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CHAPTER XVII
Peace–and the Price
In the justice court at Vegas the Widow Huff met her match in the person of the magistrate, who warned her peremptorily that if she interrupted again he would commit her for contempt of court. Then the bailiff smote his desk a resounding blow and there was silence in the presence of the law. It was a new thing to her, this power called the law and that accuser of all offenders, The People; and before she had finished she learned the great truth that no one is above the law. It governs us all and, but for the mercy of the courts, would land most of our hot-heads in jail. But though it was proved beyond the peradventure of a doubt that the Widow had attempted violence it was tacitly understood that, being a woman, there would be no actual commitment.
Wiley Holman came forward and informed the court that the defendant had threatened his life and upon two occasions and had made assaults upon his person with the avowed intention of killing him. Upon being questioned by the judge he admitted recognizing a shotgun, and three buckshot which had been extracted from his leg; but in a voluntary statement he expressed the opinion that the defendant was hardly responsible. At the same time, he stated, since his place of business was not far from the defendant’s home, he would respectfully request that she be placed in custody and bound over to keep the peace. The testimony of the officer and of other witnesses left no doubt as to the existence of a threat and after the Widow had made a chastened speech she was placed in the custody of the sheriff.
To this humiliation was added the greater pang of depositing all her jewels with her bondsmen and when it was over and she was back in her home the Widow’s proud spirit was broken. She retired to the kitchen and the balm of a great peace was laid upon tumultuous Keno. For years the bold ego of Colonel Huff’s wife had dominated the very life of the camp, but the son of Honest John had at last found a way of putting her anger in leash. Rage as she might in the privacy of her kitchen, or pour out her woes to the neighbors, when Wiley Holman came by she turned away her face and allowed him to pass in silence. And Wiley himself never gave her a glance, nor Virginia when he met her in the street; for the memory of their insults was still hot in his brain, and all he asked for was peace.
He was safe, at last, safe to remodel the mill and bring up the ore from the mine; but as his work grew and prospered the anger died in his breast and his heart turned back to Virginia. She was quiet now, with averted eyes and the sad, brooding face of a nun; and she worked early and late in the crowded dining-room, serving meals to the hard-rock miners. He had closed down his cook-house to give them some patronage, when the first mad rush of prospectors was past; but though they fed his men and took the money that he had paid them, they owned no obligation to him.
In the Paymaster the pumps were working steadily now, clearing the water from the submerged passages, and as the first checks came back in payment for his tungsten he ordered more timbers and men. There was plenty of ore on the dump for the moment but, while he separated it from the waste and shipped it to town, he caught up the falling ground in the drifts and prepared to stope out the scheelite. In the old, dismantled mill he had a crew working over-time, installing a rock-crusher and a concentrating plant; and every truck that brought out timbers and supplies took back its tons of ore. The price of tungsten leapt from forty dollars a unit to sixty and sixty-five, and rival buyers clamored for his ore; the mills treated it for almost nothing in order to get control of it and his credit was A1 at the bank–but when he passed Virginia she turned her face away and his heart turned heavy as lead.
It was the price of success, and Wiley recognized it, but he rebelled against his fate. What fault was it of his that her father and his father had fallen out over the mine? He had shown by the stock that the treachery had been Blount’s and neither of them was to blame. What fault was it of his that she had a shrewish mother who was bent upon ruining her life? Had he not endured abuse and suffered grievous wounds before he had asserted his rights? And with Virginia herself, when had there ever been a time when he had forgotten his lover’s part–except on that last day, when he had turned like a trodden worm and protested his right to live? And yet she blamed him for all her misfortunes and for every day that she slaved; and even took the stock which he had returned as a peace-offering and hurled it in his face!
Wiley’s lips set grimly as he gazed at the certificates for which men had striven and died. There were some from her father, transferred on her birthdays when the stock was around thirty and forty; and others from old prospectors like Henry Masters, who had left it to Virginia when they died. She had sent it to him by Charley, out of shame for her harsh words, and he had bought it for four hundred dollars, half the money that he had in the world. Those had been happy days, in spite of the anxiety, for he had made the sacrifice for her; and to prove his devotion–and make a peace-offering against the explosion that was bound to come–he had given the stock back to Virginia. That was when he was a prospector, doing business on a shoe-string, a racing car and a diamond ring; but now when he had made his coup and could write his check for thousands she threw the stock back in his face.
The stock had a value now for, under the terms of the bond and lease, one-tenth of the net mill returns were automatically withheld and turned in to the company as royalty; and if for any reason he failed to meet the payment when the fifty thousand-dollar option expired, then this stock and all Paymaster stock would take a sudden jump to five or ten dollars a share. And the stock was hers–she had received it from her father when he was the mining king of the West, and from old man Masters when he was dying in the cabin where she had helped to care for him for months–yet she would not accept it as a gift. Wiley pondered a long time and then, as Christmas drew near, he sent for Death Valley Charley.
“Charley,” he began, when he came up that night, “did I understand you to say one time that you were acting as a kind of guardian to Virginia? Well, now here’s a bunch of stock that you sold to me once when you were slightly off your cabeza. There’s over twelve thousand shares and all you asked was four hundred dollars, when you knew they were worth eight hundred at least.”
“Yes, that’s so,” admitted Charley, blinking and rubbing his chin, “but you know them women, Wiley. They’re crazy, that’s all, and the Colonel he told me special not to let them lose their mine.”
“Well, never mind the mine,” said Wiley wincing. “I’m talking about this stock. Don’t you think it’s your duty, by George, as guardian, to turn around and buy it back? You’ve got five thousand dollars coming to you on those claims of yours and I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’m short, right now on account of buying machinery, and so I can’t pay you much cash; but if you’ll take this stock back in part payment of your claims I’ll give you four hundred more.”
“Well, all right,” agreed Charley after gazing at him thoughtfully, “but you ought to give back that mine. The Colonel, he told me─”
“What do you mean, give it back?” demanded Wiley, irritably. “It isn’t my property yet. I’ve got to pay for it first and get it away from old Blount before I can give it to anybody. That’s fifty thousand dollars that I’ve got to make clear between now and the twentieth of May; but believe me, Charley, if I once get it paid for I’m going to do something noble.”
“That’s good,” assented Charley, “but you’ve got to pay me, right off–there’s something going to happen!” His sun-dazed eyes opened up wide with excitement and he listened long and earnestly at the door before he tiptoed back to Wiley’s desk. “I can hear ’em,” he said. “They’re going to blow up the mine and shake the mountains down. They’re boring through the ground, but I can hear them working–it’s like worms eating their way through wood.”
“Is that so?” queried Wiley. “Well, maybe we can stop ’em. I’ll look after it, right away. But now about this stock─”
“It’s the Germans!” burst out Charley. “They’ve got boring machines that eat through mountains like wood. And then, bumm, it’s them mines, and the dynamite bombs─”
“Yes, it’s awful,” agreed Wiley, “but here’s your money, Charley; so maybe you’d better go. And you keep this stock now, until it comes Christmas; and then, Christmas Eve, you slip into the house and put it in Virginia’s stocking.”
“Oh–yes,” agreed Charley, still listening to the Germans and then he became lost in deep thought. “The Colonel will kill me,” he said at last. “It’s Christmas, and I ain’t brought his whiskey.”
“Why, what’s the matter?” joshed Wiley. “Why didn’t you deliver it? Did you get caught in a sandstorm, or what?”
“Yes, a sandstorm,” answered Charley, solemnly. “It came down the valley like a wall. And my burros got away; but the Colonel, he found me–I was digging a hole in the sand.”
“Say, where are these Ube-Hebes?” broke in Wiley impulsively. “I’d like to go over there some time.”
“They’re across Death Valley,” answered Charley smiling craftily, “–on the west side, in the Funeral Range. The Coffin mine is there–I used to work in it–but they put me underground with a stiff for a pardner so I quit and come back to town.”
“Yes, I heard about that; but you forgot something, Charley–how about that graveyard shift? But I’ll tell you what I’ll do, if you’ll take me to the Colonel I’ll help Virginia get back her mine.”
He plumped the statement at him, for Charley was an innocent who spoke out the truth when he was jumped, but for once he detected the ruse.
“The Colonel’s dead,” he answered sulkily and picked up his hat to go.
“I doubt it!” scoffed Wiley. “I met a man the other day who said he’d seen him–in the Ube-Hebes mountains.”
“He did?” exclaimed Charley, and then he drew back and his eyes flashed with angry resentment. “You’re a liar!” he burst out. “The Colonel is dead. He never said anything of the kind.”
“Yes, he did,” insisted Wiley, “and you know the man well. He’s got a little dog like Heine.”
“He’s a liar!” cried Charley savagely, “and don’t you go to talking or I’ll make you wish you hadn’t.”
“No, I won’t,” assured Wiley, “but here’s the proposition–the Colonel left a lot of stock. And Mrs. Huff, being crazy, gave it all to Blount on a loan of eight hundred dollars. But if the Colonel should come back that transfer would be illegal and he could fix it to get back the mine. So don’t talk to me about giving Virginia her mine–you go out and bring in the Colonel.”
“He’s dead!” yelled Charley, scrabbling madly out the door. “You’re a liar–I tell you he’s dead!”
“Yes, he’s dead,” observed Wiley, “just the same as I am. I’ll have to get old Charley drunk.”
CHAPTER XVIII
On Christmas Day
Christmas came to Keno in a whirling snowstorm that shrouded Shadow Mountain in white and, as he stepped out in the morning and looked up at the peak, Wiley Holman felt a thrill of joy. The black shadow had bothered him, now that he had come to live under it; and a hundred times a day as it caught his eye he would glance up to find the dark cloud. But now it was gone and in place of the lava cap there was a mantle of gleaming snow. He looked down at the town and, on every graceless house, there had been bestowed a crown of white; all the tin cans were buried, the burned spots were covered over, and Keno was almost beautiful. A family of children were out in the street, trying to coast in their new Christmas wagons, and Wiley smiled to himself.
He had brought back those children; he had brought the town to life and tenanted its vacant houses; and now, best of all, he had brought the spirit of Christmas, for he had sent a peace-offering to Virginia. She had spurned it once in the heat of passion, and called him a coward and a crook; but that package of stock would recall to her mind a time when she had known him for a friend. It would bring up old memories of their boy-and-girl love, which she knew he had never forgotten, and if there was anything to forgive she would know that he remembered it when he sent this offering by Charley.
He was a crazy old rat, but he had his uses; and he had promised to give her the stock, without fail. It was to come, of course, from Charley himself, in atonement for selling it for nothing; but Virginia would know, even if she missed his flowered Christmas card, that the stock was a present from him. It had a value now far above the price he had paid for it when Charley had thrust it upon him and the dividend alone from the royalties on his lease would be twelve hundred dollars and more. And then her pro rata share, when he paid his fifty thousand dollars, would add another six hundred; and she knew that, for the asking, she could have half of what he had–or all, if she would take him, too.
Wiley looked down on the house that sheltered Virginia and smiled to think of her there. She was waiting on miners, but the time would come when someone would be waiting on her. In the back of his brain a bold plan had been forming to feed fat his grudge against Blount and restore the Huffs to their own–and it needed but a word from her to put the plan into action. He held from Blount two separate and distinct papers; one a bond and lease on the mine, the other an option on his personal stock. But to grant the bond and lease–with its option for fifty thousand–Blount had been compelled to vote the Widow’s stock; and if that stock was not his and had been illegally voted, then of course the bond and lease would be void.
Yet even so he, Wiley Holman, had fully safeguarded his interests, for by his other option he could buy all Blount’s stock for the sum of five cents a share. The four hundred thousand-odd shares would come to only twenty thousand dollars, as against fifty thousand on the bond and lease; and yet, by buying the stock at once, he could effectually debar Blount from any share in the accumulating profits. The small payments on past royalties and his five cents a share would be all that Blount would receive; and then he would be left, a spectacle for gods and men–a banker who had been beaten by a boy. It was the chicanery of Blount which had ruined his father and driven Colonel Huff to his death, and what could be better, as poetic justice, than to see him hoist on his own petard. And if the Colonel was not dead–as would appear from Charley’s maunderings–if he could be discovered and brought back to town, then surely Virginia would forget the old feud and consent to be his wife. All this lay before him, a fairyland of imaginings, waiting only her magic touch to make it real; just a word, a smile, a promise of forgiveness–and of loyalty and love–and he, Wiley Holman, would go whirling on the errand that would win him wealth and renown.
It would all be done for her, and yet he would not be the loser, for his own father held two hundred thousand shares of Paymaster; and he himself would save a fifty-thousand-dollar payment at an expense of a little over twenty. And if the Colonel could be found quickly–or his death disproved to make illegal the Widow’s transfer of his stock–then the mine could be claimed at once and Blount deprived even of his royalties. Of course this could all be done without the help of Virginia or the co-operation of any of the Huffs for, although his father had refused from the first to have anything to do with the mine, Wiley knew that he could talk him over and persuade him to pool his stock. That would make six hundred thousand, a clean voting majority and a fortune in itself; but for the sake of Virginia, and to heal the ancient feud, it would be better to unite with the Huffs.
Wiley paced up and down in the crisp, dry snow and watched for Virginia to come, and as his mind leapt ahead he saw her enthroned in a mansion, with him as her faithful vassal–when he was not her lord and king. For the Huffs were proud, even now in their poverty, and Virginia was the proudest of them all; and in this, their first meeting, he must remember what she had suffered and that it is hard for the loser to yield. It should be his part to speak with humility and dwell but lightly on the past while he pictured a future, entirely free from menial service, in which she could live according to her station. All her years of poverty and disappointment and loneliness would be forgotten in this sudden rise to wealth; and to complete the picture, Blount, the cause of all her suffering, would grovel, very unbankerlike, at their feet.
Blount would grovel indeed when he felt the cold steel that would deprive him of all his stock, for he was still playing the game with his loans and extensions in the hope of winning back what he had lost. For money was his god, before whom there was no other, and he worshiped it day and night; and all his fair talk was no more than a pretense to lure Wiley into the net. Yet not for a minute would Wiley put up his option, or his bond and lease on the mine; and for all the money that Blount had loaned him he had given his mere note of hand. It was his promise to pay, unsecured by any collateral, and yet it was perfectly good. The money came and went–he could pay Blount at any time–but it was better to rehabilitate the mine.
Wiley had a race before him, a race for big stakes, and he kept his eyes on the goal. To earn fifty thousand dollars in six months’ time, earn it clean above all expense, required foresight and careful management, and a big daily output, for every day must count. The ore on the dump was in the nature of a grub-stake, a bonus for undertaking the game; and when it was all shipped the profits would drop to nothing unless he could bring up more ore. So he took his first checks, and what he could borrow, and timbered and cleaned out the mine; and, to save shipping out more ore, he had ordered expensive machinery to put the old mill into shape. It was the part of good judgment to spend quickly at first and build up the efficiency of his plant; and then the last few months, when Blount would begin to gloat, make a run that would put him in the clear. Clear not only of the bond and lease, but on Blount’s stock as well, for it would pay for itself with the first dividend; and, to save paying any more royalties, Wiley was curtailing his wasteful shipments while he prepared to concentrate the ore in his mill.
There were envious people in town who prophesied his failure and claimed that success had gone to his head, but he was confident he could show them that a man can take chances and yet play his cards to win. He had taken chances with Blount when he had accepted his money, for there were other banks that would lend on his mine; but in what more harmless way could he engage his attention and keep him from actual sabotage?
It was that which he dreaded, the resort to open warfare, the fire and vandalism, and dynamite; and day and night he kept his eye on the works, and hired a night-watchman, to boot. But as long as Blount was convinced he could win back the mine peaceably he would not resort to violence and, though Stiff Neck George still hung about the camp, he kept scrupulously away from the Paymaster.
As Christmas day wore on and the sun came out gleaming, Wiley swung off down the trail and through the town. He was a big man now, the man who had saved Keno after ten years of stagnation and lingering death; and yet there were those who disliked him. They recited old stories of his shrewd dealings with Mrs. Huff, and with Virginia and Death Valley Charley; and if any were forgotten the Widow undoubtedly recalled them. She was a shrewish woman, full of gossip and backbiting, and she let no opportunity pass; so that even old Charley cherished a certain resentment, though he disguised it as solicitude for the Huffs. And so on Christmas day, as Wiley walked down the street, many greetings lacked a holiday heartiness.
The front room of the Huff house was full of children and, as Wiley walked back and forth, he caught a glimpse of Virginia; but she did not come out and, after lingering around for a while, he climbed up the trail to the mine. He had caught but a glimpse, but it was clean-cut as a cameo–a classic head, eagerly poised; dark hair, brushed smoothly back; and a smile, for some neighbor’s child. That was Virginia, high-headed and patrician, but kind to lame dogs and lost cats. She had invited in the children but he, Wiley Holman, who had loved her since she was a child, had been permitted to pass unnoticed. He wandered about uneasily, then went back to his office and began to run over his accounts.
Over a hundred thousand dollars had passed through his hands in less than a calendar month and yet the long haul across the desert from Vegas had put him in the hole. Besides the initial cost of cables and timbers–and of a rock breaker and the concentrating plant–there was a charge of approximately twenty dollars a ton for every pound of supplies he hauled out. And, because of the war, all supplies were high and the machinery houses were behind with their orders; yet so eager were the buyers to get hold of his tungsten that they almost took it out of the bins. He was storing up the ore, preparatory to milling it and shipping only the concentrates; but if they could have their way they would wrest it from his hands and rush it to the railroad post haste. One mysterious buyer had even offered him a contract at seventy dollars a unit–three dollars and a half a pound!
Wiley opened up his notebook and made a careful estimate of what the ore on the dump would bring and his eyes grew big as he figured. At seventy dollars a unit it would come to more than he owed; and pay for the mine, to boot. It was a stupendous sum to come so quickly, before the mine was hardly opened up; but when the mill was running and the mine was sending up ore–he smiled dizzily and shook his head. A profit like that, if it ever became known, would make his position dangerous. It was too much of a temptation for Blount and his jumpers, and blackleg lawyers with fake claims. They could get out injunctions and tie up the work until he lost the mine by default!
But would they dare do it? And how long would it take to raise fifty thousand dollars elsewhere? Wiley studied it all over in the silence of his office, for the mine was closed down for Christmas; and then once more he turned to his notebook and figured the ore underground. Then he figured the outside cost for installing his machinery, for freight and supplies and the payroll; and, adding twenty per cent for wear and tear and accidents, he figured the grand total for six months. That was astounding too but, when he put against it his ore and the price per ton, not even the chances that stood out against him could keep down that dizzy smile. He was made, he was rich, if he could just hold things level and do a day’s work every day.
The sun set at last as he sat planning details and, rising up stiffly, he pushed his papers aside and went out into the night. The snow had melted fast on the roofs and bare ridges and, as the last rays of sunset touched the peak with ruddy fingers, he noticed that the shadow had come back. The barren lava cap had thrown aside its Christmas mantle, melting the snow before it could pack; and now, grim and black, it stood out like a death-head above the white valley below. Lights flashed out from miners’ windows, the scampering children ceased their clamor, and he wandered through the darkness alone.
There was something he had forgotten, something big and significant, but his tired brain refused to respond. It was part of the scheme to beat Blount out of his stock, and the royalty from the shipments of ore; and–yes, it had to do with Virginia. It was going to make her rich, and both of them happy; but he could not recall it, at the moment. He was worn out, weary with the seething thoughts which had rioted through his mind all day, and he turned back dumbly to his office. It was dark and cold and as he groped for his matchbox his hand encountered a strange package. And yet it was not so strange–he seemed to remember it, somehow. He struck a hasty match and looked. It was the package of stock that he had sent to Virginia, but─The match burnt his fingers and he dropped it with a curse. She had refused his offer of peace.
