Ridgway of Montana
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William MacLeod Raine >> Ridgway of Montana
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Yesler shrugged his shoulders. " All right. I'll order a rig hitched for
you and drive you over myself. I want to talk over this senatorial fight
anyhow. The way things look now it's going to be the rottenest session of
the legislature we've ever had. Sometimes I'm sick of being mixed up in
the thing, but I got myself elected to help straighten out things, and I'm
certainly going to try."
"That's right, Sam. With a few good fighters like you we can win out.
Anything to beat the Consolidated."
"Anything to keep our politics decent," corrected the other. "I've got
nothing against the Consolidated, but I won't lie down and let it or any
other private concern hog-tie this State--not if I can help it, anyhow."
Behind wary eyes Ridgway studied him. He was wondering how far this man
would go as his tool. Sam Yesler held a unique position in the State. His
influence was commanding among the sturdy old-time population represented
by the non-mining interests of the smaller towns and open plains. He must
be won at all hazards to lend it in the impending fight against Harley.
The mine-owner knew that no thought of personal gain would move him. He
must be made to feel that it was for the good of the State that the
Consolidated be routed. Ridgway resolved to make him see it that way.
CHAPTER 7. BACK FROM ARCADIA
The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company stepped from the parlor-car
of the Limited at the hour when all wise people are taking life easy after
a good dinner. He did not, however, drive to his club, but took a cab
straight for his rooms, where he had telegraphed Eaton to meet him with the
general superintendent of all his properties and his private secretary,
Smythe. For nearly a week his finger had been off the pulse of the
situation, and he wanted to get in touch again as soon as possible. For in
a struggle as tense as the one between him and the trust, a hundred vital
things might have happened in that time. He might be coming back to
catastrophe and ruin, brought about while he had been a prisoner to love in
that snow-bound cabin.
Prisoner to love he had been and still was, but the business men who met
him at his rooms, fellow adventurers in the forlorn hope he had hitherto
led with such signal success, could have read nothing of this in the
marble, chiseled face of their sagacious general, so indomitable of attack
and insatiate of success. His steel-hard eyes gave no hint of the Arcadia
they had inhabited so eagerly a short twenty-four hours before. The
intoxicating madness he had known was chained deep within him. Once more he
had a grip on himself; was sheathed in a cannonproof plate armor of
selfishness. No more magic nights of starshine, breathing fire and dew; no
more lifted moments of exaltation stinging him to a pulsating wonder at
life's wild delight. He was again the inexorable driver of men, with no
pity for their weaknesses any more than for his own.
The men whom he found waiting for him at his rooms were all young
Westerners picked out by him because he thought them courageous,
unscrupulous and loyal. Like him, they were privateers in the seas of
commerce, and sailed under no flag except the one of insurrection he had
floated. But all of them, though they were associated with him and hoped to
ride to fortune on the wave that carried him there, recognized themselves
as subordinates in the enterprises he undertook. They were merely heads of
departments, and they took orders like trusted clerks with whom the owner
sometimes unbends and advises.
Now he heard their reports, asked an occasional searching question, and
swiftly gave decisions of far-reaching import. It was past midnight before
he had finished with them, and instead of retiring for the sleep he might
have been expected to need, he spent the rest of the night inspecting the
actual workings of the properties he had not seen for six days. Hour after
hour he passed examining the developments, sometimes in the breasts of the
workings and again consulting with engineers and foremen in charge. Light
was breaking in the sky before he stepped from the cage of the Jack Pot and
boarded a street-car for his rooms. Cornishmen and Hungarians and
Americans, going with their dinner-buckets to work, met him and received
each a nod or a word of greeting from this splendidly built young Hermes in
miners' slops, who was to many of them, in their fancy, a deliverer from
the slavery which the Consolidated was ready to force upon them.
Once at his rooms, Ridgway took a cold bath, dressed carefully,
breakfasted, and was ready to plunge into the mass of work which had
accumulated during his absence at the mining camp of Alpine and the
subsequent period while he was snowbound. These his keen, practical mind
grasped and disposed of in crisp sentences. To his private secretary he
rapped out order sharply and decisively.
"Phone Ballard and Dalton I want to see them at once. Tell Murphy I won't
talk with him. What I said before I left was final. Write Cadwallader we
can't do business on the terms he proposes, but add that I'm willing to
continue his Mary Kinney lease. Dictate a letter to Riley's lawyer, telling
him I can't afford to put a premium on incompetence and negligence; that if
his client was injured in the Jack Pot explosion, he has nobody but himself
to blame for it. Otherwise, of course, I should be glad to pension him. Let
me see the letter before you send it. I don't want anything said that will
offend the union. Have two tons of good coal sent up to Riley's house, and
notify his grocer that all bills for the next three months may be charged
to me. And, Smythe, ask Mr. Eaton to step this way."
Stephen Eaton, an alert, clear-eyed young fellow who served as fidus
Achates to Ridgway, and was the secretary and treasurer of the Mesa
Ore-producing Company, took the seat Smythe had vacated. He was
good-looking, after a boyish, undistinguished fashion, but one disposed to
be critical might have voted the chin not quite definite enough. He had
been a clerk of the Consolidated, working for one hundred dollars a month,
when Ridgway picked him out and set his feet in the way of fortune. He had
done this out of personal liking, and, in return, the subordinate was
frankly devoted to his chief.
"Steve, my opinion is that Alpine is a false alarm. Unless I guess wrong,
it is merely a surface proposition and low-grade at that."
"Miller says--"
"Yes, I know what Miller says. He's wrong. I don't care if he is the
biggest copper expert in the country."
"Then you won't invest?"
"I have invested--bought the whole outfit, lock, stock and barrel."
"But why? What do you want with it if the property is no good?" asked Eaton
in surprise.
Ridgway laughed shortly. "I don't want it, but the Consolidated does. Two
of their experts were up at Alpine last week, and both of them reported
favorably. I've let it leak out to their lawyer, O'Malley, that Miller
thought well of it; in fact, I arranged to let one of their spies steal a
copy of his report to us."
"But when they know you have bought it "
"They won't know till too late. I bought through a dummy. It seemed a pity
not to let then have the property since they wanted it so badly, so this
morning he sold out for me to the Consolidated at a profit of a hundred and
fifty thousand."
Eaton grinned appreciatively. It was in startling finesse of this sort his
chief excelled, and Stephen was always ready with applause.
"I notice that Hobart slipped out of town last night. That is where he must
have been going. He'll be sick when he learns how you did him."
Ridgway permitted himself an answering smile. "I suppose it will irritate
him a trifle, but that can't be helped. I needed that money to get clear on
that last payment for the Sherman Bell."
"Yes, I was worried about that. Notes have been piling up against us that
must be met. There's the Ransom note, too. It's for a hundred thousand."
"He'll extend it," said the chief confidently.
"He told me he would have to have his money when it came due. I've noticed
he has been pretty close to Mott lately. I expect he has an arrangement
with the Consolidated to push us."
"I'm watching him, Steve. Don't worry about that. He did arrange to sell
the note to Mott, but I stopped that little game."
"How?"
"For a year I've had all the evidence of that big government timber steal
of his in a safety-deposit vault. Before he sold, I had a few words with
him. He changed his mind and decided he preferred to hold the notes. More,
he is willing to let us have another hundred thousand if we have to have
it."
Eaton's delight bubbled out of him in boyish laughter. "You're a wonder,
Waring. There's nobody like you. Can't any of them touch you--not Harley
himself, by Jove."
"We'll have a chance to find that out soon, Steve."
"Yes, they say he's coming out in person to run the fight against you. I
hope not."
"It isn't a matter of hoping any longer. He's here," calmly announced his
leader.
"Here! On the ground?"
"Yes."
"But--he can't be here without us knowing it."
"I'm telling you that I do know it."
"Have you seen him yourself?" demanded the treasurer incredulously.
"Seen him, talked with him, cursed him and cuffed him," announced Ridgway
with a reminiscent gleam in his eye.
"Er--what's that you say?" gasped the astounded Eaton.
"Merely that I have already met Simon Harley."
"But you said--"
"--that I had cursed and cuffed him. That's all right. I have."
The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company leaned back with his thumbs
in the armholes of his fancy waistcoat and smiled debonairly at his
associate's perplexed amazement.
"Did you say--CUFFED him?"
"That's what I meant to say. I roughed him around quite a bit--manhandled
him in general. But all FOR HIS GOOD, you know."
"For his good?" Eaton's dazed brain tried to conceive the situation of a
billionaire being mauled for his good, and gave it up in despair. If Steve
Eaton worshipped anything, it was wealth. He was a born sycophant, and it
was partly because his naive unstinted admiration had contributed to
satisfy his chief's vanity that the latter had made of him
a confidant. Now he sat dumb before the lese-majeste of laying forcible
hands upon the richest man in the world.
"But, of course, you're only joking," he finally decided.
"You haven't been back twelve hours. Where COULD you have seen him?,"
"Nevertheless I have met him and been properly introduced by his wife."
"His wife?"
"Yes, I picked her out of a snow-drift."
"Is this a riddle?"
"If it is, I don't know the answer, Steve. But it is a true one, anyhow,
not made to order merely to astonish you."
"True that you picked Simon Harley's wife out of a snow-drift and kicked
him around?"
"I didn't say kicked, did I?" inquired the other, judicially. "But I rather
think I did knee him some."
"Of course, I read all about his marriage two weeks ago to Miss Aline Hope.
Did he bring her out here with him for the honeymoon?"
"If he did, I euchred him out of it. She spent it with me alone in a
miner's cabin," the other cried, malevolence riding triumph on his face.
"Whenever you're ready to explain," suggested Eaton helplessly. "You've
piled up too many miracles for me even to begin guessing them."
"You know I was snow-bound, but you did not know my only companion was this
Aline Hope you speak of. I found her in the blizzard, and took her to an
empty cabin near. She and her husband were motoring from Avalanche to Mesa,
and the machine had broken down. Harley had gone for help and left her
there alone when the blizzard came up. Three days later Sam Yesler and the
old man broke trail through from the C B Ranch and rescued us."
It was so strange a story that it came home to Eaton piecemeal.
"Three days--alone with Harley's wife--and he rescued you himself."
"He didn't rescue me any. I could have broken through any time I wanted to
leave her. On the way back his strength gave out, and that was when I
roughed him. I tried to bullyrag him into keeping on, but it was no go. I
left him there, and Sam went back after him with a relief-party."
"You left him! With his wife?"
"No!" cried Ridgway. "Do I look like a man to desert a woman on a
snow-trail? I took her with me."
"Oh!" There was a significant silence before Eaton asked the question in
his mind. "I've seen her pictures in the papers. Does she look like them?"
His chief knew what was behind the question, and he knew, too, that Eaton
might be taken to represent public opinion. The world would cast an eye of
review over his varied and discreditable record with women. It would
imagine the story of those three days of enforced confinement together, and
it would look to the woman in the case for an answer to its suspicions.
That she was young, lovely, and yet had sold herself to an old man for his
millions, would go far in itself to condemn her; and he was aware that
there were many who would accept her very childish innocence as the
sophistication of an artist.
Waring Ridgway put his arms akimbo on the table and leaned across with his
steady eyes fastened on his friend.
"Steve, I'm going to answer that question. I haven't seen any pictures of
her in the papers, but if they show a face as pure and true as the face of
God himself then they are like her. You know me. I've got no apologies or
explanations to make for the life I've led. That's my business. But you're
my friend, and I tell you I would rather be hacked in pieces by Apaches
than soil that child's white soul by a single unclean breath. There mustn't
be any talk. Do you understand? Keep the story out of the newspapers. Don't
let any of our people gossip about it. I have told you because I want you
to know the truth. If any one should speak lightly about this thing stop
him at once. This is the one point on which Simon Harley and I will pull
together.
Any man who joins that child's name with mine loosely will have to leave
this camp--and suddenly."
"It won't be the men--it will be the women that will talk."
"Then garble the story. Change that three days to three hours, Steve.
Anything to stop their foul-clacking tongues!"
"Oh, well! I dare say the story won't get out at all, but if it does I'll
see the gossips get the right version. I suppose Sam Yesler will back it
up."
"Of course. He's a white man. And I don't need to tell you that I'll be a
whole lot obliged to you, Stevie."
"That's all right. Sometimes I'm a white man, too, Waring," laughed Steve.
Ridgway circled the table and put a hand on
the younger man's shoulder affectionately. Steve Eaton was the one of all
his associates for whom he had the closest personal feeling.
"I don't need to be told that, old pal," he said quietly.
CHAPTER 8. THE HONORABLE THOMAS B. PELTON
It was next morning that Steve came into Ridgway's offices with a copy of
the Rocky Mountain Herald in his hands. As soon as the president of the
Mesa Ore-producing Company was through talking with Dalton, the
superintendent of the Taurus, about the best means of getting to the cage a
quantity of ore he was looting from the Consolidated property adjoining,
the treasurer plumped out with his news.
"Seen to-day's paper, Waring? It smokes out Pelton to a finish. They've
moled out some facts we can't get away from."
Ridgway glanced rapidly over the paper. "We'll have to drop Pelton and find
another candidate for the Senate. Sorry, but it can't be helped. They've
got his record down too fine. That affidavit from Quinton puts an end to
his chances."
"He'll kick like a bay steer."
"His own fault for not covering his tracks better. This exposure doesn't
help us any at best. If we still tried to carry Pelton, we should last
about as long as a snowball in hell."
"Shall I send for him?"
"No. He'll be here as quick as he can cover the ground. Have him shown in
as soon as he comes. And Steve--did Harley arrive on the eight-thirty this
morning?"
"Yes. He is putting up at the Mesa House. He reserved an entire floor by
wire, so that he has bed-rooms, dining-rooms, parlors, reception-halls and
private offices all together. The place is policed thoroughly, and nobody
can get up without an order."
"I haven't been thinking of going up and shooting him, even though it would
be a blessing to the country," laughed his chief.
"No, but it is possible somebody else might. This town is full of ignorant
foreigners who would hardly think twice of it. If he had asked my advice,
it would have been to stay away from Mesa."
"He wouldn't have taken it," returned Ridgway carelessly. "Whatever else is
true about him, Simon Harley isn't a coward. He would have told you that
not a sparrow falls to the ground without the permission of the distorted
God he worships, and he would have come on the next train."
"Well, it isn't my funeral," contributed Steve airily.
"All the same I'm going to pass his police patrols and pay a visit to the
third floor of the Mesa House."
"You are going to compromise with him?" cried Eaton swiftly.
"Compromise nothing, I'm going to pay a formal social call on Mrs. Harley,
and respectfully hope that she has suffered no ill effects from her
exposure to the cold."
Eaton made no comment, unless to whistle gently were one.
"You think it isn't wise "
"Well, is it?" asked Steve.
"I think so. We'll scotch the lying tongue of rumor by a strict observance
of the conventions. Madam Grundy is padlocked when we reduce the situation
to the absurdity of the common place."
"Perhaps you are right, if it doesn't become too common commonplace."
"I think we may trust Simon Harley to see to that," answered his chief with
a grim smile "Obviously our social relations aren't likely to be very
intimate. Now it's 'Just before the battle mother,' but once the big guns
begin to boor we'll neither of us be in the mood for functions social."
"You've established a sort of claim on him. It wouldn't surprise me if he
would meet you halfway in settling the trouble between you," said Eaton
thoughtfully.
"I expect he would," agreed Ridgway indifferently as he lit a cigar.
"Well, then?"
"The trouble is that I won't meet him halfway. I can't afford to be
reasonable, Steve. Just suppose for an instant that I had been reasonable
five years ago when this fight began. They would have bought me out for a
miserable pittance of a hundred and fifty thousand or so. That would have
been a reasonable figure then. You might put it now at five or six
millions, and that would be about right. I don't want their money. I want
power, and I'd rather fight for it than not. Besides, I mean to make what I
have already wrung from them a lever for getting more. I'm going to show
Harley that he has met a man at last he can't either freeze out or bully
out. I'm going to let him and his bunch know I'm on earth and here to stay;
that I can beat them at their own game to a finish."
"Did it ever occur to you, Waring, that it might pay to make this a limited
round contest? You've won on points up to date by a mile, but in a finish
fight endurance counts. Money is the same as endurance here, and that's
where they are long."
Eaton made this suggestion diffidently, for though he was a stockholder and
official of the Mesa Ore-producing Company, he was not used to offering its
head unasked advice. The latter, however, took it without a trace of
resentment.
"Glad of it, my boy. There's no credit in beating a cripple."
To this jaunty retort Eaton had found no answer when Smythe opened the door
to announce the arrival of the Honorable Thomas B. Pelton, very anxious for
an immediate interview with Mr. Ridgway.
"Show him in," nodded the president, adding in an aside: "You better stay,
Steve."
Pelton was a rotund oracular individual in silk hat and a Prince Albert
coat of broadcloth. He regarded himself solemnly as a statesman because he
had served two inconspicuous terms in the House at Washington. He was fond
of proclaiming himself a Southern gentleman, part of which statement was
unnecessary and part untrue. Like many from his section, he had a decided
penchant for politics.
"Have you seen the infamous libel in that scurrilous sheet of the gutters
the Herald?" he demanded immediately of Ridgway.
"Which libel? They don't usually stop at one, colonel."
"The one, seh, which slanders my honorable name; which has the scoundrelly
audacity to charge me with introducing the mining extension bill for venal
reasons, seh."
"Oh! Yes, I've seen that. Rather an unfortunate story to come out just now."
"I shall force a retraction, seh, or I shall demand the satisfaction due a
Southern gentleman.
"Yes, I would, colonel," replied Ridgway, secretly amused at the vain
threats of this bag of wind which had been punctured.
"It's a vile calumny, an audacious and villainous lie."
"What part of it? I've just glanced over it, but the part I read seems to
be true. That's the trouble with it. If it were a lie you could explode
it."
"I shall deny it over my signature."
"Of course. The trouble will be to get people to believe your denial with
Quinton's affidavit staring them in the face. It seems they have got hold
of a letter, too, that you wrote. Deny it, of course, then lie low and give
the public time to forget it."
"Do you mean that I should withdraw from the senatorial race?"
"That's entirely as you please, colonel, but I'm afraid you'll find your
support will slip away from you."
"Do you mean that YOU won't support me, seh?"
Ridgway locked his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair.
"We've got to face facts, colonel. In the light of this exposure you can't
be elected."
"But I tell you, by Gad, seh, that I mean to deny it."
"Certainly. I should in your place," agreed the mine-owner coolly. "The
question is, how many people are going to believe you?"
Tiny sweat-beads stood on the forehead of the Arkansan. His manner was
becoming more and more threatening. "You pledged me your support. Are you
going to throw me down, seh?"
"You have thrown yourself down, Pelton. Is it my fault you bungled the
thing and left evidence against you? Am I to blame because you wrote
incriminating letters?"
"Whatever I did was done for you," retorted the cornered man desperately.
"I beg your pardon. It was done for what was in it for you. The arrangement
between us was purely a business one."
The coolness of his even voice maddened the harassed Pelton.
"So I'm to get burnt drawing your chestnuts out of the fire, am I? You're
going to stand back and let my career be sacrificed, are you? By Gad, seh,
I'll show you whether I'll be your catspaw," screamed the congressman.
"Use your common sense, Pelton, and don't shriek like a fish-wife," ordered
Ridgway sharply. "No sane man floats a leaky ship. Go to drydock and patch
up your reputation, and in a few years you'll come out as good as new."
All his unprincipled life Pelton had compromised with honor to gain the
coveted goal he now saw slipping from him. A kind of madness of despair
surged up in him. He took a step threateningly toward the seated man, his
hand slipping back under his coat-tails toward his hip pocket. Acridly his
high voice rang out.
"As a Southern gentleman, seh, I refuse to tolerate the imputations you
cast upon me. I demand an apology here and now, seh."
Ridgway was on his feet and across the room like a flash.
"Don't try to bully ME, you false alarm. Call yourself a Southern
gentleman! You're a shallow scurvy impostor. No more like the real article
than a buzzard is like an eagle. Take your hand from under that coat or
I'll break every bone in your flabby body."
Flabby was the word, morally no less than physically. Pelton quailed under
that gaze which bored into him like a gimlet. The ebbing color in his face
showed he could summon no reserve of courage sufficient to meet it. Slowly
his empty hand came forth.
"Don't get excited, Mr. Ridgway. You have mistaken my purpose, seh. I had
no intention of drawing," he stammered with a pitiable attempt at dignity.
"Liar," retorted his merciless foe, crowding him toward the door.
"I don't care to have anything more to do with you. Our relations are at an
end, seh," quavered Pelton as he vanished into the outer once and beat a
hasty retreat to the elevator.
Ridgway returned to his chair, laughing ruefully. "I couldn't help it,
Steve. He would have it. I suppose I've made one more enemy."
"A nasty one, too. He'll stick at nothing to get even."
"We'll draw his fangs while there is still time. Get a good story in the
Sun to the effect that I quarreled with him as soon as I discovered his
connection with this mining extension bill graft. Have it in this
afternoon's edition, Steve. Better get Brayton to write it."
Steve nodded. "That's a good idea. We may make capital out of it after all.
I'll have an editorial in, too. 'We love him for the enemies he has made.'
How would that do for a heading?"
"Good. And now we'll have to look around for a candidate to put against
Mott. I'm hanged if I know where we'll find one."
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