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CHAPTER XXIII
On Demand

If there was anything left of his mill but the frame, Wiley’s ears had played him false; and yet he stood and looked after Virginia. This grinding crash, this pandemonium of destruction which had left him sick with fear, had put joy into her dancing feet. Yes, she had danced–like a child that hears good news or runs to meet its father–and he had thought her worthy of his love! He had battered his brain for weeks to devise some plan whereby he could make his peace; he had taken her blows like a dog; and she had answered with this. Whether it was Stiff Neck George or some other man, she had known both his presence and his purpose; and now she rejoiced in the catastrophe. A hundred dollars would buy him a squaw more worthy of confidence and love.

There was darkness in the mill, but when they brought the flares, Wiley saw that the ruin was complete. From the rock breaker to the concentrators there was nothing but splintered wood, twisted iron and upturned tanks; and the demon of destruction which had raged down through its length was nothing but the fly-wheel of the rock crusher. What power had uprooted it he was at a loss to conjecture but, a full ton in weight, it had jumped from its frame and plowed its way down through the mill. The ore-bins were intact, for the fly-wheel had overleapt them, but tables and tanks and concentrating jigs were utterly smashed and ruined. Even the wall of the mill had given way before it and the cold light of dawn crept in through a jagged aperture that marked its resistless course. The fly-wheel was gone and the damage was done; but there was still, of course, the post mortem. What had caused that massive shafting, with its ponderous speeding wheels, to leap from its bearings and go crashing down the descent, laying everything before it in ruins? Wiley summoned his engineer and, in the shattered jaws of the rock-breaker, they found the innocent-looking instrument of destruction. It was not a stick of dynamite, but a heavy steel sledge-hammer that had been cast into the jaws of the crusher. They had closed down upon it, the hammer had resisted, and then all the momentum of that whirling double fly-wheel had been brought to bear against it. Yet the hammer could not be crushed and, as the wheel had applied its weight, the resistance to its force had caused it to leap from its bearings and go hurtling down the incline.

It was a very complete job, even better than dynamiting, and yet Wiley did not blame it on Stiff Neck George. Some miner, some millman, who had seen it done before, had repeated the performance for his benefit. Or was it, perhaps, for Virginia’s? He remembered the engineer who had fed his greasy overalls into the gearings of the hoist. He had boarded with Virginia and had waved her a parting kiss–but this time it would be some trammer. Wiley gave them all their time on general principles, but he did not go down to witness the farewell. Whether the trammer kissed her good-by or simply kissed her hand was immaterial to him now–and, in case it might have been a millman or some miner underground, he laid off the whole night shift. The night-watchman went too, and the stage the following evening brought out a cook to start up the boarding-house.

Wiley did not guess it–he knew it–Virginia Huff was the witch who had mixed the hell-broth that had raised up all this treachery against him. She had poisoned his men’s minds and incited them to vandalism, but it would not happen again. He had been a fool to endure it so long; but she could starve now, for all that he cared. If she thought she could twist him like a ring around her finger while she egged on these men to wreck his mill, she had one more guess coming and then she would be right, for he had come to his senses at last. This was not the Virginia that he had known and loved–the Virginia he had played with in his youth–but a warped and embittered Virginia, a waspish, heartless vixen who had never been anything but cold. She had worked him deliberately, resorting to woman’s wiles to gain what was not her due, and now when his mill was smashed into kindling wood, she danced and laughed for joy.

What kind of a mind could a woman have, to do such a senseless thing and then laugh at the man who had helped her? She was kind to her cats, the neighbors all liked her, to everyone else she seemed human; but when it came to him she was a devil of hate, a fiend of ruthless cunning. She would tell him to his face–at three in the morning, when he had caught her running away from the mill–that she hoped his old mill would be ruined. And now, when the trammer or some other soft-head had sent one of his sledges through the crusher, she was laughing up her sleeve. But there was a hereafter coming for Virginia and her mother and they would get no more favors from him. If they crept to his feet and said they were starving he would tell them to get out and hustle. Meanwhile they had sent him broke.

There would be no more ore concentrated in the Paymaster mill during the life of his bond and lease; and unless he could raise some money, and raise it quick, he was due to lose his mine. Whether he had abetted it or not, Blount would not fail to take advantage of this last, staggering blow to his fortunes; and there were notes and paper due which would easily serve as a pretext for a writ of attachment on his mine. Bad news travels fast, but Wiley set out to beat it by snatching at his one remaining chance. His mill was ruined, his output was stopped, but he still had the ore underground–and the buyers were crazy to get it. He sent out identical messages to ten big consumers and then sat down to await the results. They came with a rush, ten scrambling frantic bids for his total output for one year–and one of them was for eighty-four dollars! It was from the biggest buyer of them all, a man who was reputed to be the representative of a foreign government, a man who had paid cash on the nail. Wiley pondered a while, looked up his obligations to Blount, and accepted immediately by wire. But there was one proviso–he demanded an advance payment, which the buyer promptly wired to his bank. Then Wiley twisted up his lip and waited.

Blount appeared the next day, dropping in casually as was his wont; but there was a cold, killing look in his eye and he had a deputy sheriff as a witness. They looked through the mill and Blount asked several leading questions before he ventured to come to the point, but at last he cleared his throat and spoke up.

“Well, Wiley,” he said, drawing some papers from his pocket, “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to call your notes. If it were my money it would be different; but I’m a banker, you understand, and your paper is long overdue. I’ve extended it before because I admired your courage and thought you might possibly pull through, but this accident to your mill has impaired the property and I can’t let it run any longer.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Wiley, “but you don’t need to apologize, because there won’t be any attachments and judgments. Just tell me how much it comes to and I’ll write you out a check.” He took the notes from Blount’s palsied hand and spread them on the desk before him, but as he was jotting down the totals Blount grabbed them wildly away.

“Not much!” he exclaimed, “I don’t surrender those notes until the money is put in my hands! Your check isn’t worth a pen stroke!”

“Well, I don’t know,” returned Wiley. “There may be two opinions about that. I had a hunch, Mr. Blount, that you might spring something like this and so I made arrangements to accommodate you.”

“But you’re strapped! You owe everybody!” cried Blount in a passion. “I don’t believe you’ve got a cent!”

“Just a minute,” said Wiley, and took down his telephone. “Hello,” he called, “get me the First National Bank.” He waited then, twiddling his pencil placidly, while Blount’s great neck swelled out with venom. “I figure,” went on Wiley, as he waited for the connection, “that I owe you twenty-two thousand dollars, with interest amounting to two-eighty-three, sixty-one. Here’s your check, all filled out, and when I get the bank you can ask the cashier if it’s good.”

“But, Wiley–,” began Blount.

“Hello! Hello! Is this the First National? This is Holman, out at the Paymaster. Mr. Blount is here and, as I’m closing my account with him─”

“No! No!” cried Blount in a panic, but Wiley went on with his talk.

“Yes,” he said, “the check is for twenty-two thousand, two eighty-three, sixty-one. Will you please set that amount aside to meet the payment on this check? All right, Mr. Blount, here’s the bank.”

He held out the instrument and Blount seized it roughly, for he had heard of fake telephone messages before, but when he listened he recognized the voice.

“Oh, Agnew?” he hailed, smiling genially at the ’phone. “Well, sorry to have troubled you, I’m sure. Oh, yes, yes; I know Wiley is all right; he’s good with us for twenty thousand more. No, never mind the certification; we may let the matter drop. Yes, thank you very much–good-by!”

He hung up the receiver and turned to Wiley; but the cold, killing look was gone.

“Wiley,” he chuckled, slapping him heartily on the back, “you certainly have put one over. It isn’t every day that I find a man waiting with the check all made out to a cent; and somehow–well, I hate to take the money.”

“Yes, I know how you suffer,” replied Wiley, grimly, “but let’s get the agony over.” He held out the check and Blount accepted it reluctantly, passing over the notes with a sigh.

But for the trifling detail that “demand” had not been waived Blount could have gone into court without even asking for his money and secured an attachment against the property. But Wiley’s firm insistence that all cut-throat clauses should be omitted had compelled Blount to demand payment on the notes; and then, by some process which still remained a mystery, he had raised the full amount to meet the payment. And so once more, after going to all the trouble of bringing a deputy sheriff along, Blount found himself balked and his dreams of judgment and lien permanently banished to the limbo of lost hopes.

Wiley’s over-prompt payment had confused Blount for the moment and thrown him into a panic. He had counted confidently upon crushing him at a blow and cutting short his inimical activities, but now of a sudden he found himself threatened with the loss of all his interests. If Wiley had made profits beyond his calculations–but no, he could not, for under the terms of their bond and lease one-tenth of the net profit on all his shipments was sent direct to Blount. And if what Wiley had received was only ten times the Company’s royalty, he was still in debt to someone. Blount had followed him closely and he knew that his expenses had absorbed all his profits, up to date. But perhaps–and Blount paused–perhaps the other bank, or some outside parties, were backing him in his enterprise. He would have to look that matter up–first. But if not–if he was still running his mine as he had from the first, on his nerve and his diamond ring–then there were ways and means which should be speedily invoked to prevent him from meeting his payments.

Scarcely a month remained before the bond and lease lapsed–and Wiley’s option on Blount’s personal stock–but any day he might raise the money and, by taking over Blount’s stock, place him out of the running for good. These tungsten buyers who were so avid for its product might purchase an interest in the mine; they might advance the fifty thousand and take it over under the bond and lease, and bring all his plans to naught. As Blount paced about the office he suddenly saw himself defrauded of that which he had worked for for years. He saw his stock bought up first, to deprive him of the royalties, and then the mine snatched from his hands; and all he would have left would be the forfeited Huff stock and the small payment it would earn from the sale. Something would have to be done, and done every minute, to prevent him from carrying out his purpose.

Blount paused in his nervous pacing and held out a flabby hand to Wiley, who was writing away at his desk.

“Well, Wiley,” he said, “I guess I must be going. But any time you need money─” He stopped and smiled amiably, in the soft, easy way he had when he wished to appear harmless as a dove, and Wiley glanced up briefly from his work.

“Yes, thank you, Mr. Blount,” he said. But he did not take his hand.

CHAPTER XXIV
Double Trouble

The next two weeks of Wiley Holman’s life were packed so full of trouble that there were those who almost pitied him, though the word had been passed around to lay off. It was Samuel J. Blount who was making the trouble, and who notified the rest to keep out, and so great was his influence in all the desert country that no one dared to interfere. What he did was all legal and according to business ethics, but it gloved the iron hand. Blount was reaching for the mine and he intended to get it, if he had to crush his man. The attachments and suits were but the shadow boxing of the bout; the rough stuff was held in reserve. And somehow Wiley sensed this, for he sat tight at the mine and hired a lawyer to meet the suits. His job was mining ore and he shoveled it out by the ton.

The distressing accidents had suddenly ceased since he began to board his own men at the mine and, while his lawyer stalled and haggled to fight off an injunction, he rushed his ore to the railroad. It was too precious to ship loose, for at eighty-four dollars a unit it was worth over four dollars a pound; he sent it out sacked, with an armed guard on each truck to see that it was delivered and receipted for. As the checks came back he paid off all his debts, thus depriving Blount of his favorite club; and then, while Blount was casting about for new weapons, he began to lay aside his profits.

They rolled up monstrously, for each five-ton truck load added several thousand dollars to his bank account, but the time was getting short. Less than three weeks remained before the bond and lease expired, and still Wiley was playing to win. He crammed his mine with men, snatching the ore from the stopes as the bonanza leasers had done at Tonopah, and doubling the miner’s pay with bonuses. Every truck driver received his bonus, and night and day the great motors went thundering across the desert. The ore came up from below and was dumped on a jig, where it was sorted and hastily sacked; and after that there was nothing to do but sent it under guard to the railroad. There was no milling, no smelting, no tedious process of reduction; but the raw picked ore was rushed to the East and the checks came promptly back.

Blount was fully informed now of the terms of his contract and of the source of his sudden wealth, but there was no way of reaching the buyer. A great war was on, every minute was precious–and every ounce of the tungsten was needed. The munitions makers could not pause for a single day in their mad rush to fill their contracts. The only ray of hope that Blount could see was that the price had broken to sixty dollars a unit. Wiley’s contract called for eighty-four, throughout the full year–but suppose he should lose his mine. And suppose Blount should win it. He could offer better terms, provided always that the buyer would accommodate him now. Suppose, for instance, that the fat daily checks should cease coming during the life of the lease. That could easily be explained–it might be an error in book-keeping–but it would make quite a difference to Wiley. And in return for some such favor Blount could afford to sell the tungsten for, say, fifty-five dollars a unit.

Blount was a careful man. He did not trust his message to the wires, nor did he put it on paper to convict him; he simply disappeared–but when he came back Wiley’s lawyer was waiting with a check. It was for twenty thousand dollars, and in return for this payment the lawyer demanded all of Blount’s stock. Four hundred thousand shares, worth five dollars apiece if the bond and lease should lapse, and called for under the option at five cents! In those few short days, while Blount had been speeding East, Wiley had piled up this profit and more–and now he was demanding his stock!

“No!” said Blount, “that option is invalid because it was obtained by deception and fraud, and therefore I refuse to recognize it.”

“Very well,” replied the lawyer, who made his living out of controversies, and, summoning witnesses to his offer, he placed the money in the hands of the court and plunged into furious litigation. It was furious, in a way, and yet not so furious as the next day and the next passed by; for the lawyer was a business man and dependent upon the good will of Blount. It was a civil suit and, since Wiley could not appear to state his case in Court, it was postponed by mutual consent.

It had come over Wiley that, as long as he stood guard, no accident would happen at the mine; but he was equally convinced that, the moment he left it, the unexpected would happen. So, since Blount had elected to fight his suit, he let the fate of his option wait while he piled up money for his coup. As an individual, Blount might resist the sale of his stock; but as President of the Company he and his Board of Directors had given Wiley a valid bond and lease and, acting under its terms, Wiley still had an opportunity to gain a clear title to the mine. What happened to the stock could be thrashed out later, but with the Paymaster in his possession he could laugh his enemies to scorn–and he did not intend to be jumped! For who could tell, among these men who swarmed about him, which ones might be hired emissaries of Blount; and, once he was out of sight, they might seize the mine and hold it against all comers.

It was a thing which had been done before, and was likely to be done again; and as the days slipped by, bringing him closer to the end, he looked about for some agent. Had he a man that he could trust to hold the mine, while he went into town to gain title to it? He looked them all over but, knowing Blount as he did, and the weakness of human nature, he hesitated and decided against it. No, it was better by far that heshould hold the mine–for possession, in mining, is everything–and send someone to pay over the money. That would be perfectly legal, and anyone could do it, but here again he hesitated. The zeal of his lawyer was failing of late–could he trust him to make the payment, in a town that was owned by Blount? Would he offer it legally and demand a legal surrender, and come out and put the deed in his hand? He might, but Wiley doubted it.

There was something going on regarding the payments for his shipments which he was unable to straighten out over the ’phone, and his lawyer was neglecting even that. And yet, if those checks were held up much longer it might seriously interfere with his payment. He had wired repeatedly, but either the messages were not delivered or his buyer was trying to welch on his contract. What he wanted was an agent, to go directly to the buyer and get the matter adjusted. Wiley thought the matter over, then he ’phoned his lawyer to forget it and wrote direct to an express company, enclosing his bills of lading and authorizing them to collect the account. When it came to collecting bills you could trust the express company–and you could trust Uncle Sam with your mail–but as to the people in Vegas, and especially the telephone girl, he had his well-established doubts. His telegraphic messages went out over the ’phone and were not a matter of record and if she happened to be eating a box of Blount’s candy she might forget to relay them. It was borne in upon him, in fact, more strongly every day, that there are very few people you can trust. With a suitcase, yes–but with a mine worth millions? That calls for something more than common honesty.

The fight for the Paymaster, and Wiley’s race against time, was now on every tongue, and as the value of the property went up there was a sudden flurry in the stock. Men who had hoarded it secretly for eight and ten years, men who had moved to the ends of the world, all heard of the fabulous wealth of the new Paymaster and wrote in to offer their stock. Not to offer it, exactly, but to place it on record; and others began as quietly to buy. It was known that the royalties had piled up an accruing dividend of at least twenty cents a share; and with the sale of it imminent–and a greater rise coming in case there was no sale–there would be a further increase in value. It was good, in fact, for thirty cents cash, with a gambling chance up to five dollars; and the wise ones began to buy. Men he had not seen for years dropped in on Wiley to ask his advice about their stock; and one evening in his office, he looked up from his work to see the familiar face of Death Valley Charley.

“Hello there, Charley,” he said, still working. “Awful busy. What is it you want?”

“Virginia wants her stock,” answered Charley simply and blinked as he stood waiting the answer. There was a war on now between the Huffs and Holmans into which Wiley’s father had been drawn; and since Honest John had repudiated his son’s acts and disclaimed all interest in his deal, Charley knew that Wiley was bitter. He had cut off the Widow from her one source of revenue but, when she had accused him of doing it for his father, Wiley had forgotten the last of his chivalry. Not only did he board all his men himself but he promised to fire any man he had who was seen taking a meal at the Widow’s. It was war to the knife, and Charley knew it, but he blinked his eyes and stood firm.

“What stock?” demanded Wiley, and then he closed his lips and his eyes turned fighting gray. “You tell her,” he said, “if she wants her stock, to come and get it herself.”

“But she sent me to get it!” objected Charley obstinately.

“Yes, and I send you back,” answered Wiley. “I gave her that stock twice, and I made it what it is, and if she wants it she can come and ask for it.”

“And will you give it to her?” asked Charley, but Wiley only grunted and went ahead with his writing.

It was apparent to him what was in the wind. The Widow had written to demand of his father some return for the damage to her business; and Honest John had replied, and sent Wiley a copy, that he was in no ways responsible for his acts. This letter to Wiley had been followed by another in which his father had rebuked him for persecuting Mrs. Huff, and Wiley had replied with five pages, closely written, reciting his side of the case. At this John Holman had declared himself neutral and, beyond repeating his offer to buy the Widow’s stock, had disclaimed all interest in her affairs. But now, with her stock still in Blount’s hands and this last source of revenue closed to her, the Widow was left no alternative but to appeal indirectly to Wiley. What other way then was open, if she was ever to win back her stock, but to get back Virginia’s shares and sell them to raise the eight hundred dollars? Wiley grumbled to himself as Death Valley Charley turned away and went on writing his letter.

It had been a surprise, after his break with Virginia, to discover that it left him almost glad. It had removed a burden that had weighed him down for months, and it left him free to act. He could protect his property now as it should be protected, without thought of her or anybody; and he could board his own men and keep the gospel of hate from being constantly dinned into their ears. They were honest, simple miners, easily swayed by a woman’s distress, but equally susceptible to the lure of gold; and now with a bonus after the minimum of work they were tearing out the ore like Titans. They were loyal and satisfied, greeting his coming with a friendly smile; but if Virginia got hold of them, or her venomous mother, where then would be his discipline?

He was deep in his work when a shadow fell upon his desk and he looked up to see–Virginia.