suspense, for he knew that arms had been stacked inside the barricades.
Any instant might bring them into play. He began to wonder why Denny
withheld the word to fire.
As a matter of fact, the explanation was simple, although it did not
appear until later. Mr. Denny at that moment was in no condition to
issue orders of any kind, the reason being as follows: when
preparations for the advance were made, Dr. Gray, who understood
perhaps more fully than any one else except O'Neil the gravity of the
issue and the slender pivot upon which the outcome balanced, had taken
his place in the vanguard of the attacking party instead of in the
background, as befitted his calling. The first rush had carried him
well into the fray, but once there he had shown his good judgment by
refusing to participate in it.
Instead, he had selected Denny out of the opposing ranks and bored
through the crowd in his direction, heedless of all efforts to stop
him. His great strength had enabled him to gain ground; he had hurled
his assailants aside, upsetting them, bursting through the press as a
football-player penetrates a line; and when the retreat had begun he
was close at the heels of his victim. He had overtaken Denny beside one
of the barricades just as Denny seized a rifle and raised it. With one
wrench he possessed himself of the weapon, and the next instant he had
bent the barrel over its owner's head.
Then, as the fight surged onward, he had gathered the limp figure in
his arms and borne it into the light of a gasolene-torch, where he
could administer first aid. He was kneeling over the fellow when
Appleton found him as he came stumbling along the grade.
But the decisive moment had come and gone now, and without a leader to
command them Gordon's men seemed loath to adopt a more bloody reprisal.
They gave way, therefore, in a half-hearted hesitation that spelled
ruin to their cause. They were forced back to their encampment: over
the ground they had vacated picks and shovels began to fly, rails were
torn up and relaid, gravel rained from the flat cars, the blockhouses
were razed, and above the rabble the locomotive panted and wheezed, its
great yellow eye glaring through the night. When it backed away another
took its place; the grade rose to the level of the intersection, then
as morning approached it crept out beyond. By breakfast-time a long row
of flats extended across the line which Curtis Gordon had tried to hold
in defiance of the law.
Dan Appleton, very dirty, very tired, but happy, found Natalie and
Eliza awaiting him when he limped up to their tent in the early morning
light. One of his eyes was black and nearly closed, his lips were cut
and swollen, but he grinned cheerfully as he exclaimed:
"Say! It was a great night, wasn't it?"
Eliza cried out in alarm at his appearance.
"You poor kid! You're a sight." She ran for hot water and soap, while
Natalie said, warmly:
"You were perfectly splendid, Dan. I knew you'd do it."
"Did you?" He tried to smile his appreciation, but the effort resulted
in a leer so repulsive that the girl looked dismayed. "You ought to
have seen the shindy."
"Seen it! Maybe we didn't!"
"Honestly?"
"Did you think we could stay behind? We sneaked along with the
cook-house gang, and one of them helped us up on the gravel-cars. He
smelled of dish-water, but he was a hero. We screamed and cried, and
Eliza threw stones until Mr. O'Neil discovered us and made us get down.
He was awfully mean."
"He's a mean man."
"He isn't! He was jumping around on one leg like a crippled
grasshopper."
"I made a thousand dollars," said Dan. "Guess what I'm going to do with
it?"
"How can I guess?"
"I'm going to buy an engagement ring." Once more he leered repulsively.
"How nice!" said Natalie, coolly. "Congratulations!"
"Guess who it's for?"
"I couldn't, really."
"It's for you."
"Oh no, it isn't!" Natalie's voice was freezing. "You have made a
mistake, a very great mistake, Dan. I like you, but--we won't even
mention such things, if you please."
Eliza's entrance saved her further embarrassment, and she quickly made
her escape. Dan groaned so deeply as his sister bathed his injuries
that she was really concerned.
"Goodness, Danny," she said, "are you as badly hurt as all that?"
"I'm worse," he confessed. "I've just been shot through the heart. Slow
music and flowers for me! Arrange for the services and put a rose in my
hand, Sis."
"Nonsense! I'll put a beefsteak on your eye," she told him, unfeelingly.
Under Dr. Gray's attention O'Neil's ankle began to mend, and by the
time the track had been laid far enough beyond the crossing to insure
against further interference from Gordon he declared himself ready to
complete the journey to Kyak, which he and the girls had begun nearly
three weeks before.
During the interval Eliza had occupied herself in laying out her
magazine stories, and now she was eager to complete her investigations
so as to begin the final writing. Her experience in the north thus far
had given her an altered outlook upon the railroad situation, but as
yet she knew little of the coal problem. That, after all, was the more
important subject, and she expected it to afford her the basis for a
sensational exposure. She had come to Alaska sharing her newspaper's
views upon questions of public policy, looking upon Murray O'Neil as a
daring promoter bent upon seizing the means of transportation of a
mighty realm for his own individual profit; upon Gordon as an
unscrupulous adventurer; and upon the Copper Trust as a greedy
corporation reaching out to strangle competition and absorb the riches
of the northland. But she had found O'Neil an honorably ambitious man,
busied, like others, in the struggle for success, and backing his
judgment with his last dollar. She had learned, moreover, to sympathize
with his aims, and his splendid determination awoke her admiration. Her
idea of the Trust had changed, likewise, for it seemed to be a fair and
dignified competitor. She had seen no signs of that conscienceless,
grasping policy usually imputed to big business. In regard to Gordon
alone, her first conviction had remained unchanged. He was, in truth,
as evil as he had been reputed.
The readjustment of her ideas had been disappointing, in a way, since
it robbed her of a large part of her ammunition; but she consoled
herself with the thought that she had not yet reached the big, vital
story which most deeply concerned the welfare of the north.
She was a bit afraid to pursue her inquiries into the coal subject, for
her ideas were fixed, and she feared that O'Neil's activities merited
condemnation. In his railroad-building, she believed, he was doing a
fine work, but the coal was another matter. Obviously it belonged to
the people, and he had no right to lay hands upon their heritage.
She wondered if it would not be possible to omit all mention of him in
her coal stories and center attention upon the Trust. It was impossible
for her to attack him now, since she had come to understand her
feelings toward him. Even so, she reflected with horror that if her
articles created the comment she anticipated their effect would be to
rob him of his holdings. But she took her work very seriously, and her
sense of duty was unwavering. She was one of the few who guide
themselves by the line of principle, straight through all other
considerations. She would write what she found true, for that was her
mission in life. If Murray proved culpable she would grieve over his
wrong-doing--and continue to love him.
O'Neil had recognized her sincerity, and on the broad subject of
conservation he had done nothing to influence her views. He preferred
to let her see the workings of the principle and, after actually
meeting some of those who had suffered by it, form her own conclusions.
It was for this reason mainly that he had arranged the trip to Kyak.
The journey in a small boat gave Eliza a longed-for opportunity to
discuss with him the questions which troubled her. He was
uncommunicative at first, but she persisted in her attempt, drawing him
out in the hope of showing him the error of his ways. At last she
provoked him to a vigorous defense of his views.
"Conservation is no more than economy," he declared, "and no one
opposes that. It's the misapplication of the principle that has
retarded Alaska and ruined so many of us. The situation would be
laughable if it weren't so tragic."
"Of course you blame your troubles on the Government. That's one thing
governments are for."
"Our ancestors blamed King George for their troubles, more than a
hundred years ago, and a war resulted. But every abuse they suffered is
suffered by the people of Alaska to-day, and a lot more besides.
Certainly England never violated her contracts with the colonies half
so flagrantly as our Government has violated its contracts with us."
"Of course you exaggerate."
"I don't. Judge for yourself. The law offers every citizen the
chance--in fact, it invites him--to go upon the public domain and
search for treasure. If he is successful it permits him to locate the
land in blocks, and it agrees to grant him a clear title after he does
a certain amount of work and pays a fixed price. Further, it says in
effect: 'Realizing that you may need financial assistance in this work,
we will allow you to locate not only for yourself, but also for your
friends, through their powers of attorney, and thus gain their
co-operation for your mutual advantage. These are the rules, and they
are binding upon all parties to this agreement; you keep your part, we
will keep ours.' Now then, some pioneers, at risk of life and health,
came to Kyak and found coal. They located it, they did all the law
required them to do--but did the Government keep its word? Not at all.
It was charged that some of them hadn't conformed strictly to the
letter of the agreement, and therefore all the claims were blacklisted.
Because one man was alleged to have broken his contract the Government
broke its contract with every man who had staked a coal claim, not only
at Kyak, but anywhere else in Alaska. Guilty and innocent were treated
alike. I was one of the latter. Was our money returned to us? No! The
Government had it and it kept it, along with the land. We've been
holding on now for years, and the Interior Department has tried by
various means to shake us off. The law has been changed repeatedly at
the whim of every theorist who happened to be in power. It has been
changed without notice to us even while we were out in the wilderness
trying to comply with the regulations already imposed. You can see how
it worked in the case of Natalie and her mother. The Government
succeeded in shaking them off."
"That's only one side of the question," said Eliza. "You lose sight of
the fact that this treasure never really belonged to you, but to the
public. The coal-lands were withdrawn from entry because men like you
and the agents of the Heidlemanns were grabbing it all up."
O'Neil shook his head, frowning. "That's what the papers say, but it
isn't true. There are twenty million acres of coal in Alaska, and not
more than thirty thousand acres have been located. The law gave me the
right to locate and buy coal claims, and I took advantage of it. Now it
tells me that I have money enough, and takes back what it gave. If it
did the right thing it would grant patents to those who located under
the law as it then existed and withdraw the rest of the land from entry
if advisable. This country needs two things to make it
prosper--transportation and fuel. We are doing our best to supply the
first in spite of hindrance from Washington; but the fuel has been
locked away from us as if behind stone walls. Rich men must be brave to
risk their dollars here under existing conditions, for they are not
permitted to utilize the mines, the timber, or the water-power, except
upon absurd and unreasonable terms. Why, I've seen timber lying four
layers deep and rotting where it lies. The Government won't save it,
nor will it allow us to do so. That's been its policy throughout. It is
strangling industry and dedicating Alaska to eternal solitude.
Railroads are the keys by which this realm can be unlocked; coal is the
strength by which those keys can be turned. The keys are fitted to the
lock, but our fingers are paralyzed. For eight years Alaska's greatest
wealth has lain exposed to view, but the Government has posted the
warning, 'Hands off! Some one among you is a crook!' Meanwhile the law
has been suspended, the country has stagnated, men have left dispirited
or broken, towns have been abandoned. The cost in dollars to me, for
instance, has been tremendous. I'm laying my track alongside rich
coal-fields, but if I picked up a chunk from my own claim to throw at a
chipmunk I'd become a lawbreaker. I import from Canada the fuel to
drive my locomotives past my own coal-beds--which I have paid for--and
I pay five times the value of that fuel, forty percent of which is
duty. I haul it two thousand miles, while there are a billion tons of
better quality beneath my feet. Do you call that conservation? I call
it waste."
"Fraud was practised at the start, and of course it takes time to find
out just where it lay."
"That's the excuse, but after all these years no fraud has been proved.
In administering the criminal law there is an axiom to the effect that
it is better for ninety-nine guilty men to escape than for one innocent
man to suffer, but the Land Office says that ninety-nine innocent
Alaskans shall suffer rather than that one guilty man shall escape. The
cry of fraud is only a pretense, raised to cover the main issue.
There's something sinister back of it."
"What do you mean?"
"A conspiracy of the Eastern coal-operators and the transcontinental
freight-lines."
"How ridiculous!" cried Eliza.
"You think so? Listen! Since all the high-grade coal of the Pacific
coast must come from the East, who, then, would discourage the opening
of local fields but those very interests? Every ton we burn means a
profit to the Eastern miner and the railroad man. Yes, and twenty per
cent. of the heat units of every ton hauled are consumed in
transportation. Isn't that waste? Every two years it costs our navy the
price of a battle-ship to bring coal to the Pacific fleet, while we
have plenty of better fuel right here on the ground. Our coal is
twenty-five hundred miles nearer to the Philippines than San Francisco,
and twelve thousand miles nearer than its present source. If Alaskan
coal-beds were opened up, we wouldn't have this yearly fight for
battle-ship appropriations; we'd make ourselves a present of a
first-class navy for nothing. No, our claims were disputed, and the
dispute was thrown into politics to keep us out of competition with our
Eastern cousins. We Alaskans sat in a game with high stakes, but after
the cards were dealt the rules were changed."
"You argue very well," said Eliza, who was a bit dazed at this
unexpected, forceful counter-attack, "but you haven't convinced me that
this coal should be thrown open to the first person who comes along."
"I didn't expect to convince you. It's hard to convince a woman whose
mind is made up. It would take hours to cover the subject; but I want
to open your eyes to the effect of this new-fangled national policy.
Any great principle may work evil if it isn't properly directed, and in
Kyak you'll see the results of conservation ignorantly applied. You'll
see how it has bound and gagged a wonderful country, and made loyal
Americans into ragged, bitter traitors who would spit upon the flag
they used to cherish."
"Is that the only reason why you came along--just to make sure that I
saw all this?"
"No. I want to look at the Heidlemann breakwater. My fortune hangs upon
it."
"It's as serious as that?"
O'Neil shrugged. "I'm waiting for the wind. My coal is in the hands of
the bureaucracy at Washington, my railroad is in the hands of the wind
god. Incidentally, I'd much rather trust the god than the Government."
Natalie, who had listened so far without the least sign of interest,
now spoke up.
"If the storm doesn't come to your help, will you be ruined?" she asked.
Murray smiled cheerfully. "No man is ruined as long as he keeps his
dreams. Money isn't much, after all, and failure is merely a schooling.
But--I won't fail. Autumn is here: the tempest is my friend; and he
won't be long in coming now. He'll arrive with the equinox, and when he
does he'll hold my fortune in his hand."
"Why, the equinoctial storm is due," said Eliza.
"Exactly! That's why I'm going to meet it and to bid it welcome."
The village of Kyak lay near the mouth of the most easterly outlet of
the Salmon, and it was similar in most respects to Hope and to Omar,
save that it looked out across a shallow, unprotected bay to the open
reaches of the north Pacific. The shores were low; a pair of rocky
islets afforded the only shelter to its shipping, and it was from these
as a starting-point that the Copper Trust had built its break-water. A
trestle across the tide-flats connected the work with the mainland, and
along this rock-trains crawled, adding their burdens to the strength of
the barrier. Protected by this arm of steel and stone and timber lay
the terminal buildings of the Alaska Northern, as the Heidlemann line
was called, and there also lay the terminus of the old McDermott
enterprise into which Curtis Gordon had infused new life. Both places
showed plenty of activity when O'Neil and his two companions arrived,
late one afternoon.
Kyak, they found, was inferior to Omar in its public accommodations,
and Murray was at a loss to find shelter for the girls until his
arrival was made known to the agents of the Alaska Northern. Then Mr.
Trevor, the engineer in charge, looked him up and insisted upon sharing
his quarters with the visitors. In Trevor's bearing was no suggestion
of an enmity like Gordon's. He welcomed his rival warmly--and indeed
the Trust had never been small in its opposition. O'Neil accepted the
invitation gratefully.
After dinner he took Natalie with him to see the sights, while Eliza
profited by the opportunity to interview Trevor. In her numerous tilts
with O'Neil she had not been over-successful from the point of view of
her magazine articles, but here at her hand was the representative of
the power best known and best hated for its activities in the
north-land, and he seemed perfectly willing to talk. Surely from him
she would get information that would count.
"Understand, I'm on the side of your enemies," she warned him.
"So is everybody else," Mr. Trevor laughed; "but that's because we're
misunderstood."
"The intentions of any Trust warrant suspicion."
He shrugged. "The Heidlemanns are just ordinary business men, like
O'Neil, looking for investment. They heard of a great big copper-field
hidden away back yonder in the mountains, and they bought what they
considered to be the best group of claims. They knew the region was
difficult of access, but they figured that a railroad from tide-water
would open up not only their own properties, but the rest of the
copper-belt and the whole interior country. They began to build a road
from Cortez, when some 'shoe-stringer' raised the cry that they had
monopolized the world's greatest copper supply, and had double-cinched
it by monopolizing transportation also. That started the fuss. They
needed cheap coal, of course, just as everybody else needs it; but
somebody discovered the danger of a monopoly of that and set up another
shout. Ever since then the yellow press has been screaming. The
Government withdrew all coal-lands from entry, and it now refuses to
grant patents to that which had been properly located. We don't own a
foot of Alaskan coal-land, Miss Appleton. On the contrary, we haul our
fuel from British Columbia, just like O'Neil and Gordon. Those who
would like to sell local coal to us are prevented from doing so."
"It sounds well to hear you tell it," said Eliza. "But the minute the
coal patents are issued you will buy what you want, then freeze out the
other people. You expect to control the mines, the railroads, and the
steamship lines, but public necessities like coal and oil and timber
and water-power should belong to the people. There has been an
awakening of the public conscience, and the day of monopolized
necessities is passing."
"As long as men own coal-mines they will sell them. Here we are faced
not by a question of what may happen, but of what has happened. If you
agreed to buy a city lot from a real-estate dealer, and after you paid
him his price he refused to give you a deed, you'd at least expect your
money back, wouldn't you? Well, that's the case of Uncle Sam and the
Alaskan miners. He not only refuses to deliver the lot, but keeps the
money, and forces them to pay more every year. I represent a body of
rich men who, because of their power, are regarded with suspicion; but
if they did anything so dishonest as what our Government has done to
its own people they would be jailed."
"No doubt there has been some injustice, but the great truth remains
that the nation should own its natural resources, and should not allow
favored individuals to profit by the public need."
"You mean railroads and coal-fields and such things?"
"I do."
Trevor shook his head. "If the people of Alaska waited for a Government
railroad, they'd die of old age and be buried where they died, for lack
of transportation. The Government owns telegraph-lines here, but it
charges us five times the rates of the Western Union. No, Miss
Appleton, we're not ready for Government ownership, and even if we were
it wouldn't affect the legality of what has been done. Through fear
that the Heidlemanns might profit this whole country has been made to
stagnate. Alaska is being depopulated; houses and stores are closed;
people are leaving despondent. Alaskans are denied self-government in
any form; theories are tried at their expense, but they are never
consulted. Not only does Congress fail to enact new laws to meet their
needs, but it refuses to proceed under the laws that already exist. If
the same policy had been pursued in the settlement of the Middle West
that applies to this country, the buffalo would still be king of the
plains and Chicago would be a frontier town. You seem to think that
coal is the most important issue up here, but it isn't. Transportation
is what the country needs, for the main riches of Alaska are as useless
to-day as if hidden away in the chasms of the moon. O'Neil had the
right idea when he selected the Salmon River route, but he made an
error of judgment, and he lost."
"He hasn't lost!" cried Eliza, in quick defense of her friend. "Your
breakwater hasn't been tested yet."
"Oh, it will hold," Trevor smiled. "It has cost too much money not to
hold."
"Wait until the storms come," the girl persisted.
"That's what we're doing, and from present indications we won't have
much longer to wait. Weather has been breeding for several days, and
the equinox is here. Of course I'm anxious, but--I built that
breakwater, and it can't go out."
When O'Neil and Natalie returned they found the two still arguing.
"Haven't you finished your tiresome discussions?" asked Natalie.
"Mr. Trevor has almost convinced me that the octopus is a noble
creature, filled with high ideals and writhing at the thrusts of the
muck-rakers," Eliza told them.