XIX
Two Women
For one day and yet another after the minatory interview with DavidKinzie, Smith fought mechanically, developing the machine-likedoggedness of the soldier who sees the battle going irresistibly againsthim and still smites on in sheer desperation.
As if the night of fiascos had been the turning-point, he saw thecarefully built reorganization structure, reared by his own efforts uponthe foundation laid by Colonel Baldwin and his ranchmen associates,falling to pieces. In spite of all he could do, the panic ofstock-selling continued; the city council, alarmed by the persistentstory of the unsafety of the dam, was threatening to cancel the lightingcontract with Timanyoni High Line; and Kinzie, though he was doingnothing openly, had caused the word about the proposed compromise withthe Escalante people to be passed far and wide among the Timanyonistockholders, together with the intimation that disaster could beaverted now only by prompt action and the swift effacement of theirrule-or-ruin secretary and treasurer.
"They're after you, John," was the way the colonel put it at the closeof the second day of back-slippings. "They say you're fiddlin' whileRome's a-burnin'. Maybe you know what they mean by that; I don't."
Smith did know. During the two days of stress, Miss Verda had been veryexacting. There had been another night at the theatre and muchtime-killing after meals in the parlors of the Hophra House. Worsestill, there had been a daylight auto trip about town and up to the dam.The victim was writhing miserably under the price-paying, but thereseemed to be no help for it. With Kinzie and Stanton working together,with Debritt gone only as far as Red Butte and promising to return, andwith Josiah Richlander still within easy reach at the Topaz mines, hestood in hourly peril of the explosion, and a single written line fromVerda to her father would light the match. Smith could find no wordbitter enough to fitly characterize the depths into which he had sunk.It was the newest phase of the metamorphosis. Since the night of VerdaRichlander's arrival in Brewster, he had not seen Corona; he wastelling himself that he had forfeited the right to see her. Out of thechaotic wreck of things but one driving motive had survived, and it hadgrown to the stature of an obsession: the determination to wring victoryout of defeat for Timanyoni High Line; to fall, if he must fall,fighting to the last gasp and with his face to the enemy.
"I know," he said, replying, after the reflective pause, to the chargepassed on by Colonel Dexter. "There is a friend of mine here from theEast, and I have been obliged to show her some attention, so they say Iam neglecting my job. They are also talking it around that I am yourJonah, and saying that your only hope is to pitch me overboard."
"That's Dave Kinzie," growled the Missourian. "He seems to have it infor you, some way. He was trying to tell me this afternoon that I oughtnot to take you out to the ranch any more until you loosen up and tellus where you came from. I told him to go and soak his addled old head ina bucket of water!"
"Nevertheless, he was right," Smith returned gloomily. Then: "I am aboutat the end of my rope, Colonel--the rope I warned you about when youbrought me here and put me into the saddle; and I'm trying desperatelyto hang on until my job's done. When it is done, when Timanyoni HighLine can stand fairly on its own feet and fight its own battles, I'mgone."
"Oh, no, you're not," denied the ranchman-president in generous protest."I don't know--you've never told us--what sort of a kettle of hot wateryou've got into, but you have made a few solid friends here in theTimanyoni, John, and they are going to stand by you. And--just to showDave Kinzie that nobody cares a whoop for what he says--you come on outhome with me to-night and get away from this muddle for a few minutes.It'll do you a heap of good; you know it always does."
Smith shook his head reluctantly but firmly.
"Never again, Colonel. It can only be a matter of a few days now, andI'm not going to pull you, and your wife and daughter, into thelimelight if I can help it."
Colonel Dexter got out of his chair and walked to the office window.When he came back it was to say: "Are they sure-enough chasing you,John?--for something that you have done? Is that what you're trying totell me?"
"That is it--and they are nearly here. Now you know at least one of thereasons why I can't go with you to-night."
"I'll be shot if I do!" stormed the generous one. "I promised the MissusI'd bring you."
"You must make my excuses to her; and to Corona you may say that I amonce more carrying a gun. She will understand."
"Which means, I take it, that you've been telling Corry more than you'vetold the rest of us. That brings on more talk, John. I haven't said aword before, have I?"
"No."
"Well, I'm going to say it now: I've got only just one daughter in thewide, wide world, John."
Smith stood up and put his hands behind him, facing the older mansquarely.
"Colonel, I'd give ten years of my life, this minute, if I might go withyou to Hillcrest this evening and tell Corona what I have been wantingto tell her ever since I have come to know what her love might make ofme. The fact that I can't do it is the bitterest thing I have ever hadto face, or can ever be made to face."
Colonel Baldwin fell back into his swing-chair and thrust his hands intohis pockets.
"It beats the Dutch how things tangle themselves up for us poor mortalsevery little so-while," he commented, after a frowning pause. And then:"You haven't said anything like that to Corry, have you?"
"No."
"That was white, anyway. And now I suppose the other woman--this MissRich-some-thing-or-other over at the hotel--has come and dug you up andgot you on the end of her trail-rope. That's the way it goes when a manmixes and mingles too much. You never can tell--"
"Hold on," Smith interposed. "Whatever else I may be, I'm not that kindof a scoundrel. I don't owe Miss Richlander anything that I can't paywithout doing injustice to the woman I love. But in another way I am ascoundrel, Colonel. For the past two days I have been contemptibleenough to play upon a woman's vanity merely for the sake of keeping herfrom talking too much."
The grizzled old ranchman shook his head sorrowfully.
"I didn't think that of you, John; I sure didn't. Why, that's what youmight call a low-down, tin-horn sort of a game."
"It is just that, and I know it as well as you do. But it's the price Ihave to pay for my few days of grace. Miss Richlander knows theStantons; they've made it their business to get acquainted with her.One word from her to Crawford Stanton, and a wire from him to my hometown in the Middle West would settle me."
The older man straightened himself in his chair, and his steel-gray eyesblazed suddenly.
"Break away from 'em, John!" he urged. "Break it off short, and let 'emall do their damnedest! Away along at the first, Williams and I bothsaid you wasn't a crooked crook, and I'm believing it yet. When it comesto the show-down, we'll all fight for you, and they'll have to bring aderrick along if they want to snatch you out of the Timanyoni. You goover yonder to the Hophra House and tell that young woman that thebridle's off, and she can talk all she wants to!"
"No," said Smith shortly. "I know what I am doing, and I shall go on asI have begun. It's the only way. Matters are desperate enough with usnow, and if I should drop out----"
The telephone-bell was ringing, and Baldwin twisted his chair to bringhimself within reach of the desk set. The message was a brief one and atits finish the ranchman-president was frowning heavily.
"By Jupiter! it does seem as if the bad luck all comes in a bunch!" heprotested. "Williams was rushing things just a little too fast, andthey've lost a whole section of the dam by stripping the forms beforethe concrete was set. That puts us back another twenty-four hours, atleast. Don't that beat the mischief?"
Smith reached for his hat. "It's six o'clock," he said; "and Williams'sform-strippers have furnished one more reason why I shouldn't keep MissRichlander waiting for her dinner." And with that he cut the talk shortand went his way.
Brewster being only a one-night stand on the long playing circuitbetween Denver and the Pacific
coast, there was an open date at theopera-house, and with a blank evening before her, the Olympian beauty,making the _tete-a-tete_ dinner count for what it would, tightened herhold upon the one man available, demanding excitement. Nothing elseoffering, she suggested an evening auto drive, and Smith dutifullytelephoned Maxwell, the railroad superintendent, and borrowed arunabout.
Being left to his own choice of routes after the start was made, heheaded the machine up the river road, and the drive paused at the dam.Craving a new sensation, Miss Richlander had it in full measure when themachine had been braked to a stop at the construction camp. Williams,hoarse from much shouting and haggard-eyed for want of sleep, wasdriving his men fiercely in a fight against time. The night rise in theriver had already set in, and the slumped section of concrete had left abroad gap through which the water threatened to pour, endangering notonly the power-house directly beneath it, but also the main structure ofthe dam itself.
The stagings were black with men hurrying back and forth under the glareof the electrics, and the concrete gangs were laboring frantically toclear the wreck made by the crumbling mass, to the end that thecarpenters might bulkhead the gap with timbers and planks to hold backthe rising flood. The mixers had stopped temporarily, but the machinerywas held in readiness to go into action the moment the debris should beremoved and the new forms locked into place. Every now and then one ofWilliams's assistants, a red-headed young fellow with a voice like afog-horn, took readings of the climbing river level from a gauge in theslack water, calling out the figures in a singsong chant: "Nineteen_six_! Nineteen six and a _quarter_! Nineteen six and a _half_!"
"Get a move, you fellows there on the stage!" yelled Williams. "She'scoming up faster than usual to-night! Double pay if you get thatbulkhead in before the tide wets your feet!"
Smith felt as if he ought to get out of the car and help, but there wasnothing he could do. Miss Richlander had been silent for the better partof the drive from town, but now she began to talk.
"So this is what you left Lawrenceville for, is it, Montague?" she said,knitting her perfect brows at the hubbub and strife. "If I were nothere, I believe you would be down there, struggling with the rest ofthem."
"I certainly should," he answered briefly, adding: "not that I should beof much use."
"There are a good many easier ways of making money," she offered,including the entire industrial strife in the implied detraction.
"This is a man's way, asking for all--and the best--there is in a man,"he asserted. "You can't understand, of course; you have eaten the breadof profits and discount and interest all your life. But here issomething really creative. The world will be the richer for what isbeing done here; more mouths can be filled and more backs clothed. Thatis the true test of wealth, and the only test."
"And you are willing to live in a raw wilderness for the sake of havinga part in these crudities?"
"I may say that I had no choice, at first; it was this or nothing. But Imay also say that whatever the future may do to me, I shall always haveit to remember that for a little time I was a man, and not a tailor'smodel."
"Is that the way you are thinking now of your former life?" she gibed.
"It is the truth. The man you knew in Lawrenceville cared more for theset of a coat, for the color of a tie, for conventional ease and thelittle luxuries, than he did for his soul. And nobody thought enough ofhim to kick him alive and show him that he was strangling the only partof him that was at all worth saving."
"If your point of view appeals to me, as perhaps it does--as possibly itwould to any woman who can appreciate masculinity in a man, even thoughit be of the crudest--the life that is giving it to you certainly doesnot," she replied, with a little lip-curling of scorn. Then: "Youcouldn't bring your wife to such a place as Brewster, Montague."
He had no answer for this, and none was needed. Williams had caughtsight of the auto, and he came up, wiping his face with a redhandkerchief.
"I thought it must be you," he said to Smith. "Thank the Lord, we'regoing to escape, this one more time! The bulkhead's in, and we'll bedumping concrete in another fifteen minutes. But it was a narrowsqueak--an awful narrow squeak!"
Smith turned to his companion, saw permission in her eyes, andintroduced Williams. Somewhat to Smith's surprise, Miss Verda evinced asuddenly awakened interest in the engineer and in his work, making himtell the story of the near-disaster. While he was telling it, the roarof another auto rose above the clamor on the stagings and ColonelBaldwin's gray roadster drew up beside the borrowed runabout. Smith gaveone glance at the small, trimly coated figure in the mechanician's seatand ground his teeth in helpless fury.
In what followed he had little part or lot. Miss Richlander wished tosee the construction battle at shorter range, and Williams was openingthe door of the runabout. The colonel was afoot and was helping hisdaughter to alight. Smith swore a silent oath to keep his place, and hedid it; but Williams was already introducing Baldwin and Corona to MissRichlander. There was a bit of commonplace talk, and then the quartetwalked down the embankment and out upon the finished portion of the dam,Williams explaining the near-disaster as they went.
Smith sat back behind the pilot-wheel of the runabout and waited. Notfor a king's ransom would he have joined the group on the dam. Hesuspected shrewdly that Verda had already heard of Corona through theStantons; that she was inwardly rejoicing at the new hold upon him whichchance had flung in her way. At the end of Williams's fifteen minutesthe rattle and grind of the mixers began. When the stream of concretecame pouring through the high-tilted spouts, Smith looked to see thecolonel and Williams bringing the two women back to the camp level. Whatthe light of the masthead arcs showed him was the figure of one of thewomen returning alone, while the two men and the other woman went onacross the stagings to the farther river bank where the battery ofmixers fed the swiftly moving lift.
Smith did not get out to go and meet the returning figure; his couragewas not of that quality. But he could not pretend to be either asleep ordead when Corona came up between the two cars and spoke to him.
"You have nothing whatever to take back," she said, smiling up at himfrom her seat on the running-board of the roadster. "She is all you saidshe was--and more. She is gorgeously beautiful!"
Smith flung his freshly lighted cigar away and climbed out to sit besideher.
"What do you think of me?" he demanded bluntly.
"What should I think? Didn't I scold you for running away from her thatfirst evening? I am glad you thought better of it afterward."
"I am not thinking better of it at all--in the way you mean."
"But Miss Richlander is," was the quiet reply.
"You have a right to say anything you please; and after it is all said,to say it again. I am not the man you have been taking me for; not inany respect. Your father knows now, and he will tell you."
"Colonel-daddy has told me one thing--the thing you told him to tell me.And I am sorry--sorry and disappointed."
He smiled morosely. "Billy Starbuck calls the Timanyoni a half-reformedgun-country, and from the very first he has been urging me to 'goheeled,' as he phrases it."
"It isn't the mere carrying of a gun," she protested. "With most menthat would be only a prudent precaution for the leader in a fight likethis one you are making. But it means more than that to you; it means acomplete change of attitude toward your kind. Tell me if I am wrong."
"No; you are right. The time is coming when I shall be obliged to killsomebody. And I think I shall rather welcome it."
"Now you have gone so far away that I can hardly see you," she saidsoftly. "'Once in a blue moon,' you said, the impossible might happen.It _did_ happen in your case, didn't it?--giving you a chance to growand expand and to break with all the old traditions, whatever they were.And the break left you free to make of yourself what you should choose.You have all the abilities; you can reach out and take what other menhave to beg for. Once you thought you would take only the best, and thenyou grew so fast that we c
ould hardly keep you in sight. But now you aremeaning to take the worst."
"I don't understand," he said soberly.
"You will understand some day," she asserted, matching his sober tone."When that time comes, you will know that the only great men are thosewho love their fellow men; who are too big to be little; who can fightwithout hatred; who can die, if need be, that others may live."
"My God!" said the man, and though he said it under his breath therewas, pent up in the two words, the cry of a soul in travail; a soul towhom its own powers have suddenly been revealed, together with its lostopportunities and its crushing inability to rise to the heightssupernal.
"It came too soon--if I could only have had a little more time," he wassaying; but at that, the colonel and Williams came up, bringing MissRichlander, and the heart-mellowing moment was gone.
Smith drove the borrowed runabout back to town in sober silence, and theglorious beauty in the seat beside him did not try to make him talk.Perhaps she, too, was busy with thoughts of her own. At all events, whenSmith had helped her out of the car at the hotel entrance and had seenher as far as the elevator, she thanked him half absently and took hisexcuse, that he must return the runabout to Maxwell's garage, withoutlaying any further commands upon him.
Just as he was turning away, a bell-boy came across from the clerk'sdesk with a telegram for Miss Richlander. Smith had no excuse forlingering, but with the air thick with threats he made the tipping ofthe boy answer for a momentary stop-gap. Miss Verda tore the envelopeopen and read the enclosure with a fine-lined little frown coming andgoing between her eyes.
"It's from Tucker Jibbey," she said, glancing up at Smith. "Some one hastold him where we are, and he is following us. He says he'll be here onthe evening train. Will you meet him and tell him I've gone to bed?"
At the mention of Jibbey, the money-spoiled son of the man who stoodnext to Josiah Richlander in the credit ratings, and Lawrenceville'sbest imitation of a _flaneur_, Smith's first emotion was one of reliefat the thought that Jibbey would at least divide time with him in theentertainment of the bored beauty; then he remembered that Jibbey hadonce considered him a rival, and that the sham "rounder's" presence inBrewster would constitute a menace more threatening than all the othersput together.
"I can't meet Tucker," he said bluntly. "You know very well I can't."
"That's so," was the quiet reply. "Of course, you can't. What will youdo when he comes?--run away?"
"No; I can't do that, either. I shall keep out of his way, if I can. Ifhe finds me and makes any bad breaks, he'll get what's coming to him. Ifhe's worth anything to you, you'll put him on the stage in the morningand send him up into the mountains to join your father."
"The idea!" she laughed. "He's not coming out here to see father. PoorTucker! If he could only know what he is in for!" Then: "It is beginningto look as if you might have to go still deeper in debt to me, Montague.There is one more thing I'd like to do before I leave Brewster. If I'llpromise to keep Tucker away from you, will you drive me out to theBaldwins' to-morrow afternoon? I want to see the colonel's fine horses,and he has invited me, you know."
Smith's eyes darkened.
"There is a limit, Verda, and you've reached it," he said quickly. "Ifthe colonel invited you to Hillcrest, it was because you didn't leavehim any chance not to. I resign in favor of Jibbey," and with that hehanded her into the waiting elevator and said: "Good night."
The Real Man Page 19