Chapter XII: Part II: I (3)

“That I’ll not tell you. Even your wife could not, I fancy. I’ve never seen a woman treat men with a more careless impartiality. What a relief--with all these divorces pending. Merely a shuffling of cards, too, I understand. It is disgusting. I asked your wife as a personal favour to me to invite none of them tonight. Butte either has long orgies of respectability or goes quite off her head.”

“My wife is singularly indifferent to men for a beautiful woman,” replied Gregory, comfortably ignorant of his beautiful wife’s depredations abroad. “Nor is she likely to countenance divorce. She has a good deal of her old New England mother in her.” He had a haughty contempt for explanations as a rule, but his quick instinct had caught the significance of his companion’s remarks; knowing that Ida must wish to stand well with this amiable but rigid arbiter of Butte’s court of last resort, he added:

“I am sorry not to be in Butte oftener, and give her what little assistance a man may, but it is all I can do to leave the mine for a few hours every week or two.”

“That is the fate of too many of our American women married to our too busy American men. But--well--Gregory--I have married sons and daughters, and I am an old friend of yours. Young wives must not be neglected, and resentment eats like a cancer until women are old enough to be philosophical. Just think that over.” And before he could answer Ida gave the signal and the men were left alone.

VIII

As the women dispersed about the long drawing-room Ora laid her arm lightly round the waist of Ida, who was standing for the moment apart.

“Your dinner is a tremendous success, my dear,” she said, “and so are you. That gown! It makes mine look so crude. I wish I had worn white as I intended until the last minute. How splendidly everything went off. Not a detail to criticise, and every woman has worn something new from New York or Paris. But you--well, Ida, you are always beautiful, of course, but tonight you are something more than lovely.”

“Oh, am I?” Ida gave a little gasp, forgetting her passing astonishment at so much tribute from Ora at once. “Well, I ought to be. I never felt quite like this in all my life. Geewhil--no, I’m too happy even for slang. I wish I could sing.”

Ora sighed. “I’ve always known you would get everything you wanted, and I can guess just how you feel tonight. You are a complete success. How many people ever are able to say that?”

“Yes, I feel as if I owned the earth!” But her brows met in a puzzled frown. “I never felt, though, as if even the conquest of Butte would all but send me off my head. I never feel very much excited about any old thing; it’s not my make; but I’ve got a sort of shiver inside of me, and a watery feeling in the heart region. If that chef had spoilt the dinner I’d have gone out and wrung his neck.”

“Well, nothing can go wrong now. The worst is over, and no dinner was ever more delicious. Why don’t you let them dance? I know that Mrs. O’Hara plays.”

“Good idea! I’ll ring this minute for a few of those extra near-waiters to take out the rugs and move the furniture.”

Two of the younger women, who had returned not long since from San Francisco, were showing their scandalised friends the turkey-trot when the men came down the hall from the dining-room. Ida drew Gregory aside.

“Tell me,” she asked, with an eager almost childish note in her voice new to him. “Did it go off well? Am I all I ought to be after all the money you have spent on me? Do I look nice in my fine clothes?”

Gregory patted her on the shoulder. “I know little about such things,” he said kindly, “but it outclassed all the banquets I’ve been obliged to attend in the last six or eight months. I felt quite proud that it was in my own house--yours, to be literal--and Mrs. Blake assured me that she had never seen anything better done.”

“Ora is an angel, and without her--but you know all that. Tell me--well, Gregory, I want a good old-fashioned compliment!”

His voice lost its bantering tone and became formal with gallantry: “You are, as ever, the handsomest woman in Montana. I shouldn’t wonder a bit if those New York reporters were right and that you are the handsomest woman in America.”

Ida looked for a long moment into his eyes. Again her brows met in a puzzled frown, this time because her singular lightness of spirit had fled abruptly. She was too proud, too far developed beyond the old Ida, to put forth the arts of the siren until they were alone; but she asked softly, and again with that almost childish naïveté:

“Do you really admire me?”

“You are all right,” he said with a heartiness that masked a sudden misgiving. “I must come in and take you to the theatre the next time a good show comes to town. Let me know. I’ll gratify my vanity by sitting beside you in a box----”

“There’s a play tomorrow night. Stay over!”

“I’m sorry. I don’t dare. Apex is sinking for all she’s worth. We may have a set-to any minute. It was a risk even to come away for a night.”

“Oh, do let me go out, and down into the mine----”

“I should think not. And do your best to keep Mrs. Blake in Butte for at least a week.”

“Well, let me go out when the danger is over. I long to see chalcopyrite in the vein. I saw some beautiful specimens at the School of Mines the other day. It looks like pure gold.”

He looked at her in amazement. “What on earth do you know about ores? Did you include Freiberg in your itinerary?”

“This is Butte, remember. I no sooner returned than I realised how interesting she was.”

“Ah, well, when this affair is settled, come out and stay with Mrs. Blake and I’ll take you down. I’ve no place to put you up. Even the ranch house is full. Mrs. Blake’s manager and foreman are boarding there at present, and Oakley also puts up my secretary----”

“And those crops Oakley put in with such enthusiasm?” cried Ida with a sudden inspiration, and racking her memory. “Did they turn out as he expected? Was there a drought--in--in--those states?”

“What a memory you have! Yes, Oakley is doing wonders, and the drought arrived as per schedule. He would scorn to put the ranch under the ditch, although that is my long suit at present.”

“I suppose Circle-G Ranch looks like Holland by this time.”

“Not quite yet! But the work is progressing splendidly, all except----” He paused. It had never been his habit to talk to her, and the complicated details of business he regarded as beyond the intelligent apprehension of any woman. But as Ida moved closer to him with wide-open eyes she looked intelligent enough to understand anything, and a letter received that morning had been on his mind ever since. “There is some trouble about the railroad,” he said. “The Land Company was to build it, but either doesn’t want the bother or really has lost a lot of money, as it claims. I placed a deed in escrow which pledges me to build it if the Land Company failed to keep its agreement; and the seed houses, which bought several large blocks of land, and a number of private settlers are demanding that the railroad be begun--it was to be finished at the end of a year----”

Ida saw her opportunity and grasped it. “We both must do our duty, and not monopolise each other,” she said hurriedly. “But tell me all about it after they have gone. Now, go and dance with Kitty Collier. She’s the best-looking woman in Butte. I can’t dance in this harness, but I’ll talk English politics with my portlier guests.” As he smiled and moved toward the music, she laid her hand lightly on his arm. “I want to thank you for coming tonight, Gregory,” she said. “It means a great deal to me socially. Besides, it is good to see you again.” And this time she looked very sweet; but there was a slight aloofness in her manner, as if to admonish him that, although he was forgiven, there was still a breach which it was for him to close. Then she added lightly: “Well, we’ll talk it all over later. Go, now, and dance.”

* * * * *

Gregory stood by the front door talking to two of the men, whose wives had walked on; their homes were but a door or two away. Ida ran up the stairs to Ora’s room, where they unhooked each other.

“You look tired,” said Ida, sympathetically.

“Oh, I am tired,” replied Ora, her arms hanging. “Tired. Tired.”

“It’s a long while since you danced like that. Just drop into bed. Lend me a scarf, will you?”

She covered her opened gown with the lace and walked slowly over to her room. Then she suddenly turned back to the head of the stairs. The three men were still talking below.

“Gregory,” she called, and her voice was very sweet.

“Yes?”

“Lock up, will you? The servants have gone to bed.”

“I will.”

“Don’t forget,” and omitting to add a good-night, she went swiftly to her room, changed her formal evening gown for a soft combination of yellow silk and lace that made her look like a tulip in a primrose bed, let down the black masses of her hair, and threw herself into a deep chair. But there was no repose in her attitude. More than once her body stiffened and she raised her head. Pride and shrewdness forbade her to leave her door open, and it would be impossible to hear that light panther-like tread on the heavy carpet of the stair. The front door might have closed while she was changing in the dressing-room.

Suddenly she heard it slam. Nervous as she was she smiled reminiscently. Gregory might be soft of foot, but otherwise he was as noisy as most men. Then the smile froze until her lips were distended in a grin. Another door had slammed. Gregory was in his own room.

After a few moments she became aware that her body was rigid and that she was grasping the arms of her chair. She rose with an exclamation of impatience, but stood with her head bent, listening intently. Suddenly she swayed a little, once more flooded with that sense of excited gladness with which guests and chefs had had naught to do: she thought she heard a door open softly, a light footfall. But her straining ear-drums had deceived her. The house was as still as a mausoleum. She pressed her hands against her breast in the gesture the stage has borrowed from life; her heart felt as if swimming against an undertow.

Then she began pacing up and down. After her habit she tried to arrange her thoughts by putting them into words, and, as people still do off the stage, muttered them aloud.

“My God! Do I care as much as that? Do I really _care_? No! No! No! Any woman of pride, let alone vanity, would make up her mind to bring her husband back--especially if she could make him as proud of her as I made him of me tonight. And when he still thinks me beautiful. What woman wouldn’t? Even if she didn’t have an ounce of any kind of feeling for him? Men are only interesting when they forget about us in that purely masculine world where women are warned off the grass. To lure them back--that is the spice of life in this country. And if one doesn’t succeed the first time--he may be so tired and sleepy that he’s forgotten about me--or shy, afraid I’d laugh at him--the world does not come to an end tonight--What an idiot I am! I made him admire me more than ever, astonished him--why am I not satisfied for the present?--It can’t be that I care--that I long for him to come--Good God! I’d rather be dead than _that_!”

But she went to the door and, laying her ear against it, listened until she became aware that her lungs were bursting with imprisoned breath. Then she sank into a chair trembling, her eyes filled with fear. A moment more and she flung her arms over the table and dropped her face upon them and broke into heavy weeping.

IX

Ora looked round the large living-room of her bungalow with a deep sense of content. The walls were covered with a material coarse in weave and of a red warm but not too bright. The colour was repeated in the divan and chairs, melting softly into browns that harmonised with the heavy beams of the ceiling. A few Navajo rugs covered the floor. Above the divan of many cushions was a bookshelf crowded with the new fiction of two continents. Several shelves, built like a bookcase, occupied a corner and were furnished more ponderously. In the middle of the room a large table was half covered with the best periodicals of the day, although there was room for a large lamp with a red shade and a vase filled with wild flowers. Down at the far end of the room, which was about thirty feet long, and opposite the kitchen, were the dining-table and a small sideboard. The main door opened upon a verandah, and one beside the fireplace into a narrow hall, giving privacy to the bedrooms. Ora had no atavistic yearnings for the life of the pioneer; she might feel as much at home in a bungalow as in a palace, but elementals, save when pictorially valuable, like overhead beams, were rigidly excluded.

Her hands clasped behind her, she drifted up and down the long room, her mode of ambulation expressing the state of her mind. Quick and final as she could be in decision, if necessity spurred, the deeper sensuousness in her nature impelled her to drift whenever circumstances would permit. For two months she intended to drift--or gamble! She had not come out here further to alienate the affections of her friend’s husband, and those old tumultuous dreams were still crowded in some remote brain cell with seals on the door. She had even told herself in so many words that she had no desire for anything so terrific as their complete materialisation. She had plumbed the depth and intensity of life in her imagination. Let that suffice. And reality was not so much to be feared because of the wreck it might make of her life as because it was reasonably sure to leave a corpse in her memory, instead of that ever burning soul of past delights.

But she had come out to her mine to enjoy the constant companionship of Gregory Compton before she left her country for ever and married a European. That much she owed to the extraordinary imaginative experience in which they had been one. If she could spend long hours with him, make him as eager for her companionship as she was for his, forget his mine now and then, feel that mysterious and satisfying bond of the spirit, she would ask no more, not even an admission of love when they parted.

When a woman goes on a still hunt for a man’s soul she is far more dangerous than the obvious siren, for her self-delusion is complete, her guards are down, her wiles disarming. Ora had had too little practical experience of men to be prepared to admit, in spite of her abstract knowledge of life, that there has been but one foundation of love since the world began, and never will be another till life on this planet ends, whatever may be the starry mysteries of the spheres. But while she was (spasmodically) too honest to deny even her own sex encumbrance, she believed, like many other, particularly American women of narrow experience, that it had been politely emasculated by the higher civilisation, was merely synonymous with poetry, romance, and sentiment. This convention was imported to the New World by England’s middle-class and became a convenient national superstition. It is on the wane.

That Gregory, granted she were successful in capturing his soul, might desire to contribute the rest of himself to the spoils, now that she no longer was the wife of his friend, let loose those subversive passions she had divined the night of their meeting and dared to recognise in the realm of imagination, she would have refused to admit had the possibility occurred to her. She was out for the ideal, and not yet had she learned to take her imagination in hand like a refractory child. Moreover, she had an imperious will, gracefully as she concealed it. This last year of freedom and wealth and feminine triumphs had tempered that will into a pliable and dangerous weapon. What she wanted she would have. As she planned a thing so should it work out. But the details--ah, they were veiled in the future, and from their mysteries came this reflex vibration, this pleasant sense of drifting, of wondering how it would all begin and what would happen next.

In a sense it had begun. Gregory had called two days before to ask if she were comfortable. He was in his overalls (purposely), and had refused at first to sit down, but finally had succumbed to the deepest of the chairs before the log fire. He had finished by remaining for supper, and again had occupied the chair until eleven o’clock. Neither had suspected the other’s secret passion, for love before union, being nine parts imagination, needs solitude for indulgence, and is capable, moreover, of long and satisfying quietudes if fed with externals. There was sheer delight in sitting together by that warm intimate fire, at the dining-table at the end of the long shadowy room, in feeling cut off from the world on the edge of that rough mountain camp, in listening to the soughing of the pines during the silences. That both were on their guard lest the other take fright and the experience be impossible of repetition but exaggerated the atmosphere of friendliness, of almost sexless comradeship. Gregory betrayed one only of his reflections: he admitted to himself what Ora subtly compelled him to admit, and had no difficulty in divining, that the companionship of woman was a blessed thing, and that he had been the loneliest of men.

Their talk was mainly of ores! She was permitted to learn how little else interested him in comparison with the enthralling inside of Montana. But he told her also the legends of the great copper mines on Lake Superior, so old that copper was found pure, looking much like the smelted product from the copper ores of the later geological formations of the Rocky Mountains. These vast mines, particularly that on Isle Royal, bore unmistakable signs of having been worked systematically by a prehistoric people experienced in mining; presumably by the Atlantans, who, after their own mines were worked out and they still demanded “orichalcum” for their monuments and bronze for their implements, went annually in ships for the metal. That there had been a self-supporting mining colony on Isle Royal was indicated by certain agricultural remains.

Gregory and Ora had amused themselves reconstructing that old time when the metal island was as lively as today, and considerably more picturesque--owing to the alternative of skins for muck-spattered overalls; an underground chapter of the Niebelungenlied, its gnomes toiling down in those two miles of workings, stoping out less in a hundred years than the methods of today force a mine to yield in one. How they must have swarmed to the surface, regardless of discipline, at the first signal of the approaching ships, their one link with a world that was not all water and forest and underground cavern. By what tortuous way did those archaic ships travel from the Atlantic to the northwest corner of that vast inland sheet; unless, indeed, which is likely, subsequent upheavals have destroyed a waterway which may have connected sea and lake prior to 10000 B.C.[B] How many of those old ships lie in the bed of Lake Superior, laden with rude nuggets of copper, pounded from the gangue, or, who knows? smelted by a lost art into sheets and blocks? Archaic ships rode high, and no doubt those from Atlantis were overladen; for what has kept Atlantis in the realm of myth so long save the unscientific legend that she perished of greed and its vicious offspring? What archaic mysteries may not the terrible storms of that great north lake yet uncover? What strange variety of copper, washed and bitten by the waters of twelve thousand years, for which the enraptured geologist must find a new name? Who knows?--the bed of Lake Superior may be one unbroken floor of malachite; and the North American Indian of that region the descendant of those ancient miners, abandoned and forgotten when Atlantis plunged to the bottom of the sea.

It was Ora who advanced these last frivolous theories, and--the clock striking eleven--Gregory sprang to his feet.

“Likely as any,” he said. “All theories change about as often as it is time to get out a new edition of an encyclopædia, or develop a ‘new school’ which makes its reputation by the short cut of upsetting the solemn conclusions of its predecessors. I’m going down into the mine.” He bolted out with no further ceremony, but Ora was long since accustomed to the manners of Western men. She went to bed feeling that sadness had gone out of the world.

She had not seen him since. Nor had anything new and interesting happened. Her manager, Raymond, refused to take her down in the mine, alleging that when Apex broke into the workings of Perch of the Devil, there was sure to be a fight, and the bohunks would retreat, not up their own shaft but through the tunnels of the Primo mine. The young man was manifestly distressed to refuse any boon to so charming a woman, and he and his foreman had moved at once into the half-finished cottage, but he heartily wished her back in Butte, nevertheless. The best of miners love a fight, and it would be impossible to protect her from flying bullets if the row was continued above ground. Ora merely had laughed when he begged her to return or to remain within doors, but had promised to be prudent and flourished her automatic .25.

X

She glanced at the clock. It was half-past three. She knew that Gregory frequently went below in the morning, and had half expected that he would cross over to her hill for a moment when he came up at three o’clock. The drifting mood vanished. She decided that two days were enough for feminine passivity and went to her bedroom and changed her pretty house frock for a stout out-of-doors’ costume of forest green tweed: as she had no mind to look either the outworn Western heroine of romance, or a fright, she had omitted khaki from her mountain wardrobe. She tied a light green veil round her head, put on a pair of loose chamois gloves, selected a green parasol lined with pink, and went out to give the fates a gentle shove.

Hitherto she had so far yielded to the solicitude of her manager as to take her walks through the pine woods above her bungalow, but today she marched deliberately through her grove and stood for several moments on the edge of the little bluff above the tableland on which her claim was located. It was her first prolonged look at the three mining camps, for she had arrived at night. She had driven out occasionally to mining camps with her father, once or twice with Mark; the scene was both typical and picturesquely ugly. In or near the centre of each claim was the shaft house; fifty feet beyond--the distance prescribed by law to prevent overhead fires from communicating with underground timbers--were the buildings containing the hoisting machinery and the compressed air plant. Scattered about were the shacks of the miners, the long bunk- and mess-houses, blacksmith and carpenter shops. Just below the Apex claim, and on Government land, an enterprising publican had established himself. On all sides were other claims of recent location, for there had been the inevitable rush.

The rude buildings were grey and weather-beaten, and all traces of the gentle spring verdure had disappeared. About the collar of each shaft was an immense dump heap, waste rock brought up from the depths, and the highest of these was on Perch of the Devil. Near each were the ore bins, but these for the most part were empty, and, save on the De Smet hill, there was a notable absence of “double-sixes.” The Primo vein had not been recovered, Apex had not yet touched bottom; Gregory Compton, for reasons best known to himself, had changed his original plan and was merely uncovering his new vein, taking out as little of its ore as possible. His bins were furnished with ore from the second level of his mine, where work had proceeded steadily on the original vein.

The men off shift were standing about in groups as they did in Butte, or passing in and out of the saloon. And the racket was deafening: the roar of the machinery in the hoisting and compressor houses, the crash of rock dumped from the buckets or skips, the ringing of hammer on anvil. The scene was not beautiful but it was alive! One could fancy the thrill of the hidden metals, knowing that their hour, after vast geological ages of waiting, was come; that, like mortals, they were to agonise in the crucible of life and achieve their ultimate destiny.

Ora walked through the grove until she was beyond the long mess-house at the back of her claim, climbed over the abrupt rise of Apex--which, combined with the hardness of the rock, had made its task so long--and, ascertaining that the larger buildings hid her, crawled under the De Smet fence, and drew a long breath as she set her feet squarely on the famous Perch of the Devil. Here the buildings, large and small, were scattered up to the brow of the hill and over on the other side. It had, in fact, something of the appearance of a growing village with irregular streets; and before several of the cabins children were playing, or women took their Monday washing from the line. The fronts of some of these cottages were painted white, and here and there flowers grew in boxes. There were even a reading-room and a large “general store.” Altogether Perch of the Devil looked as if it might grow larger, and more solid and permanent of aspect, with the years.

Ora walked through the crooked streets on the steep hillside until she reached the deep chamber into which had leached the acids of the centuries to enrich the ores, and incidentally Gregory Compton. Thousands of tons of dump made a hill in itself and shut off the view to the south, but below were the acres of waving wheat, the alfalfa with its purple flower, the sprouting flax, the winding creek that was often dry but sometimes wet, the brush sheds for the cattle, the substantial farm buildings. The broad peaceful expanse looked as if even a winter wind had never shaken it, so entirely did it seem dissociated from the frantic energies of its northeast corner. And still beyond was perfect beauty: the massive pine-covered mountains, rising tier above tier, ridges of the great Rockies, far away and up to the sky-cutting line, glittering with eternal snows. For a few moments Ora forgot the raucous noises about her, Nature delivering herself of her precious children with loud protesting pains. Then she turned suddenly and looked upward.

Gregory had just stepped from his cabin. For a moment he did not see her, but stood staring, his hands in his pockets, at the distant mountains. He wore his favourite overalls and a battered cap on the back of his head; but he looked so remote in spirit from that materialising costume that Ora watched him with a sensation of helpless jealousy. Not for a moment could she delude herself that he was thinking of her. He looked like a seer.

“Can you see right into the heart of those mountains?” she asked lightly, as she walked up the hill toward him. “You looked as if your imagination were ‘blocking out’ thousands of tons of gold quartz.”

He started and coloured, but smiled with a sudden pleasure at the charming picture in the foreground. “Something like that. This mine is all right, and now that I’ve got over my disappointment, I have a feeling for it that I guess I’ll never have for another mine--something like the affection for one’s first born! But all the same I intend to have a gold mine one of these days. Have you been admiring my view?”

He had walked down and joined her.

“Yes, but that is not what I came over here for. Nor is it what I came out to the mines for. I brought a small library, but I find I am not in the humour for books. I want to be doing something myself. Mr. Raymond won’t take me down into my mine. I want to go down into yours--now.”

He hesitated a moment. “Well--why not? Apex is not working this afternoon--something the matter with their compressor. They sounded pretty close to our workings this morning, but the men quit about one o’clock, and as they didn’t blast it was probably because the holes weren’t deep enough. I’ve just been told that they can’t get to work again before tomorrow. But you look much too fine!”

“Everything cleans; and I’ll leave my veil and parasol in the shaft house.”

“All right,” he said abruptly. “Come along.”

When they were in the shaft house he asked, “Will you go down in the skip or by the ladder?”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly do anything so ignominious as to go down in a bucket, and I’m very agile. How far is it?”

“A hundred feet. I shall only take you to the first level.”

Ora peered down into the black and slanting and apparently bottomless well. A ladder was built flat against one side. A skip full of ore was banging against the sides of the other compartment on its way up. She looked again at the ladder, shuddered, and set her teeth.

Gregory put two candles in his pocket, inserted his long limber body into the narrow aperture and ran down sideways.

“Oh!” gasped Ora. “I can’t do that. Please wait. I--I think I’d better go down backward.”

“By all means. Sit down and turn round. I’ll catch hold of one of your feet and put it on a rung. The rest will be easy.”

Ora followed these instructions gingerly, concluding that the skip would have been more dignified. Then she forgot dignity and only wondered if her bones had gone out of her: she had rolled over on her equatorial zone and was kicking helplessly in the void. But as Gregory caught her feet and planted them safely she set her teeth once more and summoned her pride.

“Glad you have on stout boots,” he said, practically. “We’ve not enough water in the mine for pumps, but it’s a little damp underfoot. Wait a minute while I light a candle.” He struck a match and performed this feat; how, Ora could not even guess; but she glanced down sideways and saw that he was holding the lighted candle up at arm’s length.

“Come on,” he said. “You mustn’t be frightened.”

“I’m not a bit frightened, but don’t go too fast.”

Gregory, who was running down the ladder, moderated his pace, and sent up an occasional word of cheer. Suddenly Ora heard a horrid noise below like the crash and roar of an express train. “Has the mine fallen in?” she gasped.

“Hope not. That’s the tram with ore and rock for the skip. By and by we’ll use the waste rock to fill up the stopes with, but we’re only blocking out at present.”

“How frightfully interesting mining is--in all its details!” Ora’s hands were smarting, and every part of her, not excluding her imagination, felt as if on the rack. “That noise is over!”

“Did I hear you say ‘Thank heaven’?”

“Of course not. How much farther is it? Haven’t we passed the first level?”

“If we had I should be carrying you. Only about twenty feet more.”

And a few moments later, with the deepest sigh of relief she had ever drawn, she was standing in the small station beside the shaft.

“It’s hard work the first time,” he said sympathetically. “But you’ll soon get used to it.”

“How dark it is!”

“I’ll put in electricity when my troubles with Amalgamated are over.” He lit another candle and handed it to her. “Be careful of your frock.”

The ore car was rumbling away in the distance. Gregory followed the sound down the tunnel and Ora kept close at his heels. “I suppose we’ll see something after a while?” she ventured. “I can’t see even you now, only your candle.”

“We’ll soon be out of this,” he said cheerfully. “You see, we’ve had to walk under the chamber from which I took that great deposit of carbonates, and then some----” He paused a moment, but not before he had turned acutely to the left. “This is where I lost the vein. We are in the fault now. How would you like to be in an earthquake that broke a vein in two and hurled one end----” His voice was lost in the rattling roar of the compressed air drills, although there was nothing to be seen until they reached another little station and faced a wider drift on the right, some twelve feet long. Candles were flaring from the miners’ candlesticks, whose long points were thrust into stulls or the softer part of the rock, and four men were manipulating two of the cumbersome air drills which stood on tripods. Gregory made a sign to the shift boss, who shut off a valve, and the din stopped abruptly.

“Now,” said Gregory. “This is what you have come for.” He moved his candle along the brassy glitter of chalcopyrite in the vein, steadying her with his arm, for the floor was uneven and littered.

Ora trembled. She forgot the arm about her; it felt like mere steel for that matter; she was in one of the magic caverns of her dreams and she thrilled to the magnet of the ores. “It looks like pure gold,” she whispered.

“So it is in a sense, and far more beautiful to look at in the vein.” They had been standing near the opening of the drift. He guided her down toward the farther end; the miners made way for them and went out to the station nothing loath; owing their lives to what has cost many a man his life and more, the caprice of a woman.

“I want to show you how the holes look before we put the sticks of powder in,” Gregory began, as he waved his candle once more aloft, this time over a less dazzling surface. He stopped abruptly. She felt his body stiffen. Then, as he whirled her about, he screamed to the men:

“Get out! Run!”

Ora had the sensation of being swept along by a bar of steel burrowing into the flesh of her waist. But in another instant she had lost all sense of her body. There was a shock as if something had hit the hill at its foundations, a dull roar, and then the crash of falling rock behind them.

The men were all ahead. Ora dimly could see them running like rabbits up the fault drift. Then she became conscious of the stifling sickening smell of powder and a bursting sensation in her head. No one paused for a second, nor drew breath until all had turned the corner and were in the main level. For a space nothing was heard but the hoarse effort to refill tormented lungs. The men leaned against the walls of the tunnel. Ora leaned against Gregory. All sense of fear had departed out of her. She had had her baptism of fire and doubted if she ever should be capable of the sensation of fear again.

The silence lasted but a moment. Out of the intense darkness flew oaths like red-hot rocks from boiling craters.

“Shut up!” said Gregory sharply. “There’s a lady here. And light up if you have any extra candles. I’ve dropped mine. We must find out if anybody is missing.”

“I held on to mine,” said Ora proudly. Gregory lit it, and the shift boss counted his men. “All here, sir; but by jink, it was a narrow squeak. The--the--the----”

“Never mind--who’s this?” A man was running toward them from the direction of the shaft.

“It’s me, sir.” Gregory recognised Mann’s voice. “I’ve just got on to what they were up to. There wasn’t a blamed thing the matter with the compressor. They just meant to catch us off guard--anybody hurt?”

“All right. How did you find out?”

“I suspicioned something crooked, so I got one of those damned bohunks drunk and bribed him. They’d put in the sticks before they quit, pretending the compressor had gone wrong and they couldn’t finish drilling. I suppose they sneaked back while I was getting the story, and lit the fuses.”

“You’ll let us get back at ’em, boss?” demanded the men.

“Oh, yes,” said Gregory, in a voice of deadly irony. “We’ll get back at them.”

He was holding the candle. Ora saw him bend his head forward in the attitude so characteristic of him. But he raised it in a moment.

“Go up, every one of you,” he said, “and down to the saloon. Talk about what happened, but assume that it was an accident. Any fighting above ground and you’ll be canned. Say that there’s a big cave-in and we’re obliged to quit work on this level for the present. See that that spreads all over Apex camp. Say that I’ve given you the rest of the shift off. Come down as soon as you’ve had your drink and said your say. Jerry”--to the shift boss--“you watch the Apex shaft house. I don’t figure that they’ll go down under an hour, on account of the smoke, but if they do just drop below. I’ll wait for you here. And before you come,” he added grimly, “go over to the compressor house and tell them to turn the steam on the air line.”

“Hooray!” The shouting of the men made almost as much noise in the tunnel as the recent explosion. “That’s the ticket, boss. Oh, we won’t do a thing to them!”

“Get out of this,” said the shift boss. “Don’t take more than one drink; and hold on to your tempers, or there’ll be no fun below.”

A moment later Gregory and Ora were alone in the tunnel.

XI

“How did you guess?” asked Ora.

“I didn’t guess. I saw a drill hole just beyond where my men were working. I also did a little quick deduction. Miners blast just before they go off shift. The afternoon change of shift is at three o’clock. As I told you I had seen the Apex men come up about one o’clock when their compressor stopped. That hole not only told me that they were closer than we had thought, but that they were up to devilment. I guessed that they had timed to blast just before we were ready to drill at that point. Were you very much frightened?”

“I didn’t like it.” Ora knew that bravery in woman makes no appeal to the lordly male. “But I hardly had time to think; and after all you left me nothing to do.”

“Well, you were game and didn’t scream or cry,” he conceded handsomely. “Let’s light up.”

They had walked as far as the station at the foot of the shaft. Gregory unlocked the door of a small cupboard, found two candles and inserted them in miners’ candlesticks that were stabbed into the walls. They flickered in the draft as a skip rattled up from the second level, but relieved the oppressive darkness.

“Why, your hair is down!” exclaimed Gregory.

Ora put up a hand. “So it is! Well--I am sure I never should know if my hair fell down at a good play, and ours was live drama. I’ll braid it and put on my veil up above.”

He watched her for a moment as she sat on a box braiding her long fair hair, vaguely recalling the legend of the Lorelei. He noticed that her eyes as she peered up at him looked green in that uncertain light. But in a moment his thoughts wandered from her. He folded his arms and stared downward.

Ora leaned back against the wall. She saw that he had forgotten her, but had made up her mind to accept him as he was; she had no more desire to dictate his moods than to read in advance the book of the next two months. There was the same pleasurably painful vibration in her nerves as on the night when she had piled stake upon stake at Monte Carlo. From that scene her thoughts travelled naturally to Valdobia and she suddenly laughed aloud.

“What are you laughing at?” demanded Gregory suspiciously.

“I was trying to imagine that we were imprisoned in the underground dungeon of an Italian palace in the middle ages.”

“Hard work, I should think. Although if we had a cave-in I guess the results would be about the same.”

“And you? Were you seeing your minerals winking three thousand feet below?”

He laughed then, and sat beside her. “At all events the mystery down there is more romantic than your mediæval dungeons--and so will the great underground caverns be when the ores have been taken out.”

“Pity the caverns--stopes!--have to be filled up with débris to prevent the mine caving in,” said Ora flippantly. “I went underground in Butte last week--to the eighteenth level of the Leonard. Nothing but endless streets and cross-alleys, all numbered----”

“And you didn’t find that interesting?” he asked indignantly. “To be a third of a mile below the surface of the earth and find it laid out like a city, with streets and rooms, and stations ten times as large as this, and lighted with electricity?”

“Yes, but the knowledge that you have a third of a mile of those streets and rooms--seventeen levels of them--on top of you, supported only by waste rock in the stopes, and timbers that are always snapping in two from the terrific pressure--timbermen working at every turn--‘Save YOURSELF’ the first thing you see when you leave that cage--Oh, well, I felt there was quite enough romance on top of the earth.”

“I am deeply disappointed in you. You told me once--why, even lately----”

“Oh, I haven’t changed the least little bit. Nothing in life,” and she looked at him with laughing eyes, “interests me as much at present as these two mines. But I am thankful that we are still within a reasonable distance of the surface. I am quite content to screw up my eyes and wander in fancy among the primary deposits close to the central fires. If I had a mine like yours, full of the beautiful copper ores instead of that hideous pyroxenite of mine, I should leave a glittering layer in every stope, support the roof with polished stone columns, light with hidden electric bulbs, and wander from one to the other imagining myself in Aladdin’s palace.”

“A fine practical miner you would make. It’s lucky that your mine is pyroxenite, not quartz. That is if you want to live in Europe.--Do you?”

“Of course. What have I in this part of the world? A mine cannot satisfy a woman for ever. I suppose you wouldn’t care if you never saw a woman again!”

“Oh!” He was looking hard at her.

“What else were you thinking of just now?” asked Ora, with that perverse desire to be superficial which so often possesses American women in decisive moments.

He sighed impatiently. “I’ve got a big job on my hands, one that will take me away from here more or less. Did Mark tell you of a land deal I put through?”

“I should think so!”

“Well, I’ve got to build that railroad. Apex will close down when it finds I won’t let its men work underground. Amalgamated’s next move will be to bring suit for apex rights, and get out an injunction to enjoin me from working on that vein until the case is decided. As soon as I have driven them out now, however, I must get to work on the railroad--find my engineers--Oh, there are too many details to bother you with. But it means that I must spend a good deal of time in Butte until the thing is started----”

“How delighted Ida will be!” interrupted Ora softly. “And that house will be so comfortable after your cabin.”

For a moment he did not speak. Nor did his face betray him; but she fancied that his muscles stiffened. He replied suavely: “I should have gone on to say that it is more likely I shall have to attend to the matter in Helena. That is the centre of the land interest. It is doubtful if I could find the sort of men I want in Butte.”

“Have you any other land schemes on hand?”

“Not at present.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well--when I have taken a couple more millions out of this hill I shall begin to buy land, put it under the ditch, build the short railroads that may be necessary, and sell to small farmers--in other words push along the colonisation of this state. I believe you gave me that idea--the night we talked Butte--the first time, I mean.”

“I thought you had forgotten that night altogether.”

“Forgotten it!” Ora’s heart stood still at the explicit vibration in his well-ordered voice. She leaned back and closed her eyes. He had loved her all these months, dreamed of her as she had dreamed of him. Her first sensation of wonder and delight was succeeded by a faint disappointment.

She had the instinct of the born huntress, although she was far too highly civilised to have recognised it before. She wondered if his capitulation meant her own deliverance, too ignorant in the ways of love to guess that whether this were a passing or a permanent phase depended on the man.

While Gregory hurried on to tell her of all he should be able to do for Montana with the millions at present locked in the vaults of his hill, she had a full moment of honesty, and confessed that she had come out here to make Gregory Compton love her. And he did! It was a mighty personality to conquer; and the victory had been won long since! But the disappointment passed in a cynical smile. That he had no intention of declaring himself her lover was as patent as his inhuman power of self-control. Here were barricades to storm if barricades she wanted? What difference? And did she?

He sprang to his feet and stood at the foot of the shaft, looking up.

“They’re coming down,” he said.

Joshua Mann emerged a moment later.

“Apex bunch being rounded up to go below,” he said. “Our men are on the way.”

“Steam on the air line?”

“You bet!”

“Let’s get to work.” He turned to Ora. “Stay here till I come back,” he said peremptorily. “I can’t take you up in the skip now.”

“I am quite comfortable,” said Ora, coolly. “How many men will come down?”

“Five.” And he and Mann disappeared into the tunnel.

Ora waited until the other men had descended one by one and run into the blackness. Then she dislodged one of the candlesticks from the wall and ran after them. When she reached the fault drift she thrust the long point of the candlestick into a stull before turning the corner. Then she crept toward the station, from which she could witness the punishment about to be inflicted upon the Apex men, whatever it might be.

There was a glimmer of light in the new drift. Ora saw the men binding a piece of hose to the same length of pipe. They attached the hose to the air line and held it just inside the ragged hole some twelve feet above.

There was a distant murmur of voices overhead and to the right. The solitary candle was extinguished. The murmur of voices in the drift which led from Apex shaft along the continuation of the Primo vein grew louder. Men were laughing. One man was giving orders. It appeared that they were to let themselves down and go systematically to work on the Perch vein, which was now driving under the Apex claim.

Ora heard a sharp whispered word: “Now!” and barely recognised Gregory’s voice. A second later and she was deafened by the roar and hiss of escaping steam, mingled with shrieks of agony above, and fiendish cat-calls and jeers below, all expressed in the spectacular profanity of the mining camp. The episode was over in a moment. The Apex men tumbled over one another in their anxiety to leave the scene, and those manifestly disabled--Ora could hear them gasping horribly as the steam was turned off abruptly--were dragged away. She felt her own way rapidly along the fault drift, snatched her candlestick from the wall as she turned the corner, and scampered back to the shaft station. When the men arrived she was sitting demurely on the box. Gregory evidently had telephoned from the other station, for the skip came rattling down just before his appearance at the head of his laughing, cursing column.

“Did it go off well?” asked Ora.

“Did it?” cried Mann, tossing his cap in the air.

“They’re settled for the moment,” said Gregory. “They’ll come back at us later with steam on their own air line, and slacked lime; but we’ll be ready for them. They stand no show.”

Two of the men had been left on watch. Gregory lifted Ora into the skip. He and Mann stood on the edge. A second more and Ora was holding her breath as they were hurtled upward at express speed, the metal car banging from side to side of the shaft. In something under three-quarters of a minute Gregory helped her to alight in the shaft house, while the skip descended for the miners.

“Well,” he said, smiling, as she lifted her braid to the top of her head and wound the veil about it, “have you supped full of sensations for one day?”

“The last was the worst! And I do mean the skip. Now that we are where you cannot beat me I will confess that I followed you and saw your neat little mediæval revenge from the station----”

“Hush!” Gregory glanced about apprehensively, and drew her outside. “You mustn’t tell anyone else that. You don’t want to be summoned to the witness stand, I suppose?”

Ora gasped. “I never thought of that.”

“When will women let men do their thinking?” Gregory looked the primeval male as he scowled down at her. Nor did he mitigate her alarms with the information that underground battles seldom were continued in the courts. “Now, I am going to take you to your cottage, and I want you to stay there until the trouble is over. The men are bound to get drunk and fight. Better go to Butte----”

“I won’t.”

“Very well, then, stay in your house.”

“And be bored to death? Besides. I need exercise. I’ll roam all over the place unless you promise to come to supper every night and then take me for a walk in the woods.”

His eyes flickered. “Perhaps your engineer----”

“He’s a mere child. I hate boys. And I must have exercise.”

He looked at her with apparent stolidity for another moment, but she knew that he was investigating her expressive orbs. They expressed nothing that could be construed as flirtation, coquetry, or personal interest in himself. He saw himself mirrored there merely as the friend of her husband and the husband of her friend. “Very well,” he said curtly and swung on his heel. “I suppose I must look out for you. Come along.”

XII

Gregory had worn a clean suit of overalls into the mine. He was now spattered from head to foot, including his face and hands, but he swung along beside Ora with an unconsciousness of his disreputable appearance that was quite superb. All the miners of the three camps’ off shift were gathered about the saloon. As Gregory appeared the greater number of these men cheered wildly, but the “dark men,” who stood apart, maintained an ominous silence.