Ridgway of Montana

by Raine, William MacLeod

  She broke down again and dabbed at her eyes with her kerchief. Sam, very much embarrassed but not at all displeased at this display of feeling, patted her dark hair and encouraged her to composure.

  "There. It's all right, now, ma'am. Sure you'll be happy. Any mother that's got kids like these—"

  He caught up the little girl in his arms by way of diverting attention from himself.

  This gave a new notion to the impulsive little woman.

  "I want you to kiss them both. Come here, Kennie. This is Mr. Yesler, and he is the best man you've ever seen. I want you to remember that he has been our best friend."

  "Yes, mama."

  "Oh, sho, ma'am!" protested the overwhelmed cattleman, kissing both the children, nevertheless.

  Pelton laughed. He felt a trifle hysterical himself. "If she thinks it she'll say it when she feels that way. I'm right surprised she don't kiss you, too."

  "I will," announced Norma promptly, with a pretty little tide of color.

  She turned toward him, and Yesler, laughing, met the red lips of the new friend he had made.

  "Now, you've got just grounds for shooting me," he said gaily, and instantly regretted his infelicitous remark.

  For both husband and wife fell grave at his words. It was Pelton that answered them.

  "I've been taught a lesson, Mr. Yesler. I'm never going to pack a gun again as long as I live, unless I'm hunting or something of that sort, and I'm never going to drink another drop of liquor. It's all right for some men, but it isn't right for me."

  "Glad to hear it. I never did believe in the hip-pocket habit. I've lived here twenty years, and I never found it necessary except on special occasions. When it comes to whisky, I reckon we'd all be better without it."

  Yesler made his escape at the earliest opportunity and left them alone together. He lunched at the club, attended to some correspondence he had, and about 3:30 drifted down the street toward the post-office. He had expectations of meeting a young woman who often passed about that time on her way home from school duties.

  It was, however, another young woman whose bow he met in front of Mesa's largest department store.

  "Good afternoon, Miss Balfour."

  She nodded greeting and cast eyes of derision on him.

  "I've been hearing about you. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

  "Yes, ma'am. What for in particular? There are so many things."

  "You're a fine Christian, aren't you?" she scoffed.

  "I ain't much of a one. That's a fact," he admitted. "What is it this time—poker?"

  "No, it isn't poker. Worse than that. You've been setting a deplorable example to the young."

  "To young ladies—like Miss Virginia?" he wanted to know.

  "No, to young Christians. I don't know what our good deacons will say about it." She illuminated her severity with a flashing smile. "Don't you know that the sins of the fathers are to descend upon their children even to the third and fourth generation? Don't you know that when a man does wrong he must die punished, and his children and his wife, of course, and that the proper thing to do is to stand back and thank Heaven we haven't been vile sinners?"

  "Now, don't you begin on that, Miss Virginia," he warned.

  "And after the man had disgraced himself and shot you, after all respectable people had given him an extra kick to let him know he must stay down and had then turned their backs upon him. I'm not surprised that you're ashamed."

  "Where did you get hold of this fairy-tale?" he plucked up courage to demand.

  "From Norma Pelton. She told me everything, the whole story from beginning to end."

  "It's right funny you should be calling on her, and you a respectable young lady—unless you went to deliver that extra kick you was mentioning," he grinned.

  She dropped her raillery. "It was splendid. I meant to ask Mr. Ridgway to do something for them, but this is so much better. It takes them away from the place of his disgrace and away from temptation. Oh, I don't wonder Norma kissed you."

  "She told you that, too, did she?"

  "Yes. I should have done it, too, in her place."

  He glanced round placidly. "It's a right public place here, but—"

  "Don't be afraid. I'm not going to." And before she disappeared within the portals of the department store she gave him one last thrust. "It's not so public up in the library. Perhaps if you happen to be going that way?"

  She left her communication a fragment, but he thought it worth acting upon. Among the library shelves he found Laska deep in a new volume on domestic science.

  "This ain't any kind of day to be fooling away your time on cook-books. Come out into the sun and live," he invited.

  They walked past the gallows-frames and the slag-dumps and the shaft-houses into the brown hills beyond the point where green copper streaks showed and spurred the greed of man. It was a day of spring sunshine, the good old earth astir with her annual recreation. The roadside was busy with this serious affair of living. Ants and crawling things moved to and fro about their business. Squirrels raced across the road and stood up at a safe distance to gaze at these intruders. Birds flashed back and forth, hurried little carpenters busy with the specifications for their new nests. Eager palpitating life was the key-note of the universe.

  "Virginia told me about the Peltons," Laska said, after a pause.

  "It's spreading almost as fast as if it were a secret," he smiled. "I'm expecting to find it in the paper when we get back."

  "I'm so glad you did it."

  "Well, you're to blame."

  "I!" She looked at him in surprise.

  "Partly. You told me how things were going with them. That seemed to put it up to me to give Pelton a chance."

  "I certainly didn't mean it that way. I had no right to ask you to do anything about it."

  "Mebbe it was the facts put it up to me. Anyhow, I felt responsible."

  "Mr. Roper once told me that you always feel responsible when you hear anybody is in trouble," the young woman answered.

  "Roper's a goat. Nobody ever pays any attention to him."

  Presently they diverged from the road and sat down on a great flat rock which dropped out from the hillside like a park seat. For he was still far from strong and needed frequent rests. Their talk was desultory, for they had reached that stage of friendship at which it is not necessary to bridge silence with idle small talk. Here, by some whim of fate, the word was spoken. He knew he loved her, but he had not meant to say it yet.

  But when her steady gray eyes came back to his after a long stillness, the meeting brought him a strange feeling that forced his hand.

  "I love you, Laska. Will you be my wife?" he asked quietly.

  "Yes, Sam," she answered directly. That was all. It was settled with a word. There in the sunshine he kissed her and sealed the compact, and afterward, when the sun was low among the hill spurs, they went back happily to take up again the work that awaited them.

  CHAPTER 25. FRIENDLY ENEMIES

  Ridgway had promised Aline that he would see her soon, and when he found himself in New York he called at the big house on Fifth Avenue, which had for so long been identified as the home of Simon Harley. It bore his impress stamped on it. Its austerity suggested the Puritan rather than the classic conception of simplicity. The immense rooms were as chill as dungeons, and the forlorn little figure in black, lost in the loneliness of their bleakness, wandered to and fro among her retinue of servants like a butterfly beating its wings against a pane of glass.

  With both hands extended she ran forward to meet her guest.

  "I'm so glad, so glad, so glad to see you."

  The joy-note in her voice was irrepressible. She had been alone for weeks with the conventional gloom that made an obsession of the shadow of death which enveloped the house. All voices and footsteps had been subdued to harmonize with the grief of the mistress of this mausoleum. Now she heard the sharp tread of this man unafraid, and saw the alert vitality of his confident bearin
g. It was like a breath of the hills to a parched traveler.

  "I told you I would come."

  "Yes. I've been looking for you every day. I've checked each one off on my calendar. It's been three weeks and five days since I saw you."

  "I thought it was a year," he laughed, and the sound of his uncurbed voice rang strangely in this room given to murmurs.

  "Tell me about everything. How is Virginia, and Mrs. Mott, and Mr. Yesler? And is he really engaged to that sweet little school-teacher? And how does Mr. Hobart like being senator?"

  "Not more than a dozen questions permitted at a time. Begin again, please."

  "First, then, when did you reach the city?"

  He consulted his watch. "Just two hours and twenty-seven minutes ago."

  "And how long are you going to stay?"

  "That depends."

  "On what?"

  "For one thing, on whether you treat me well," he smiled.

  "Oh, I'll treat you well. I never was so glad to see a real live somebody in my life. It's been pretty bad here." She gave a dreary little smile as she glanced around at the funereal air of the place. "Do you know, I don't think we think of death in the right way? Or, maybe, I'm a heathen and haven't the proper feelings."

  She had sat down on one of the stiff divans, and Ridgway found a place beside her.

  "Suppose you tell me about it," he suggested.

  "I know I must be wrong, and you'll be shocked when you hear."

  "Very likely."

  "I can't help feeling that the living have rights, too," she began dubiously. "If they would let me alone I could be sorry in my own way, but I don't see why I have to make a parade of grief. It seems to—to cheapen one's feelings, you know."

  He nodded. "Just as if you had to measure your friendship for the dead with a yardstick of Mother Grundy. It's a hideous imposition laid on us by custom, one of Ibsen's ghosts."

  "It's so good to hear you say that. And do you think I may begin to be happy again?"

  "I think it would be allowable to start with one smile a day, say, and gradually increase the dose," he jested. "In the course of a week, if it seems to agree with you, try a laugh."

  She made the experiment without waiting the week, amused at his whimsical way of putting it. Nevertheless, the sound of her own laughter gave her a little shock.

  "You came on business, I suppose?" she said presently.

  "Yes. I came to raise a million dollars for some improvements I want to make."

  "Let me lend it to you," she proposed eagerly.

  "That would be a good one. I'm going to use it to fight the Consolidated. Since you are now its chief stockholder you would be letting me have money with which to fight you."

  "I shouldn't care about that. I hope you beat me."

  "You're my enemy now. That's not the way to talk." His eyes twinkled merrily.

  "Am I your enemy? Let's be friendly enemies, then. And there's something I want to talk to you about. Before he died Mr. Harley told me he had made you an offer. I didn't understand the details, but you were to be in charge of all the copper-mines in the country. Wasn't that it?"

  "Something of that sort. I declined the proposition."

  "I want you to take it now and manage everything for me. I don't know Mr. Harley's associates, but I can trust you. You can arrange it any way you like, but I want to feel that you have the responsibility."

  He saw again that vision of power—all the copper interests of the country pooled, with himself at the head of the combination. He knew it would not be so easy to arrange as she thought, for, though she had inherited Harley's wealth, she had not taken over his prestige and force. There would be other candidates for leadership. But if he managed her campaign Aline's great wealth must turn the scale in their favor.

  "You must think this over again. You must talk it over with your advisers before we come to a decision," he said gravely.

  "I've told Mr. Jarmyn. He says the idea is utterly impossible. But we'll show him, won't we? It's my money and my stock, not his. I don't see why he should dictate. He's always 'My dear ladying' me. I won't have it," she pouted.

  The fighting gleam was in Ridgway's eyes now. "So Mr. Jannyn thinks it is impossible, does he?"

  "That's what he said. He thinks you wouldn't do at all."

  "If you really mean it we'll show him about that."

  She shook hands with him on it.

  "You're very good to me," she said, so naively that he could not keep back his smile.

  "Most people would say I was very good to myself. What you offer me is a thing I might have fought for all my life and never won."

  "Then I'm glad if it pleases you. That's enough about business. Now, we'll talk about something important."

  He could think of only one thing more important to him than this, but it appeared she meant plans to see as much as possible of him while he was in the city.

  "I suppose you have any number of other friends here that will want you?" she said.

  "They can't have me if this friend wants me," he answered, with that deep glow in his eyes she recognized from of old; and before she could summon her reserves of defense he asked: "Do you want me, Aline?"

  His meaning came to her with a kind of sweet shame. "No, no, no—not yet," she cried.

  "Dear," he answered, taking her little hand in his big one, "only this now: that I can't help wanting to be near you to comfort you, because I love you. For everything else, I am content to wait."

  "And I love you," the girl-widow answered, a flush dyeing her cheeks. "But I ought not to tell you yet, ought I?"

  There was that in her radiant tear-dewed eyes that stirred the deepest stores of tenderness in the man. His finer instincts, vandal and pagan though he was, responded to it.

  "It is right that you should tell me, since it is true, but it is right, too, that we should wait."

  "It is sweet to know that you love me. There are so many things I don't understand. You must help me. You are so strong and so sure, and I am so helpless."

  "You dear innocent, so strong in your weakness," he murmured to himself.

  "You must be a guide to me and a teacher."

  "And you a conscience to me," he smiled, not without amusement at the thought.

  She took it seriously. "But I'm afraid I can't. You know so much better than I do what is right."

  "I'm quite a paragon of virtue," he confessed.

  "You're so sure of everything. You took it for granted that I loved you. Why were you so sure?"

  "I was just as sure as you were that I cared for you. Confess."

  She whispered it. "Yes, I knew it, but when you did not come I thought, perhaps—— You see, I'm not strong or clever. I can't help you as Virginia could." She stopped, the color washing from her face. "I had forgotten. You have no right to love me—nor I you," she faltered.

  "Girl o' mine, we have every right in the world. Love is never wrong unless it is a theft or a robbery. There is nothing between me and Virginia that is not artificial and conventional, no tie that ought not to be broken, none that should ever of right have existed. Love has the right of way before mere convention a hundredfold."

  "Ah! If I were sure."

  "But I was to be a teacher to you and a judge for you."

  "And I was to be a conscience to you."

  "But on this I am quite clear. I can be a conscience to myself. However, there is no hurry. Time's a great solvent."

  "And we can go on loving each other in the meantime."

  He lifted her little pink fingers and kissed them. "Yes, we can do that all the time."

  CHAPTER 26. BREAKS ONE AND MAKES ANOTHER ENGAGEMENT

  Miss Balfour's glass made her irritably aware of cheeks unduly flushed and eyes unusually bright. Since she prided herself on being sufficient for the emergencies of life, she cast about in her mind to determine which of the interviews that lay before her was responsible for her excitement. It was, to be sure, an unusual experience for a young wom
an to be told that her fiance would be unable to marry her, owing to a subsequent engagement, but she looked forward to it with keen anticipation, and would not have missed it for the world. Since she pushed the thought of the other interview into the background of her mind and refused to contemplate it at all, she did not see how that could lend any impetus to her pulse.

  But though she was pleasantly excited as she swept into the reception-room, Ridgway was unable to detect the fact in her cool little nod and frank, careless handshake. Indeed, she looked so entirely mistress of herself, so much the perfectly gowned exquisite, that he began to dread anew the task he had set himself. It is not a pleasant thing under the most favorable circumstances to beg off from marrying a young woman one has engaged oneself to, and Ridgway did not find it easier because the young woman looked every inch a queen, and was so manifestly far from suspecting the object of his call.

  "I haven't had a chance to congratulate you personally yet," she said, after they had drifted to chairs. "I've been immensely proud of you."

  "I got your note. It was good of you to write as soon as you heard."

  She swept him with one of her smile-lit side glances. "Though, of course, in a way, I was felicitating myself when I congratulated you."

  "You mean?"

  She laughed with velvet maliciousness. "Oh, well, I'm dragged into the orbit of your greatness, am I not? As the wife of the president of the Greater Consolidated Copper Company—the immense combine that takes in practically all the larger copper properties in the country—I should come in for a share of reflected glory, you know."

  Ridgway bit his lip and took a deep breath, but before he had found words she was off again. She had no intention of letting him descent from the rack yet.

  "How did you do it? By what magic did you bring it about? Of course, I've read the newspapers' accounts, seen your features and your history butchered in a dozen Sunday horrors, and thanked Heaven no enterprising reporter guessed enough to use me as copy. Every paper I have picked up for weeks has been full of you and the story of how you took Wall Street by the throat. But I suspect they were all guesses, merely superficial rumors except as to the main facts. What I want to know is the inside story—the lever by means of which you pried open the door leading to the inner circle of financial magnates. You have often told me how tightly barred that door is. What was the open-sesame you used as a countersign to make the keeper of the gate unbolt?"