Ridgway of Montana

W >> William MacLeod Raine >> Ridgway of Montana

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Eaton had an inspiration.

"I do?"

"One that will run well, popular enough to catch the public fancy?"

"Yes."

"Who, then?"

"Waring Ridgway."

The owner of the name stared at his lieutenant in astonishment, but slowly
the fascination o the idea sank in.

"By Jove! Why not?"

CHAPTER 9. AN EVENING CALL

"Says you're to come right up, Mr. Ridgway," the bell-hop reported, and
after he had pocketed his tip, went sliding off across the polished floor
to answer another call.

The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company turned with a good-humored
smile to the chief clerk.

"You overwork your boys, Johnson. I wasn't through with that one. I'll have
to ask you to send another up to show me the Harley suite."

They passed muster under the eye of the chief detective, and, after the
bell-boy had rung, were admitted to the private parlor where Simon Harley
lay stretched on a lounge with his wife beside him. She had been reading,
evidently aloud and when her visitor was announced rose with her finger
still keeping the place in the closed book.

The gaze she turned on him was of surprise, almost of alarm, so that the
man on the threshold knew he was not expected.

"You received my card?" he asked quickly.

"No. Did you send one?" Then, with a little gesture of half-laughing
irritation: "It must have gone to Mr. Harvey again. He is Mr. Harley's
private secretary, and ever since we arrived it has been a comedy of
errors. The hotel force refuses to differentiate."

"I must ask you to accept my regrets for an unintentional intrusion, Mrs.
Harley. When I was told to come up, I could not guess that my card had gone
amiss."

The great financier had got to his feet and now came forward with extended
hand.

"Nevertheless we are glad to see you, Mr. Ridgway, and to get the
opportunity to express our thanks for all that you have done for us."

The cool fingers of the younger man touched his lightly before they met
those of his wife.

"Yes, we are very glad, indeed, to see you, Mr. Ridgway," she added to her
husband's welcome.

"I could not feel quite easy in my mind without hearing from your own lips
that you are none the worse for the adventures you have suffered," their
visitor explained after they had found seats.

"Thanks to you, my wife is quite herself again, Mr. Ridgway," Harley
announced from the davenport. "Thanks also to God, who so mercifully
shelters us beneath the shadow of His wing."

But her caller preferred to force from Aline's own lips this affidavit of
health. Even his audacity could not ignore his host entirely, but it gave
him the least consideration possible. To the question which still rested in
his eyes the girl-wife answered shyly.

"Indeed, I am perfectly well. I have done nothing but sleep to-day and
yesterday. Miss Yesler was very good to me. I do not know how I can repay
the great kindness of so many friends," she said with a swift descent of
fluttering lashes to the soft cheeks upon which a faint color began to
glow.

"Perhaps they find payment for the service in doing it for you," he suggested.

"Yet, I shall take care not to forget it," Harley said pointedly.

"Indeed!" Ridgway put it with polite insolence, the hostility in his face
scarcely veiled.

"It has pleased Providence to multiply my portion so abundantly that I can
reward those well who serve me."

"At how much do you estimate Mrs. Harley's life?" his rival asked with
quiet impudence.

In the course of the past two days Aline had made the discovery that her
husband and her rescuer were at swords drawn in a business way. This had
greatly distressed her, and in her innocence she had resolved to bring them
together. How could her inexperience know that she might as well have tried
to induce the lion and the lamb to lie down together peaceably? Now she
tried timidly to drift the conversation from the awkwardness into which
Harley's suggestion of a reward and his opponent's curt retort had
blundered it.

"I hope you did not find upon your return that your business was
disarranged so much as you feared it might be by your absence."

"I found my affairs in very good condition," Ridgway smiled. "But I am glad
to be back in time to welcome to Mesa you--and Mr. Harley."

"It seems so strange a place," the girl ventured, with a hesitation that
showed her anxiety not to offend his local pride. "You see I never before
was in a place where there was no grass and nothing green in sight. And
to-night, when I looked out of the window and saw streams of red-hot fire
running down hills, I thought of Paradise Lost and Dante. I suppose it
doesn't seem at all uncanny to you?"

"At night sometimes I still get that feeling, but I have to cultivate it a
bit," he confessed. "My sober second thought insists that those molten
rivers are merely business, refuse disgorged as lava from the great
smelters."

"I looked for the sun to-day through the pall of sulphur smoke that hangs
so heavy over the town, but instead I saw a London gas-lamp hanging in the
heavens. Is it always so bad?"

"Not when the drift of the wind is right. In fact, a day like this is quite
unusual."

"I'm glad of that. I feel more cheerful in the sunshine. I know that's a
bit of the child still left in me. Mr. Harley takes all days alike."

The Wall Street operator was in slippers and house-jacket. His wife, too,
was dressed comfortably in some soft clinging stuff. Their visitor saw that
they had disposed themselves for a quiet uninterrupted evening by the
fireside. The domesticity of it all stirred the envy in him. He did not
want her to be contented and at peace with his enemy. Something deeper than
his vanity cried out in protest against it.

She was still making talk against the gloom of the sulphur fog which seemed
to have crept into the spirit of the room.

"We were reading before you came in, Mr. Ridgway. I suppose you read a good
deal. Mr. Harley likes to have me read aloud to him when he is tired."

An impulse came upon Ridgway to hear her, some such impulse as makes a man
bite on sore tooth even though he knows he must pay later for it.

"Will you not go on with your reading? I should like to hear it. I really
should."

She was a little taken aback, but she looked inquiringly at her husband,
who bowed silently.

"I was just beginning the fifty-ninth psalm. We have been reading the book
through. Mr. Harley finds great comfort in it," she explained.

Her eyes fell to the printed page and her clear, sweet voice took up the
ancient tale of vengeance

"Deliver me from mine enemies, O my God: defend me from them that rise up
against me. Deliver me from the workers of iniquity, and save me from
bloody men.

"For, lo, they lie in wait for my soul: the mighty are gathered against me;
not for my transgression, nor for my sin, O Lord. They run and prepare
themselves without my fault: awake to help me, and behold.

"Thou, therefore, O Lord God of Hosts, the God of Israel, awake to visit
all the heathen: be not merciful to any wicked transgressors. Selah."

Ridgway glanced across in surprise at the strong old man lying on the
lounge. His hands were locked in front of him, and his gaze rested
peacefully on the fair face of the child reading. His foe's mind swept up
the insatiable cruel years that lay behind this man, and he marveled that
with such a past he could still hold fast to that simple faith of David. He
wondered whether this ruthless spoiler went back to the Old Testament for
the justification of his life, or whether his credo had given the impulse
to his career. One thing he no longer doubted: Simon Harley believed his
Bible implicitly and literally, and not only the New Testament.

"For the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips even be taken in
their pride: and for cursing and lying which they speak.

"Consume them in wrath, consume them, that they may not be: and let them
know that God ruleth in Jacob unto the ends of the earth."

The fresh young girlish voice died away into silence. Harley, apparently
deep in meditation, gazed at the ceiling. His guest felt a surge of
derision at this man who thought he had a compact with God to rule the
world for his benefit.

"I am sure Mr. Harley must enjoy the Psalms a great deal," he said
ironically, but it was in simple faith the young wife answered eagerly:

"He does. He finds so much in them that is applicable to life."

"I can see how he might," agreed the young man.

"Few people take their religion so closely into their every-day lives as he
does," she replied in a low voice, seeing that her husband was lost in
thought.

"I am sure you are right."

"He is very greatly misunderstood, Mr. Ridgway. I am sure if people knew
how good he is-- But how can they know when the newspapers are so full of
falsehoods about him? And the magazines are as bad, he says. It seems to be
the fashion to rake up bitter things to say about prominent business men.
You must have noticed it."

"Yes. I believe I have noticed that," he answered with a grim little laugh.

"Don't you think it could be explained to these writers? They can't WANT to
distort the truth. It must be they don't know."

"You must not take the muckrakers too seriously. They make a living
roasting us. A good deal of what they say is true in a way. Personally, I
don't object to it much. It's a part of the penalty of being successful.
That's how I look at it."

"Do they say bad things about you, too?" she asked in open-eyed surprise.

"Occasionally," he smiled. "When they think I'm important enough."

"I don't see how they can," he heard her murmur to herself.

"Oh, most of what they say is true."

"Then I know it can't be very bad," she made haste to answer.

"You had better read it and see."

"I don't understand business at all," she said

"But--sometimes it almost frightens me. Business isn't really like war, is
it?"

"A good deal like it. But that need not frighten you. All life is a
battle--sometimes, at least. Success implies fighting."

"And does that in turn imply tragedy--for the loser?"

"Not if one is a good loser. We lose and make another start."

"But if success is a battle, it must be gained at the expense of another."

"Sometimes. But you must look at it in a big way." The secretary of the
trust magnate had come in and was in low-toned conversation with him. The
visitor led her to the nearest window and drew back the curtains so that
they looked down on the lusty life of the turbid young city, at the lights
in the distant smelters and mills, at the great hill opposite, with its
slagdumps, gallows-frames and shaft-houses black against the dim light,
which had yielded its millions and millions of tons of ore for the use of
mankind. "All this had to be fought for. It didn't grow of itself. And
because men fought for it, the place is what it is. Sixty thousand people
live here, fed by the results of the battle. The highest wages in the world
are paid the miners here. They live in rough comfort and plenty, whereas in
the countries they came from they were underpaid and underfed. Is that not
good?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"Life for you and for me must be different, thank God. You are in the world
to make for the happiness of those you meet. That is good. But unless I am
to run away from my work, what I do must make some unhappy. I can't help
that if I am to do big things. When you hear people talking of the harm I
do, you will remember what I have told you to-night, and you will think
that a man and his work cannot be judged by isolated fragments."

"Yes," she breathed softly, for she knew that this man was saying good-by
to her and was making his apologia.

"And you will remember that no matter how bitter the fight may grow between
me and Mr. Harley, it has nothing to do with you. We shall still be
friends, though we may never meet again."

"I shall remember that, too," he heard her murmur.

"You have been hoping that Mr. Harley and I would be friends. That is
impossible. He came out here to crush me. For years his subordinates have
tried to do this and failed. I am the only man alive that has ever resisted
him successfully. I don't underestimate his power, which is greater than
any czar or emperor that ever lived, but I don't think he will succeed. I
shall win because I understand the forces against me. He will lose because
he scorns those against him."

"I am sorry. Oh, I am so sorry," she wailed, gently as a breath of summer
wind. For she saw now that the cleavage between them was too wide for a
girl's efforts to bridge.

"That I am going to win?" he smiled gravely.

"That you must be enemies; that he came here to ruin you, since you say he
did."

"You need not be too hard on him for that. By his code I am a freebooter
and a highwayman. Business offers legitimate ways of robbery, and I
transgress them. His ways are not my ways, and mine are not his, but it is
only fair to say that his are the accepted ones."

"I don't understand it at all. You are both good men. I know you are.
Surely you need not be enemies."

But she knew she could hope for no reassurance from the man beside her.

Presently she led him back across the big room to the fireplace near where
her husband lay. His secretary had gone, and he was lying resting on the
lounge. He opened his eyes and smiled at her. "Has Mr. Ridgway been
pointing out to you the places of interest?" he asked quietly.

"Yes, dear." The last word came hesitantly after the slightest of pauses.
"He says he must be going now."

The head of the greatest trust on earth got to his feet and smiled
benignantly as he shook hands with the departing guest. "I shall hope to
see you very soon and have a talk regarding business, Mr. Ridgway," he
said.

"Whenever you like, Mr. Harley." To the girl he said merely, "Good night,"
and was gone.

The old man put an arm affectionately across his young wife's shoulder.

"Shall we read another psalm, my dear? Or are you tired?"

She repressed the little shiver that ran through her before she answered
wearily. "I am a little tired. If you don't mind I would like to retire,
please."

He saw her as far as the door of her apartments and left her with her maid
after he had kissed the cold cheek she dutifully turned toward him.

CHAPTER 10. HARLEY MAKES A PROPOSITION

Apparently the head of the great trust intended to lose no time in having
that business talk with Ridgway, which he had graciously promised the
latter. Eaton and his chief were busy over some applications for leases
when Smythe came into the room with a letter

"Messenger-boy brought it; said it was important," he explained.

Ridgway ripped open the envelope, read through the letter swiftly, and
tossed it to Eaton. His eyes had grown hard and narrow

"Write to Mr. Hobart that I am sorry I haven't time to call on Mr. Harley
at the Consolidated offices, as he suggests. Add that I expect to be in my
offices all morning, and shall be glad to make an appointment to talk with
Mr. Harley here, if he thinks he has any business with me that needs a
personal interview."

Smythe's leathery face had as much expression as a blank wall, but Eaton
gasped. The unparalleled audacity of flinging the billionaire's overture
back in his face left him for the moment speechless. He knew that Ridgway
had tempted Providence a hundred times without coming to disaster, but
surely this was going too far. Any reasonable compromise with the great
trust builder would be cause for felicitation. He had confidence in his
chief to any point in reason, but he could not blind himself to the fact
that the wonderful successes he had gained were provisional rather than
final. He likened them to Stonewall Jackson's Shenandoah raid, very
successful in irritating, disorganizing and startling the enemy, but with
no serious bearing on the final inevitable result. In the end Harley would
crush his foes if he set in motion the whole machinery of his limitless
resources. That was Eaton's private opinion, and he was very much of the
feeling that this was an opportune time to get in out of the rain.

"Don't you think we had better consider that answer before we send it,
Waring?" he suggested in a low voice.

His chief nodded a dismissal to the secretary before answering.

"I have considered it."

"But--surely it isn't wise to reject his advances before we know what they
are."

"I haven't rejected them. I've simply explained that we are doing business
on equal terms. Even if I meant to compromise, it would pay me to let him
know he doesn't own me."

"He may decide not to offer his proposition."

"It wouldn't worry me if he did."

Eaton knew he must speak now if his protest were to be of any avail. "It
would worry me a good deal. He has shown an inclination to be friendly.
This answer is like a slap in the face."

"Is it?"

"Doesn't it look like that to you?"

Ridgway leaned back in his chair and looked thoughtfully at his friend.
"Want to sell out, Steve?"

"Why--what do you mean?" asked the surprised treasurer.

"If you do, I'll pay anything in reason for your stock." He got up and
began to pace the floor with long deliberate strides. "I'm a born gambler,
Steve. It clears my head to take big chances. Give me a good fight on my
hands with the chances against me, and I'm happy. You've got to take the
world by the throat and shake success out of it if you're going to score
heavily. That's how Harley made good years ago. Read the story of his life.
See the chances he took. He throttled combinations a dozen times as strong
as his. Some people say he was an accident. Don't you believe it. Accidents
like him don't happen. He won because he was the
biggest, brainiest, most daring and unscrupulous operator in the field.
That's why I'm going to win--if I do win."

"Yes, if you win."

"Well, that's the chance I take," flung back the other as he swung
buoyantly across the room. "But YOU don't need to take it. If you want, you
can get out now at the top market price. I feel it in my bones I'm going to
win; but if you don't feel it, you'd be a fool to take chances."

Eaton's mercurial temperament responded with a glow.

"No, sir. I'll sit tight. I'm no quitter."

"Good for you, Steve. I knew it. I'll tell you now that I would have hated
like hell to see you leave me. You're the only man I can rely on down to
the ground, twenty-four hours of every day."

The answer was sent, and Eaton's astonishment at his chief's temerity
changed to amazement when the great Harley, pocketing his pride, asked for
an appointment, and appeared at the offices of the Mesa Ore-producing
Company at the time set. That Ridgway, who was busy with one of his
superintendents, should actually keep the most powerful man in the country
waiting in an outer office while he finished his business with Dalton
seemed to him insolence florescent.

"Whom the gods would destroy," he murmured to himself as the only possible
explanation, for the reaction of his enthusiasm was on him.

Nor did his chief's conference with Dalton show any leaning toward
compromise. Ridgway had sent for his engineer to outline a program in
regard to some ore-veins in the Sherman Bell, that had for months been in
litigation between the two big interests at Mesa. Neither party to the suit
had waited for the legal decision, but each of them had put a large force
at work stoping out the ore. Occasional conflicts had occurred when the men
of the opposing factions came in touch, as they frequently did, since crews
were at work below and above each other at every level. But none of these
as yet had been serious.

"Dalton, I was down last night to see that lease of Heyburn's on the
twelfth level of the Taurus. The Consolidated will tap our workings about
noon to-day, just below us. I want you to turn on them the air-drill pipe
as soon as they break through. Have a lot of loose rock there mixed with a
barrel of lime. Let loose the air pressure full on the pile, and give it to
their men straight. Follow them up to the end of their own tunnel when they
retreat, and hold it against them. Get control of the levels above and
below, too. Throw as many men as you can into their workings, and gut them
till there is no ore left."

Dalton had the fighting edge. "You'll stand by me, no matter what happens?"

"Nothing will happen. They're not expecting trouble. But if anything does,
I'll see you through. Eaton is your witness that I ordered it."

"Then it's as good as done, Mr. Ridgway," said Dalton, turning away.

"There may be bloodshed," suggested Eaton dubiously, in a low voice.

Ridgway's laugh had a touch of affectionate contempt. "Don't cross bridges
till you get to them, Steve. Haven't you discovered, man, that the bold
course is always the safe one? It's the quitter that loses out every time.
The strong man gets there; the weak one falls down. It's as invariable as
the law of gravity." He got up and stretched his broad shoulders in a deep
breath. "Now for Mr. Harley. Send him in, Eaton.

That morning Simon Harley had done two things for many years foreign to his
experience: He had gone to meet another man instead of making the man come
to him, and he had waited the other man's pleasure in an outer office. That
he had done so implied a strong motive.

Ridgway waved Harley to a chair without rising to meet him. The eyes of the
two men fastened, wary and unwavering. They might have been jungle beasts
of prey crouching for the attack, so tense was their attention. The man
from Broadway was the first to speak.

"I have called, Mr. Ridgway, to arrange, if possible, a compromise. I need
hardly say this is not my usual method, but the circumstances are extremely
unusual. I rest under so great a personal obligation to you that I am
willing to overlook a certain amount of youthful presumption." His teeth
glittered behind a lip smile, intended to give the right accent to the
paternal reproof. "My personal obligation--"

"What obligation? I left you to die in the snow.',

"You forget what you did for Mrs. Harley."

"You may eliminate that," retorted the younger man curtly. "You are under
no obligations whatever to me."

"That is very generous of you, Mr. Ridgway, but--"

Ridgway met his eyes directly, cutting his sentence as with a knife.
"'Generous' is the last word to use. It is not a question of generosity at
all. What I mean is that the thing I did was done with no reference
whatever to you. It is between me and her alone. I refuse to consider it as
a service to you, as having anything at all to do with you. I told you that
before. I tell you again."

Harley's spirit winced. This bold claim to a bond with his wife that
excluded him, the scornful thrust of his enemy--he was already beginning to
consider him in that light rather than as a victim--had touched the one
point of human weakness in this money-making Juggernaut. He saw himself for
the moment without illusions, an old man and an unlovable one, without near
kith or kin. He was bitterly aware that the child he had married had been
sold to him by her guardian, under fear of imminent ruin, before her
ignorance of the world had given her experience to judge for herself. The
money and the hidden hunger of sentiment he wasted on her brought him only
timid thanks and wan obedience. But for this man, with his hateful,
confident youth, he had seen the warm smile touch her lips and the delicate
color rose her cheeks. Nay, he had seen more her arms around his neck and
her, warm breath on his cheek. They had lived romance, these two, in the
days they had been alone together. They had shared danger and the joys of
that Bohemia of youth from which he was forever excluded. It was his
resolve to wipe out by financial favors--he could ruin the fellow later if
need be--any claims of Ridgway upon her gratitude or her foolish
imagination. He did not want the man's appeal upon her to carry the
similitude of martyrdom as well as heroism.

"Yet, the fact remains that it was a service" --his thin lips smiled. "I
must be the best judge of that, I think. I want to be perfectly frank, Mr.
Ridgway. The Consolidated is an auxiliary enterprise so far as I am
concerned, but I have always made it a rule to look after details when it
became necessary. I came to Montana to crush you. I have always regarded
you as a menace to our legitimate interests, and I had quite determined to
make an end of it. You are a good fighter, and you've been on the ground in
person, which counts for a great deal. But you must know that if I give
myself to it in earnest, you are a ruined man."

The Westerner laughed hardily. "I hear you say it."

"But you don't believe," added the other quietly. "Many men have heard and
not believed. They have KNOWN when it was too late.

"If you don't mind, I'll buy my experience instead of borrowing it,"
Ridgway flung back flippantly.

"One moment, Mr. Ridgway. I have told you my purpose in coming to Montana.
That purpose no longer exists. Circumstances have completely altered my
intentions. The finger of God is in it. He has not brought us together thus
strangely, except to serve some purpose of His own. I think I see that
purpose. 'The stone which the builders refused is become the headstone of
the corner. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes,'" he
quoted unctiously.
"I am convinced that it is a waste of good material to crush you; therefore
I desire to effect a consolidation with you, buy all the other copper
interests of any importance in the country, and put you at the head of the
resulting
combination."

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