speaks twice, and now that the men understand his ways, he don’t
need to.”
A short half-hour after Loring had finished his letter the stage from the
northward drew up outside the office door, and a passenger descended from
it. Loring opened the window, looked out, and recognized his old friend
McKay.
“Prompt as usual!” thought Loring. “I did not expect him until to-morrow
or the day after; but I like his coming so soon. Promptness means
efficiency.”
Loring smiled when he heard McKay tell the driver to charge the trip to
the Company. “Mac has not much to learn of business methods in the west,”
Loring chuckled, as he hastened to resume his seat at the desk. A little
later he heard a thump, as McKay dropped his bag on the porch, and then
he heard him asking for the manager. Some one directed the stranger to
the office, and Loring heard the creak of his boots on the stairs.
Stephen, for he had a streak of vanity in his nature, lighted a cigar,
and pretended to be very busy over some papers. After a moment he looked
up, to find McKay staring in such open-mouthed astonishment that it
seemed as if his teeth were in danger of falling back down his throat.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he finally ejaculated. “What are _you_ doing
here?”
“I am the manager,” said Stephen in a dignified manner. Then he could
keep a sober face no longer, and burst into a laugh, in which McKay,
though in a dazed and uncertain manner, joined.
Stephen jumped up from his chair and shook hands with his old boss. McKay
continued to swing his arm up and down, as though this grip were his one
hold upon the world of realities.
“You! How on earth did it happen? You must have been a heap wiser than I
thought!” exclaimed McKay.
The only danger of being thought wise is that one is tempted to prove it;
but Stephen safely avoided this danger.
“Anyhow, Mac,” he answered, “here I am and here I hope I’ll remain, and
there is a lot of work for you to do here. Things have been allowed to
deteriorate to such an extent that it takes more time to rebuild than it
must have taken to construct the whole plant. Fortunately we have the
original plans designed by the people who had opened the mine, and though
they are no key to what has been done, they give a pretty good idea of
what was meant to be done.” As he spoke he pulled a roll of blue prints
out from the desk drawer, and drawing up a chair beside him for McKay, he
started to outline the work.
As he watched the unerring way in which McKay’s clumsily shaped finger
followed the designs, stopping at each questionable point and rubbing
back and forth over it with the determined questioning of a hand
competent to remedy defects, Loring thanked heaven for the fact that the
Quentin Company, their rush of early work over, had parted with such a
man. The very twitching of the corners of McKay’s mustache, as he pored
over the papers, showed a personality teeming with success and energy.
After an hour of hard work Stephen pushed back his chair from the desk
and rolled up the prints.
“I’m afraid, Mac,” he said, “that you are going to be very busy here. You
see I know how good a man you are. But I also realize that after your
journey you must eat, and that you will want to see your quarters.”
He called Reade into the room and introduced him. “Take Mr. McKay and
show him where he is to live. Put him in that new shack on the right-hand
side of the road.” With a sudden recollection of McKay’s treatment of
him on that first night at Quentin, Stephen went on with a broad grin:
“To-night I will send you over some blankets. You can pay for them out
of your first month’s pay, and to-morrow I will let you have an old straw
hat of mine.”
McKay smiled sheepishly, as he stood twirling his rusty black felt hat
in his fingers. Accustomed as he was to the sudden changes which Arizona
brings about in men’s fortunes, Loring’s meteoric rise was too great a
problem for him to solve. He could not adjust himself to the miraculous
change which had been wrought in the life of the man before him. He could
only stand speechless and gaze at the marvel, and then drop his eyes
again to the baggy knees of his best trousers.
Stephen took pity on him in his bewilderment and interrupted his
reflections: “If you can start in to work after lunch, I will have Mr.
Fitz, the man who is leaving, show you what little he has done. You had
better take a microscope to see it with.”
McKay followed Reade out of the office, his efficient, right-angled and
non-complex mind in a whirl.
“_Steve Loring_, manager of the Kay mine! I certainly will be damned.
_Him_ running all this!” He gazed stupefied at the ordered confusion of
the busy camp before him. “_Steve Loring!_ Phew!”
And all the time the man of whom McKay was thinking with admiring envy
sat before his desk, his head sunk upon his folded arms in an attitude of
profound dejection.
To McKay, Loring seemed to have reached the highest level of the up grade
in being the manager of a successful mine. What more could any man wish?
But to Loring all that he had achieved was as nothing.
The sight of McKay had brought back with photographic vividness all the
familiar things and scenes of the old days at Quentin,—the smelter,
the dip in the hills, the hoist, “_Muy Bueno_,” and then, in spite of
himself, above them all rose the face of Jean Cameron, Jean as she had
looked bending over his cot in the hospital with the sheaf of flowers
across her arm, Jean smiling at him as she passed the hoist, Jean
stretching out her hand to him on that never-to-be-forgotten ride through
the soft Arizona night.
With a sudden pang he realized that all success would be as dust and
ashes unless he could bring it to her and say: “Whatever I have won, it
was all for you. My only pride is that whether you ever know it or not,
I have at last justified your faith in me. Oh, Jean,” he murmured, “it
is not success or power or money that I want. It is you, dear, you, you,
you!”