Chapter VI: Part I: I (6)

“Part of it--when I am not working in a mill or a smelter. I’d be ashamed of myself if I couldn’t do anything that another man can do. Some of the best miners look like rats.”

He looked like a highly-bred mettlesome race-horse himself, and Ora wondered, as she had before tonight: “Where did he get it? Who were his ancestors?” She had seen dukes that looked like farm hands, and royal princesses that might have been upper housemaids, but her feminine (and American) mind clung to the fallacy that it takes generations to produce the clean-cut shell. She determined to look up his family tree in Holland.

“Well--Custer--my housekeeper--will look after you,” she said as naturally as if her thoughts had not wandered for a moment. “Shall you do any mining on your own place before we come back from Europe?”

He started and looked at her apprehensively, then scowled.

“What is the matter? You may not know it but at this moment your face looks like an Indian battle-axe.”

To her surprise he laughed boyishly. “You startled me. I have heard of mind readers. Well, I will tell you what I wanted to a while back. But you must promise not to tell--anyone.”

“I promise! I swear it! And do hurry. I’m afraid you’ll shut up tight again.”

“No, I won’t. I don’t know that I’d tell you were it not that your own mine is just over the border; we may have to consolidate some day to save a lawsuit--No, I will be honest; I really want to tell you. It is this: Close to the northeast boundary line of my ranch is an almost barren hill of limestone and granite. Shortly before I left--last October--I discovered float on the side of the hill. There is no doubt in my mind that we have both come upon a new mineral belt, although whether we are in the middle or on one edge of it is another question.”

He told her the story of the storm and of the uncovering of the float. Nor did he end his confidence with a bare statement of fact. He told her of his sensations as he sat on the ragged ground leaning against the roots of the slain trees, his mental struggle, and final resolution. Then he told her of the hopes and dreams of his boyhood, and what it had meant to him--this sudden revelation that he had a mine under his feet--and all his own! He talked for half an hour, with the deep satisfaction that only a shy and silent person feels when talking into a sympathetic mind for the first time. Ora listened with a curious sense of excitement, as if she were overboard in a warm and pleasant but unknown sea. There were times when she felt like talking very fast herself. But she did nothing of the sort, merely jogging him diplomatically when he showed signs of relapsing into silence. Finally he stopped in the middle of a sentence and said abruptly:

“That’s all.”

“Oh! And you really have made up your mind not to begin work for a year?”

“Quite!”

“But--have you thought--it is only tonight I learned that the engineers who leased my mine have struck a rich vein. Suppose it dips toward yours----”

“It does----”

“Have they put on a big force?”

“Naturally. They are rushing things, as they know they will not get the mine another year.”

“Well, suppose their vein runs under your hill--through their side-line?”

He stirred uneasily. “I am watching them. So far the dip is very slight. It may take a turn, or go down straight; or,” and he smiled at her again, “it may pinch out. Nothing is so uncertain as an ore vein.”

“Do you think it will?” asked Ora anxiously.

“No, don’t worry. I was down the other day; and did some prospecting on my own account besides. I think you’ve got a big mine.”

“But suppose the vein should take a sudden dip to the right--you don’t want them burrowing under your hill----”

“They won’t burrow under my hill,” he said grimly. “I should persuade them that there was an even richer vein on their left.”

“Is there?”

“I have reason to think so. They naturally would want to avoid the expenses of a lawsuit, and of course they would waste a lot of time sinking a shaft or driving across. Their lease would be pretty well up by the time----”

“You _are_ cold-blooded! What of me? I should be making nothing, either.”

“You’d make it all later on. How much do you expect to spend in Europe anyway? You must have made a thousand dollars a day since the first carload of ore was smelted.”

She was on the point of replying that a woman could not have enough money in Europe, when she remembered the conspiracy to make him believe that a thousand dollars would cover the expenses of his wife.

“Oh, it is merely that I don’t like being one of the pawns in your game,” she said.

“You’d have all the more later on. Ore doesn’t run away.”

“How _can_ you stay away from your mine? I feel--after all that you have told me!--that you are wild to get at it?”

“So I am! So I am! But I said I wouldn’t and that is the end of it. I want that last year at the School.”

“What shall you do with all that money--if your hill turns out to be full of gold? More, I hope, than the rest of our millionaires have done for Montana--which is exactly nothing. You might give the State a complete irrigating system.”

“Good idea! Perhaps I will. But that is in the future. I want the fun first----”

“Fun? It is the passion of your life, your great romance. You’ll never love a woman like that.”

“Of course not.” But he was staring at her. He had a sensation of something swimming in the depths of his mind, striving to reach the surface. He changed his position suddenly and sat up. “And you?” he asked. “You have the same vision. Couldn’t you feel the same absorbing passion----”

“For ore?” The scorn of her entire sex was in her voice. “Dead cold metal----”

“Every molecule, every individual atom is alive and quivering----”

“I am not interested in chemistry.”

He still stared at her. Her cheeks were scarlet, her eyes blazing. She sprang to her feet.

“Ida is the wife for you! She’ll never ask much of you and you never could hurt her, not even if you tried, she is fortunate in lacking just that which you could hurt.”

“What is it?” He spoke eagerly. He, too, had risen, his eyes still on her face. Unconsciously he held his breath.

“Oh, you wouldn’t understand it I told you--and I haven’t the least desire to tell you. She will make you comfortable, do you credit when you are a rich man, spend your money royally. That is all _you_ will ask of _her_. Now, I’ll go back.”

He was a step or two below her. Their eyes were on a level. He looked at her sombrely for a moment, then walked past her up the steps.

“You need not call a cab. I shall go home. I should only set them all talking if I appeared in the ballroom again. You can tell Mark that I didn’t feel well and that you took me home.”

They walked along the high terrace until they found a point of easy descent.

“What have I said to make you angry?” he asked.

Ora laughed with determined good humour. “It was not I. It was merely my sex that flared up. Please forget it.”

“I want to thank you for what you have done for Ida,” he said abruptly, and it was evident that the words cost him more than his former revelations. “It was a great thing for you to do.”

“Oh, Ida has become my most intimate friend. I have never enjoyed Butte so much as in these last few months.”

“Has she? And Mark is my best friend.” He jerked his head in annoyance; manifestly the remark had been too spontaneous. They were before her gate. She extended a limp hand, but he held it firmly. He was smiling again although he looked depressed.

“Do give me a friendly shake,” he said. “I do like you and you will be going in a few days.”

“I do not go for five months.”

“You can go next week. I’ll square it with Mark.”

“I don’t wish to go next week. Besides, Mark expects some important people here in the autumn, and needs my help. He has a deal on.”

“I’ll dispossess Mark of any such notion. It’s all nonsense, this idea of a man’s needing his wife’s help in business. It’s a poor sort of man that can’t manage his own affairs, and Mark is not a poor sort. Now, you are angry again!”

“That would be foolish of me,” she said icily. “You merely don’t understand. You never could. Do you want to get rid of me?” she asked abruptly.

“Yes, I think I do.”

Then Ora relented. She also gave him the smile that she reserved as her most devastating weapon. “I am sorry,” she murmured, “but I don’t think I can be ready for at least three months. Nor Ida.”

“You go next week,” he said.

And go they did.

XXI

Gregory and Mark established their wives comfortably in a drawing-room of the limited for Chicago, asked the usual masculine questions about tickets and trunk checks, expressed their masculine surprise that nothing had been forgotten, told them to be careful not to lean over the railing of the observation car, nor to make themselves ill with the numerous boxes of candy sent to the train, admonished them not to spend too much money in New York, to send their trunks to the steamer the day before they sailed, and give themselves at least two hours to get to the docks; above all not to mislay their letters of credit; then kissed them dutifully, and, as the train moved out, stood on the platform with solemn faces and hearts of indescribable buoyancy.

“My Lord!” exclaimed Ida, as she blew her last kiss. “If Greg was going along I’d have to take care of him every step of the way. I wouldn’t trust him with the tickets the length of the train. Men do make me tired. They keep up the farce that we’re children just to keep up that other grand farce that they run the Universe. Any old plank to cling to.”

Ora kept her sentiments to herself.

If Mark, who was fond of his wife, and more or less dependent upon her, wondered vaguely that he should rejoice in the prospect of six months of bachelorhood, Gregory was almost puzzled. Ida was now no more to him personally than a responsibility he had voluntarily assumed and was determined to treat with complete justice; but at least she made him more comfortable than he had ever been before, and he had trained her to let him alone. Since her rapid improvement her speech had ceased to irritate him; she was never untidy, never anything but a pleasant picture to look at. He had also noted on the night of the party that she was indisputably the handsomest woman in the room and received the homage of men with dignity and poise. He had felt proud of her, and comfortably certain that he could trust her. Altogether a model wife.

Nevertheless as he walked out Park Street after he left Mark at his office (Ida not only had sent his personal possessions to the Blake house but found time to unpack and put them away) his brain, which had been curiously depressed during the past week, felt as if full of effervescing wine.

“Jove!” he thought, “why do men marry? What has any woman living to give a man half as good as his freedom.”

His freedom was to be reasonably complete. He had told Ida to expect no letters from him and not to write herself unless she were in trouble. With all the fervour of his masculine soul he hated to write letters. Long since he had bought a typewriter, on which he rattled off necessary business communications so briefly that they would have cost him little more on the wire. He knew that he should hear constantly of his wife’s welfare from Mark, and had no desire to be inflicted with descriptions of scenery and shops.

He felt a spasm of envy, however, as he thought of the letters Mark would receive from Ora. _Her_ letters, no doubt, would be worth reading, not only because she had a mind, and already had seen too much of Europe to comment on its obvious phases, but because they would be redolent of her subtle exquisite personality. He had once come upon a package of old letters among his mother’s possessions and read them. They had been written by his great-great-grandmother to her husband while he was a soldier in the War of the Revolution. It was merely the simple life of the family, the farm, and the woods, that she described, but Gregory never recalled those letters without feeling again the subtle psychological emanation of the writer’s sweet and feminine but determinate personality; it hovered like a wraith over the written words, imprisoned, imperishable, until the paper should fall to dust. So, he imagined, something of Ora’s essence would take wing on the rustling sheets of her letters.

But the spasm of envy passed. Ora would write no such letters to Mark Blake. Her correspondence with her husband would be perfunctory, practical, brief. To some man she might write pages that would keep him up at night, reading and rereading, interpreting illusive phrases, searching for hidden and personal meanings, while two individualities met and melted.... But this yearning passed also. To receive such letters a man must answer them and that would be hell.

He was on his way to change his clothes for overalls and get his blue dinner pail, well filled, from Custer. But before he reached the house he conceived an abrupt and violent distaste for life underground, an uncontrollable desire--or one which he made no effort to control--for long rides over the ranch, and a glimpse of Limestone Hill. It was seven months since he had seen his ranch save in snatches, and he wanted it now for months on end. He was not a town-bred man, and he suddenly hated the sight of Butte with her naked angles and feverish energies. He realised also that his mind insistently demanded a rest. To be sure he had intended to work in the mines for eight hours of the day, but he had planned to study for ten. Well, he would have none of it! Caprice was no characteristic of his, but he felt full of it this brilliant morning. If the air was so light in Butte that his feet seemed barely to touch the ground, so clear that the mountains seemed walking down the valley, what must it be in the country?

He went rapidly to the house, left a message for Mark, packed a suit-case and took the next train for Pony. There he hired a horse and rode to his ranch.

One of the sudden June rains had come while he was in the train. It had ceased, but a mass of low clouds brushing the higher tree tops was almost black. Their edges were silver: they were filled with a cold imprisoned sunlight, which transformed the distant mountains into glass, transparent, with black shadows in their depths. Montana looked as giving an exhibition of her astral body. But as he rode the clouds drifted away, the sky deepened to the rich voluptuous blue of that high altitude; even the grey soil showing through the thin grass of the granite hills looked warmer. Where the soil was thicker the ground was covered with a gorgeous tapestry of wildflowers; the birds sang desperately as if they knew how short was their springtime, affected like mortals by the thin intoxicating air. Even the waters in the creek roared as if making the most of their brief span. The mountains lost their glassy look; blue, ice-topped, they were as full of young and vivid life as when they danced about, heedless that the heaving earth purposed they should wait for centuries before settling into things of beauty for unborn man to admire. They never will look old, those mountains of Montana; man may take the treasure from their veins and the jewels from their crowns, but they drink forever the elixir of the air. The blue dawn fills their spirit with a deathless exultation, the long blue-gold days their bodies with immortal life, the starry nights, swinging their lamps so close to the snow fields, unroll the dramas of other worlds. They are no mere masses of rock and dirt or even of metal, these mountains of Montana, but man’s vision of eternal youth.

Gregory drew rein on the crest of one of his own hills. Below lay the De Smet ranch, and he drew a long breath with that sensation of serene pride which comes to men when they contemplate their landed possessions, or their wives on state occasions. All the arable soil, on flat and hillside, was green; alfalfa, with its purple flowers, filled the bottoms; the winter wheat was rippling in the wind; the acres covered with the tender leaves of young flax were like a densely woven lawn. On the hills and the public range roamed his cattle. All of this fair land, including its possible treasure, was his, absolutely. By the terms of his father’s will he paid yearly dividends from the sale of steers and crops to three aunts, now reduced to two. Whether by accident or design, Mr. Compton had omitted all mention of “minerals under the earth.” Gregory had not the least objection to making these ladies rich, when his mines yielded their wealth, but he was jealous of every acre of his inheritance, far more of its secrets. All the passionate intensity of his nature he had poured out on his land and its subterranean mysteries, and he would have hailed an invention which would enable him to dismiss every man from his employ. But his head was hard and he always smiled grimly at the finish of his fanciful desires.

He turned his horse toward the distant group of farm buildings, then wheeled abruptly and rode toward Limestone Hill. He had anticipated a long talk with the enthusiastic Oakley on the subject of crops, but he suddenly realised that he was in no mood to talk to anyone and that his secret reason for coming to the ranch was to visit his hill. Oakley would cling to him for hours. One glance had assured him that the crops would have satisfied a state experimental farm. Mining would fascinate him in its every detail, but as far as agriculture was concerned, he was interested only in results.

As he rode toward the hill he frowned at the signs of activity on the other side of his boundary line. A large gasoline hoist had been installed. The waste dump was almost as high as a hill, four “double-sixes”--six-horse teams--stood waiting to be loaded from the ore bins. There were a group of miners’ cabins, a long mess-house, and a blacksmith’s shop. This was the only shadow on his future: he wanted no lawsuits, nor did he want to enter into partnership with anyone, not even Ora Blake.

But he dismissed the matter from his mind, tied his horse, and, although Montanans are a slow race on foot out of deference to the altitude, ran up the hill. A glance told him that his secret was undiscovered. He knelt down and dug up the float, his heart hammering. And then he deliberately let the prospector’s fever take possession of him. The soles of his feet prickled as if responding to the magnets below; he had a fancy that gold, molten, was running through his veins. But his brain worked clearly. He was aware that his exultation and excitement were not due to the lure of gold alone, but to the still more subtle pleasure that a strong and obstinate nature feels in breaking a vow and deliberately succumbing to temptation. He had vowed in good faith that he would not open his mine until the third of June of the following year. But a week before he had spent an enchanted hour with a woman, and during the rest of that night--he had walked half way to Silver Bow and back--he had wanted that woman more than he had ever wanted anything on earth. He had forgotten his mine.

At first he had lashed himself with scorn, remembering his infatuation for the woman he had married. He felt something of the indignant astonishment of the small boy who imagines himself catching a second attack of measles, before he discovers it is scarlet fever. But it took him only a brief time to realise that the passion inspired by Ora Blake was so much deeper and more various than the blind subservience to Nature that had driven him to Ida (who had not the least idea of being a tool of Nature herself) that it was far more dangerous than the first inevitable attack of youthful madness could ever be. It humiliated his pride to have been the mere victim of the race, the rudimentary male swept into matrimony by the first woman who combined superlative femaleness with virtue. Then he wondered if he could have loved Ora at that time; he certainly felt ten years older today.

The word love brought him to his senses. It was formidable and definite. While he had believed himself to be in the throes of a second fever caught from a beautiful woman’s concordant magnetism, he had felt merely disgusted at his weakness, not in the least disloyal to his closest friend, whom he knew no woman could tempt him to betray. But he realised with hideous abruptness that if he were thrown with Ora Blake for any length of time she would become so necessary to him through the comprehensive appeal, which he only half understood, that he no more could pluck her out of him by the roots, as men disposed of the superficial passion when it became inconvenient, than he could tear the veins out of his hill with his hands.

He had felt the danger dimly when with her, although he had made up his mind even then to get her out of Montana as quickly as possible. He vowed anew, with the first sensation of panic he had ever experienced, that the same sky should not cover them a week hence. He knew his influence over Mark Blake.

Then he made a deliberate attempt to banish the subject from his mind, ordering his thoughts to their favorite haunts underground. But one little insidious tract, so difficult to control in all brains still young and human, showed a disposition to create startling and vivid pictures, to dream intensely, to cast up this woman’s face, fling it into his consciousness, with an automatic regularity that was like a diabolical challenge to his haughty will.

He endeavoured to think of Ora with contempt: she had married a good fellow, but one whom she must have been compelled by the circumstances of her life to regard as her social inferior, and who assuredly was in no sense suited to her--merely from a parasitic dread of poverty. Other women went to work, even if delicately nurtured. But he was too masculine and too little influenced by certain phases of modern thought to condemn any woman long for turning to man in her extremity. Privately he detested women that “did things”; better for them all to give some man the right to protect them: marriage with a good fellow like Mark Blake, even without love, spoilt them far less than mixing up with the world in a scramble for bread. It would have spoilt Ora, who was now merely undeveloped; hardened, sharpened, coarsened her. He dismissed his abortive attempt to despise her; also a dangerous tendency to pity her.

Before he finished his tramp he had recaptured his poise. What a woman like Ora Blake might have to give him he dared not think of, nor would he be betrayed again into speculation. Doubtless it was all rubbish anyway, merely another trick of the insatiable mating instinct. If it were more--the primal instinct plus the almost equally insistent demands of the civilised inheritances in the brain--so much the worse, the more reason to “cut it out.” But when he returned to the cottage in East Granite Street he threw himself on the divan in the parlour and slept there.

XXII

Therefore was he in no mood to fight another temptation; rather to take a sardonic pleasure in succumbing. An hour later, in overalls, and assisted by two of his labourers, outwardly more excited than he, for they had worked underground and vowed they smelt ore, he was running an open cut along the line of the float. As there was no outcropping it was mere guesswork; it might be weeks before he struck any definite sign of an ore body, but he was prepared to level the hill if necessary. Until he did come upon indications that would justify the expense, however, he was resolved not to sink a shaft nor drive a tunnel.

They used pick and shovel until at the depth of eight feet they struck rock. Gregory had been prepared for this and sent the unwilling but interested Oakley into Pony for drills and powder. For two days more they drilled and blasted; then--Gregory took out his watch and noted the hour, twenty-three minutes after four--one of the men gave a shout and tossed a fragment into the air.

“Stringer, by jinks!” he cried. “And it’s copper carbonate or I’m a dead ’un.”

Gregory frowned, but laid the bit of ore gently on his palm and regarded it with awe. He wanted gold, but at least this was his, and the first of his treasure to be torn from its sanctuary. For a moment the merely personal longing was lost in the enthusiasm of the geologist, for the fragment in his hand was very beautiful, a soft rich shaded green flecked with red; the vugs, or little cells, looked as if lined with deep green velvet.

But he turned and stared at the mining camp beyond his boundary line. One of the bits of float he had found last year had been gold quartz. Had it travelled, a mere chip, from the original body to this distant point, or danced here on the shoulders of an earthquake? Float, even under a layer of soil was often found so far from the ore body, that it was a more fallible guide than a prospector’s guess. He walked to the end of the hill, while his miners shrugged their shoulders and resumed the drilling.

The great vein of the Primo mine was dipping acutely to the right. Might it not be wise for him to abandon his present position and sink a shaft close to the line, trusting to his practical knowledge and highly organized faculty to strike the vein?

He stood for half an hour debating the question, listening to the intermittent roar of the engine, the rattle of ore dumped from the buckets. Then he walked back to the red gash in his own land. It would be the bitterest disappointment of his life if he failed to find gold in his hill, but the dominant voice in his brain was always practical, and it advised him to follow the willing metal for the present instead of incurring the expense of a shaft and possible litigation.

“’Nother stringer!” announced one of the men, as Gregory arrived at the long deep cut. “Guess it’s time for a windlass.”

“Guess it is. Go down to the house and get some lumber.”

He descended into the cut and looked at the unmistakable evidence of little veins. Were they really stringer, tentacles of a great ore body climbing toward the surface, or a mere series of independent and insignificant veins not worth exploiting? He was in a pessimistic mood, but laughed suddenly as he realised how disappointed he would be should further excavation demonstrate there was no chamber of copper ore below.

Four hours later the windlass was finished and four men were at work. At the end of the fortnight the windlass had been discarded in favor of a gasoline hoist, and twenty-five men in three shifts were employed upon a chamber of copper carbonate ore. The nearest of the De Smet hills began to take on the appearance of a mining camp; a mess-house and a number of cabins were building. Trees were falling, not only to make room for the new “town” but to timber the mine when the time came to sink or drift. At present those of the miners that could not be housed by the disgusted Oakley occupied tents or rude shacks. Oakley spent the greater part of his time escorting the great six-horse teams from the ranch to the public road, as their drivers showed an indifference to his precious crops only rivalled by Gregory Compton’s.

Mark took a week’s vacation after the first carload of ore had been shipped from Pony to the sampling works in Butte and netted $65 a ton. Gregory, who was working with his men, far too impatient and surcharged with energy to walk about as mere manager, paid scant attention to him during the day; but Mark was content to sit on the edge of the cut and smoke and calculate, merely retreating in haste when the men lit the fuses.

On the third morning, as he was approaching the mine at dawn with his host, Gregory suddenly announced his intention of sending for a manager; he purposed to sink a shaft on the edge of the chamber in order to determine if the present lode was the top of a vein.

“Better take off your coat and go to work,” he added. “Do you good. You’re getting too fat.”

“Getting? Thanks. But I don’t mind. You’ve got several hundred thousand dollars in that chamber by the looks of things, but I suppose that wouldn’t satisfy you?”

“Lord, no. That is merely the necessary capital to mine the entire hill--or fight the powers that be when they get on to the fact that I’ve got another Anaconda.”

“Do you believe it? Big pockets have been found in solitary splendor before this.”

“This hill is mineral from end to end,” said Gregory with intense conviction. “And I want to get to the main lode as quickly as possible.”

“By the way,” said Mark abruptly, “why don’t you locate your claim?”

“Locate? Why, the land’s mine. Patent is all right. My father even patented several placer claims----”

“Mining laws are fearful and wonderful things. Judges, with a fat roll in their pockets, have been known to make fearful and wonderful interpretations before this. If you’ve struck a new copper belt--well, the enemy has billions. Better stake off the entire hill, and apply for patents. You may be grey before you get them, but the application is enough----”

“It would cost a lot of money, and I don’t like the idea of paying twice over. This is costing thousands----”

“And you’ll soon be taking out thousands a week. But if you need it all I’ll lend you the money. It would be a good investment for Ora. You can pay me four per cent. I’ve a mind to go ahead today and begin staking off.”

Gregory stood still with his head inclined at the angle which indicated that he was concentrating his mind. “Very well,” he said curtly. “Go ahead. And I don’t need your money. Stake off every inch of the hill and have a good map made. See that the side lines are flush with the boundary. Of course I’d never have any trouble with you, but Mrs. Blake might take it into her head to sell. Get out a surveyor when you’re ready for him. Don’t bother me until the thing is done.”

Mark took a longer vacation and worked off some twenty pounds. He wished ruefully that Ora would return suddenly, for he doubted that his love of good living would undo the excellent work when he was once more in Butte. He employed a U. S. deputy mineral surveyor, the map was made, Gregory applied for his patents; the lawyers’s mind was at rest for the present, although he kept his ears open in Butte.

Gregory sank his shaft ostensibly to determine the dip and width of the vein leading from the chamber, but secretly with the hope of meeting the body of ore already uncovered in the Primo Mine. He was elated with his splendid “find” and sudden wealth, but his old dream never left him for a moment. Indeed he would have been more than willing to miss the pyroxenite if he could come upon a lode of quartz containing free gold. That was what he had visualised all his life. He wanted to stand in his own stopes and flash his lantern along glittering seams, not merely send masses of decomposed grey-black ore to the sampling works and await returns. If he found a vein worth the outlay he would erect his own stamp mill and listen to its music. Such is the deathless boy that exists in all men. Mere wealth meant far less to him than the beautiful costly toy to play with for a while.

The shaft at the end of a month had gone down eighty feet; but had revealed only a lean vein of copper carbonates which made him forget his dreams in the fear that his mine was pinching out. But he persisted, and one morning when he went to the bottom of the shaft after the smoke of the blast had cleared away, and lit his candle, he picked up a lump of yellow ore that glittered like quartz packed with free gold. For a moment his head swam. He knelt down and brushed the shattered rock from several other bits of what looked like virgin gold; and he caressed them as gently as if they had been the cheek of his first born. But he was a geologist. He stepped into the ascending bucket a prey to misgivings. As soon as he examined his treasure in the sunlight he knew it at once for chalcopyrite--the great copper ore of the sulphide zone.

After he had assayed it he philosophically dismissed regret. It ran $26 in copper with slight values of gold and silver. Chalcopyrite ore, as a rule, runs about five per cent. in copper, its commercial value lying in the immense quantities in which it may be found, although it is necessary to concentrate at the mine. If he had struck one of the rare veins of massive chalcopyrite, averaging $25 a ton, he would take out, after it was sufficiently developed, several thousand dollars a day; and, like the carbonates, it could go straight to the smelter. As a matter of fact the vein when uncovered proved to be six feet wide and grew slightly broader with depth. The miners were jubilant over their “fool’s gold”, and a number of people came out and asked for the privilege of looking at what the foreman, Joshua Mann, declared to be the prettiest pay streak in Montana.

Gregory found his chalcopyrite during the third month after he began to investigate the hill. The chamber already had netted him over a hundred thousand dollars and grew richer with depth. He put an extra force at work on the promising shoot.

In the Primo Mine the luck varied. The two engineers, Osborne and Douglas, exhausted the first lode, struck a poor vein, averaging ten dollars a ton, then ran into a body of the ore netting as high as four hundred dollars. Two months later they came up suddenly against a wall of country rock. Undaunted, they drove through the mass, and struck a lean shoot of chalcopyrite.

XXIII

“Well, what do you know about that?”

Mark’s feet were on the table in the cabin Gregory had had built for himself on the top of the hill. The news had just been brought to them by one of the men who had a faithful friend in the Primo Mine.

Gregory was engaged in biting a cigar to pieces. He waited some ten minutes before replying, during which Mark smoked philosophically. “I think this,” he said finally, “what those fellows are after is gold, not copper. Better suggest to them to get out an expert geologist--Holmes is a good friend of mine--who will tell them to sink a shaft over on the right, or run a drift from the original stope. All we need is time.”

“I’m on. But will they do it? They’re not fools and what they’re after mainly is cash.”

“I think they’ll listen to reason. They’re not far from the boundary line and there’s no possible doubt that the vein apexes here. The moment they cross the line I’ll get out an injunction. That would stop them anyhow, hold them up until their lease had expired. And their chance is good to recover the vein on the other side. No doubt it has faulted. Have you noticed those aspens about a hundred yards beyond their shaft? Where there are aspens there is water. Now as there is no water in sight it must be below the surface, and that would indicate faulting. There might be no ore on the other side, but the chance is worth taking. Better have a talk with Osborne tomorrow. He’s the least mulish of the two.”

“Good. I might offer them some inducement--give them an extra month or two. Even so we’d win out. But they’re not the only danger ahead. How long since you’ve been in Butte?”

“Not since I began work.”

“Well, let me tell you that Amalgamated is buzzing. They’ve got on to the fact good and plenty that you’ve got the biggest thing in copper that has been struck in Montana for twenty years. Of course they get figures regularly from the sampling works. They know you’ve already taken out half a million dollars worth of ore--net--and that the new shoot is getting richer every minute. They’re talking loud about spoiling the market and all the rest of it. Of course that’s rank nonsense. What worries them is a rival in Montana. If your mine was in Colorado or Michigan they wouldn’t care shucks. You haven’t taken out enough yet to worry them about the market. But if they can queer your game they’ll do it. Lucky for you the smelting works need copper just now as badly as you need them. If it were not for that strike in the Stemwinder and the Corkscrew you might be having trouble.”

Gregory smiled, but as he set his jaw at the same time it was not an agreeable smile. “I’m in a mood to fight somebody--and win. I wanted gold and didn’t get it. A row with Amalgamated would relieve my feelings--although I’d rather use my fists.”

“They’re mad, too, because you’ve named your mine ‘Perch of the Devil.’ That’s the old name for Butte, and they look upon it as a direct challenge.”

“So it is. And you don’t suppose I’d call my mine Limestone Hill, do you? I shouldn’t get half the fun out of it. What the devil can they do, anyhow?”

“That’s what I’m worrying about. You never know what Amalgamated has up its sleeve. There was just one man who was too much for them--for a while--and that was Heinze. And they got him in the end. I believe you’d give them a run for their money, and I don’t rank you second to Heinze or any other man when it comes to brains or resource. But--well, they’ve got billions--and the best legal talent in the state.”

“You deserve a return compliment. You may consider yourself counsel for Perch of the Devil Mine.”

“Jimminy! But I’d like a chance at them.” Mark’s cigar was burning his fingers but he only felt the fire in his brain. “Do you mean it?”

“Who else? Watch them. Put spies on them. Fight them with their own weapons. They’ve spies among my miners. That doesn’t worry me a bit. I merely mention it. Let’s change the subject. I’ve got to sleep tonight. What’s the news from Europe?”

“I’ve got Ora’s last letter here; want to hear it?”

“Good Lord, no. Tell me what they are doing. I sent Ida five thousand dollars a few days ago, so I suppose they’re flying high. She cabled her thanks and said they were both well.”

“Don’t you really know what they’ve been doing?”

“Not a thing.”

“Well--let’s see. They went over in June. They did France, Germany--lot of places in regulation tourist style--incidentally met several of Mrs. Stratton’s old friends. Then they went back to Paris, where they appear to have indulged in an orgy of clothes preparatory to a round of country house visits on the Continent and in England. Ora writes with great enthusiasm of--er--Ida’s improvement. Says you’d think she’d been on top all her life, especially since she got those Paris duds, and met a lot of smart people; makes a hit with everybody, and will astonish Butte when she comes back.”

“That will please her!” He felt no glow of tenderness, but some satisfaction that he could gratify the ambitions of the woman he had married. He was still too keen on his own youthful dreams, and thankful at their partial fulfillment, not to sympathise with those of others.

Mark left him to accept the more commodious hospitality of Oakley, and Gregory sat for another hour smoking, hoping for the mood of sleep. But the news had excited him, and he preferred to sit up rather than to toss about his narrow bed. The last part of the conversation, however, had given a new turn to his thoughts. Suddenly, unbidden, Ora flashed into his mind and refused to be dislodged. He walked up and down, striving to banish her as he had done before, when, sleepless, she had peremptorily demanded his attention. Tonight she was almost a visible presence in the little room.

He sat down again and grimly permitted his mind to dwell upon his long communion with her on the steps of the School of Mines. He tried to analyse his impulse to take her there. Unconventional as he was it had never occurred to him to do such a thing before, and there were twenty women in the room whom he would have expected to exercise a more potent fascination had he been in the humour for a flirtation. He had been quite honest in telling Ora that he had taken her out merely to look at her under the stars, and in intimating that to make love to her was the last thing in his mind. She had hardly seemed a woman at all there in the ballroom or when he first sat at her feet; his mind was relaxed and the “queer” romantic or poetical streak that he often deprecated had taken possession of it; if he had had a suspicion of anything more he would have fled from her at once, for she was the wife of his friend. As it was he merely had dismissed Mark from his mind and tried the experiment of setting a bit of exquisite white poetry to the music of the stars....

As often as her memory had assailed him he had longed to rehearse that scene; the conversation, desultory and personal; her white profile against the flaming blue sky; the intensity and brilliancy of her eyes, so unlooked for in her young almost colorless face; her pink mouth that changed its expression so often; her curious magnetism, so unlike that of the full-blooded woman--all of that and something more; the strange community of mind--or soul?--that had drawn him on to pour out his secret self into another self of whose contact he was almost literally sensible,--in a sudden desire for comprehension that had been like the birth of a new star in his mental constellation. He had felt the thrill of her sympathy, her understanding, then another thrill of perplexity, fear; then the little quarrel, when he had thought her more adorable than ever, and no longer bearing the least resemblance to a star-wraith, but wholly feminine. When he left her it was with the confused sense that he had sojourned for a bit with the quintessence of womanhood whom Nature had cast in a new and perilous mould.

He went over the hour again and again, hoping to bore himself, to arrive at the conclusion that it had been a mere commonplace flirtation with a coquette who was as cold as she looked. But he found the recaptured scene very sweet. The power of concentration he possessed enabled him to shut out the little room and sit at the feet of the woman whose magic personality had penetrated the barriers he so jealously had built about his soul and given him the first sense of companionship he had ever known.

He was filled with a longing that shook him and hurt him, to feel that sense of sympathetic companionship, of spiritual contact, again. And far more. He knew that she had loved no man, that all the glory and the riches within her were waiting--and if she had waited, and he had waited, and they had met unfettered that night----

He sprang to his feet. His face in the smoky light looked black.

“God!” he muttered. “God! Have I fallen as low as that? If ever I think of her again I’ll cut my heart out. I hope to God the Amalgamated puts up the hell of a fight. What I want is a man’s work in the world, not a play actor’s.”

XXIV

A week later, Gregory, who was down in the bottom of the shaft, received a message by way of a descending miner that a gentleman from Butte, one Mr. John Robinson, requested the favour of an interview, and awaited him in the cabin on the top of the hill. At least such is the polite translation of the message as delivered: “Say, Boss, there’s a guy upstairs in your shack what says he’s from Butte, and’s come out to have a chin with you--some important. Says his name is John Robinson.”

Gregory swore under his breath and for a minute his face looked ugly and formidable. But as he stepped into the bucket and gave the signal he permitted his expression to change to one of grim amusement. Mr. Robinson was one of the brilliant galaxy that guided the legal footsteps of “Amalgamated”; that powerful company, financed by Standard Oil, which owned thirty-one of the mines of Butte openly, and exerted a power in Montana far exceeding that of state or nation.

Gregory wore corduroy trousers and coat, and these as well as his face and hands were white with “muck”, a mixture of rock-dust and water which spattered everyone in the vicinity of the ore drills; but he wasted no time to clean up before climbing to his cabin to meet the ambassador from Amalgamated.

Mr. Robinson, a portly gentleman, still young, but manifestly the victim of easy fortune, rose from his chair before the stove and greeted his host with beaming smile and extended hand.

“My dear Mr. Compton!” he exclaimed. “It is a great pleasure to meet you again. Of course you have forgotten me for I was two grades above you in the High, when you were a little chap----”

“What have you come here for? Out with it! I’ve no time to waste. Sit down if you like.”

Mr. Robinson colored angrily. He knew little of the man with whom he had come to deal, but had always relied upon his urbanity and Western heartiness to “make a hit.” He knew Mark Blake and, although he had heard, like others, of Gregory Compton’s record at the School of Mines, he had assumed that he was a mere student, and in other respects more or less the same sort of man as his chum. This man looked unlike any he had ever met. He concealed his chagrin, however, and resumed his seat.

“Really, Mr. Compton, you are somewhat abrupt----”

“Get down to business. What does Amalgamated want?”

Mr. Robinson wisely took the cue.

“To buy you out.”

“How much will they pay?”

“How much do you want?”

“What do they offer?”

“Well, between you and me. I fancy they might go as high as a hundred thousand.”

“Tell them to go to hell.”

“How much do you want?”

“A hundred millions.”

“Good God, man, are you mad!”

“If you had permitted me to finish. I should have added--in other words, nothing. There isn’t money enough inside of Montana, let alone on top, to buy one acre of this ranch.”

“But--you know what most mines are--pockety--yours may peter out any minute.”

“All right. I take the chances.”

“The history of Butte Hill is unique. There will never be another----”

“How do you know?”

“It stands to reason----”

“Why?”

“Oh, Lord, man, if you are indulging in wild dreams----!”

“My dreams concern no one but myself. I’m satisfied with my hill and that’s all there is to it.”

“I’m afraid not. Look here, you are a fine young fellow with a big future--people talk a lot about you--I don’t want to see you crushed----”

“You won’t.”

“I’m not here to make threats, but you are not so--ah--unsophisticated as to imagine that if Amalgamated sets out to get rid of you, you can stand up against them?”

“They can’t do a damned thing and you know it. They might have a few years ago, when a roll could be passed on the street to a judge who was to deny or grant an injunction within a few hours, and at a time when there was no prospect of the referendum and recall; when the people of Montana took the buying and selling of men in the legislature as part of the game, all in the day’s work. But Montana has caught the reform spirit that has been sweeping over the rest of the country, and she is also getting pretty sick of corporation power. Now, sir, not only have I a clear title to this ranch, but I’ve staked off the entire hill and applied for patents. If Amalgamated freezes me out of Anaconda and Great Falls, I’ll promote a company and put up a plant of my own. With nearly a million dollars in sight besides what I’ve taken out, you can figure, yourself, how much trouble I’d have in New York getting all the money I wanted. Amalgamated knows that, and my ore will continue to be smelted in Anaconda. Of course if I were within a mile or so of Butte I might be in some danger. They’d bore through and then claim that my ore vein apexed in one of their properties. But I’m too far away for that.”

Gregory saw the other man’s eyes flash wide open before they were hastily lowered. Mr. Robinson regarded the point of his cigar.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “That’s all very true. Luck is with you in a measure, but--well, take my advice and don’t fight Amalgamated. They have in their employ some of the most resourceful brains in the country--that are always on the job. Heinze taught them a lesson they’ll never forget.”

“Let’s drop the subject.” Gregory rose and opened a cupboard. “Have something?”

He poured whiskey into two glasses. The men smiled as they drank, Gregory sardonically, Mr. Robinson ruefully but with thoughtful eyes. He had what Ida called the quick-rich face, large and round and fat, and it was an admirable mask.

“Like to see the mine?” asked Gregory.

“Why, yes--do you mean it?”

“Why not? If it had any secrets your spies would have turned them over before this. Glad to show it to you.”

They went to the shafthead and descended in one of the buckets.

“How far down have you gone?” asked Mr. Robinson, with an air of polite interest.

“We found chalcopyrite at one hundred and ten feet, after a narrow vein leading from the chamber near the surface, and are stoping.”

As they left the bucket they were greeted by the cheerful rhythmical sound of hammers on the drills, and by the light of the miners’ candles they saw the men working at different points of the dark chamber, two on a scaffolding above.

“Great waste of labor,” said Gregory. “I shall install a compressor before long as well as electric lighting. Of course it is only the beginning of a mine.”

He saw the ambassador from Amalgamated smile, and turned on his heel. “They’ll be loading the holes in a minute,” he said. “And I’d like to show you the upper chamber.”

When they reached the surface Mr. Robinson declined to go down into the excavation, but stood on the edge watching the busy hive below. “Great sight,” he said admiringly. “How deep have you gone?”

“About seventy-eight feet.”