Chapter VII: Part I: I (7)

“And the end not in sight!”

“Not yet, but of course it’s only a chamber.”

“You’ve taken out close on half a million here alone.”

“Pretty near. What the devil made you suppose I’d take a paltry hundred thousand for the hill?”

“Oh, just to avoid trouble. You have the reputation of being a very clever man.”

“Thanks. It’s cold standing round. Wouldn’t you like to take a walk? How’d you like to see the Primo Mine?”

As Gregory, who was watching him intently, anticipated, the man’s face lit up. “I should like it!” he said definitely. “I hear that they too have struck chalcopyrite. Lost their gold vein.”

“They’re nosing after it in another direction. When the lease is up I shall consolidate with the Blakes.”

“Quite natural. Of course it’s the same vein?--the chalcopyrite, I mean.”

“Unquestionably. And it apexes in my property.”

“Are you so sure of that?”

“Not a doubt in the world. I struck the top of the vein twelve feet below the surface. But it will never go to the courts.”

“Of course not.”

Gregory, who looked remote, almost blank, lost not an intonation of the other man’s voice, nor a flickering gleam in his cunning eyes. His own head was a little on one side, which, had Mr. Robinson had the good fortune to know him better, would have warned him that the young man for whom he had conceived a certain respect was thinking hard and to some purpose.

Douglas, who had a personal liking for his neighbor, unaware that he had been the chief instrument in the upsetting of skillful plans for untold wealth, readily gave permission to visit the mine as soon as the smoke from a recent blast would permit. Gregory and Mr. Robinson walked about to keep warm, the former pointing out the probability of a faulted ore vein under the aspens, and enlarging upon the great fortune bound to be Mrs. Blake’s in any case. Then as the man merely remarked, “Yes, charming woman, Mrs. Blake; thought the night of the Prom she was one of the prettiest women I ever saw. No dead easy game there”; Gregory refrained from kicking him and said innocently.

“Good thing the law compels creditors to present their claims within a limited time, or Amalgamated might grab this mine and bore through to my hill. I understand Judge Stratton was heavily in debt to the Anaconda Company when he died.”

Mr. Robinson’s face turned a deep brick-red, and he shot a piercing glance into the narrow noncommittal eyes opposite.

“Of course--it’s too late for that, but--Oh, well----” He broke off abruptly and walked toward the shaft as Osborne beckoned. Gregory stood a moment, his head bent forward. He had experienced the sensation of coming into contact with an electrical wave. But he was smiling pleasantly as he joined his guest at the shaft house.

After the visit to the mine, during which he amiably pointed out the dip of the vein toward his own property, and Mr. Robinson succumbed to the charm which never missed fire when Gregory chose to exert it, they walked back to the ranch, where a team awaited the ambassador at the foot of the hill.

“I’ve had quite a delightful visit,” began Mr. Robinson, when Gregory interrupted:

“I’ve no intention of letting you go. You must have supper at the farm and meet Oakley. I’ll send off the rig and drive you in myself----”

“Oh, I couldn’t think of troubling you----” Robinson, red again, stood in almost agitated embarrassment.

“No train to Butte till nine-thirty. You don’t want to spend four hours in Pony?”

“The fact is----” But whatever he had on his mind died on his lips. He looked sharply into the bland smiling eyes opposite, and concluded abruptly, “All right. Many thanks. Glad of the chance to know you better.”

He paid off the driver of the team and they walked toward the ranch house, Gregory commenting on Oakley’s genius for dry farming, and expatiating upon the excellence of the crops. Mining was not mentioned again during the evening and the lawyer enjoyed an excellent supper.

Gregory drove him to Pony, and clung to him so closely that he had no opportunity to visit the telegraph office or a telephone booth. They shook hands cordially as the train moved off. When it was out of sight Gregory sent a telegram to Mark telling him to take the first train next morning for Virginia City and meet him in the Court House. He took his car to a garage and spent the night in Pony. On the following morning at nine o’clock he walked into the Tax Collector’s office at the County Seat.

XXV

The County Treasurer, who had just come in, looked blank for a moment, then greeted his visitor with effusive cordiality.

“Always glad to see you, Mr. Compton. It does a poor clerk’s heart good just to look at a man who’s such a favourite of fortune. Sit down, sir.”

“I will. I’ve a good deal to say.”

“Staked off the rest of your ranch? It’ll be some little time yet before you get those patents through you’ve applied for already----”

“What do the taxes foot up on the Oro Fino Primo Mine?”

“Ah--What?” The man’s face turned scarlet, then white. He was a young man, clerically able, but otherwise insignificant. “Why----” Then he became voluble.

“The Primo mine, over there near your place? It’s a new claim, isn’t it? Never heard of it before those fellows from New York sank a shaft and struck it rich. Why should there be any taxes before the regular----”

“You know as well as I do that Judge Stratton patented that mine and did the necessary amount of development work, then found it salted and abandoned it. That was twenty-eight years ago. He forgot it, and so, apparently, did this office. It was regarded as an abandoned prospect hole, if anyone thought about it at all. I haven’t discussed the matter with Mr. Blake, but assume that he’s merely been waiting for his bill. Now, for reasons of my own, I’ve telegraphed him to meet me here this morning, but in case he can’t come I’m prepared to pay the amount myself. How much?” and he took out his checque book.

The treasurer looked as if the cane seat of his chair had turned to hot coals. “Really--that is a large order, Mr. Compton. Twenty-eight years. It will take time to go over the records.”

“I’m prepared to wait all day if necessary.”

“But why this haste?”

“I have my reasons. They don’t concern you in the least. Do they?”

“Why--no--but I am very busy----”

“Then put someone else on the job. I assume that the county is not averse to raking in a tidy little sum in a hurry.”

“Really----”

Gregory leaned back in his chair and smiled pleasantly.

“You had a telephone from Mr. John Robinson this morning.”

This time the man started visibly, but he made an effort to control himself. “I have just come in----”

“He telephoned to you last night, did he not? What did he offer you to permit him to pay those taxes today?”

“I will not be insulted, sir.” The man’s voice was almost a scream. He heartily wished he had been in training a few years longer, a graduate of the famous Heinze-Amalgamated orgy of corruption, or of the Clark-Daly epoch, when nearly every man in office had been bribed or hoped to be. “I never heard of Mr. Robinson!”

“Of course he reminded you that as the taxes are long delinquent the county has the right to put the property up at public auction, and that in any case Mrs. Blake would hardly be given the usual year in which to redeem it. But why auction when the money is ready to be paid over at once? How much did he offer you?”

“I repeat----”

“I think I can guess. It was five thousand dollars. I’ll make it ten. Get to work.”

The man, in whom excitement had destroyed his appetite for breakfast, and who had started out in life with the usual negative ideals of honesty, burst into tears. “My God!” he sobbed. “I’ve heard of the third degree. Your eyes bore a hole through one. They hurt, I say. To think that you should come in here and accuse me of taking bribes.”

“Oh, hell, cut it out. Montana may be a great state, but she has her rotten spot like any other. She’s been so debauched the last twenty years by open bribery that I doubt if you could lay your hand on a hundred men in her that haven’t had a roll anywhere from five hundred to twenty thousand dollars passed to them, and pocketed it. Estimable citizens, too, but a man never knows his weak spot until he has a wad of easy money thrust under his nose--or flung over his transom. You are no worse than the rest. Do you take my offer?”

The County Treasurer recovered himself with amazing alacrity. Ten thousand dollars in a lump never had haunted his wildest dreams.

“All right, sir. It’s a bargain. But I want bills. No checks for me.”

“I congratulate you on your foresight! But there have been times in this state when checque books were not opened for months. You shall have it in bills. Where are the records?”

“In the vault there.”

“I’ll sit here. If you attempt to leave the room to go to a telephone I’ll drag you out on the Court House steps and tell the story to the town. Now get to work.”

“I’ll keep my word, sir, and I know you’ll keep yours.” He went into the vault and appeared later trundling out a pile of records, then sat down at a table and concentrated his mind as earnestly as if corruption had never blighted it. Gregory watched him until Mark entered. Then the two men went out into the corridor, standing where they could see the table. Gregory recounted his interview with Mr. John Robinson, and the present sequel.

Mark listened with his mouth open, an expression of profound chagrin loosening the muscles of his cheerful healthy shrewd face.

“By George!” he cried. “And to think that was the one thing I never thought of. Of course I knew about the delinquent taxes, and intended to pay them when I was good and ready; but what’s the use of forking over till you have to? But not to have thought of this! And I pride myself upon sleeping with one eye open--never was caught napping yet!” And for five minutes he exploited his vocabulary of profanity, heaping each epithet upon his own humiliated head.

Gregory laughed. “Merely another proof that two heads are better than one. Do you stand for the ten thousand? If not I’ll pay half.”

“I’d pay fifty----”

“I’ll pay half,” said Gregory definitely. “It means as much to me as to you.”

“All right. Jimminy, but they’re clever!” He was calmer and his astute legal brain was moved to admiration. “But you are cleverer. I’ve always sworn by you. They’ll get a jolt all right. How did you catch on, anyhow?”

“I fancy I got a wireless. The other man was thinking hard and so was I--had practically nothing else in our minds. Those things will be better explained some day. Perhaps it was merely a good guess.”

“You hit the nail on the head all right. I’ll have a letter to write to Ora next Sunday! She’s had a narrow squeak, and she shall know whom to thank for it.”

“Oh, cut that out.”

Gregory went to the bank and drew the ten thousand dollars, while Mark kept watch. When the bill was finally made out, Mark examined it critically, and then gave his personal checque. Three months later the County Treasurer resigned his office on the ground of ill health and bought an orange grove in Southern California. There he and his growing family enjoy a respected, prosperous, bucolic life.

XXVI

Gregory had scored against the most powerful combination of capital in the world. He knew that they knew he had scored, for he had met Mr. John Robinson as he descended the Court House steps with the husband of the delinquent taxpayer, and he felt reasonably elated. But the keenest and canniest brains are not infallible, and he underestimated the resources of his mighty and now open enemy. Three mornings later, while he was still asleep, Joshua Mann, the miner in his confidence and devoted to his interests, burst into the cabin and shook him.

“There’s the devil to pay, sir,” he cried. “Amalgamated has staked off a claim between our boundary line and Primo.”

Gregory sat up in bed. He never awakened dazed, but with every faculty alert. “What are you talking about? The Primo claim almost overlaps the ranch.”

“So anyone would think. But it doesn’t. That’s the point. Of course the old stakes of the Primo rotted long ago. They must have got hold of the original map. But there it is: a bit of unclaimed land between Primo and the ranch. There isn’t much more than room to sink a shaft, but there is, all right. Guess they’ve got us on the hip.” And having delivered his news he relieved his mind with profanity, of which he too had a choice assortment.

Gregory flung on his clothes and accompanied by Mann walked hastily to the edge of the hill. There, sure enough, were the four posts and the flaunting notice of a located claim.

“Must have done it between shifts last night,” commented the miner. “Didn’t take long and the moon helped. By jing!--if I’d been round with a shotgun! Well, there’ll be fun underground sames on top. The moment they break through we’ll be ready for ’em. They may get there but they won’t stay long. The boys will like the fun; and we’d put our last cent on you--know a winner when we see one.”

“Put on an extra force and make them work like hell. _We must get here first._ When I’m not below you’re boss.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll keep ’em on the job, all right.”

“Promise them extra pay. Come up to me at eight o’clock tonight and we’ll talk it over.”

He went back to the cabin and telephoned to Mark to come out at once. The lawyer arrived in the course of the morning. The first ten minutes of the interview may be passed over. Then Mark recovered his equilibrium. He lit a cigar, demanded a drink, and elevated his feet to the table.

“We’ll just thresh this question out, turn the spot-light on every side of it, present and future. We ought to have done it before, but that first victory was a little too heady. Nothing like a defeat to clear the brain. What’s the first thing they’ll do? They won’t waste time sinking a shaft if they can help it. That’s the hardest kind of country rock. They’ll try to buy up the lease from Douglas and Osborne. I haven’t the lease with me, but most leases carry a clause which permits the original lessees to sub-let. I fancy I could get out an injunction and delay them, however, until the lease expired. But what they can do, all right, is to bribe those two men to give them the use of their cross-cut--the one that has already struck your vein--while they were sinking the shaft. Do you think they’ll fall for it?”

“My experience is that most men can be bribed if the roll is big enough. Osborne and Douglas are pretty discouraged, although they’ve begun to drift across the fault. I’ll talk to them, but they’re not square men. Amalgamated could pretend to be sinking a shaft against time itself, and be drifting for all they were worth on the Primo vein. I understand that Amalgamated’s head geologist has been nosing round for some time and has concluded there’s a parallel fissure in their claim and that they can ‘prove’ apex rights.”

“How deep do you figure they’d have to sink to strike the vein at that point?”

“About two hundred feet, owing to that surface bump.”

“And it apexes here. There’s no getting round that--with a square deal. But they figure on proving that they’ve the main vein, and yours is an offshoot? The case would go to Helena--to the Federal Courts--as Amalgamated was incorporated out of the state. That’s bad. If the case could be tried in Virginia City, and there was a good healthy suspicion that the Judge was expecting to retire in comfort, you could apply for a change of venue--result of that odorous chapter in our history when every judge was on the pay roll of either Heinze or Amalgamated. Well, at least there’s public opinion to be considered; the state is waking up. Here is one thing we can do. If it comes to a knock-out fight and the case goes to Helena, we can get out an expert geologist of national reputation, whose record shows him to be above bribes, and who will be bound to testify that the vein apexes in your claim. Becke of the School of Mines, will find the man we want. Now, what’s your first move?”

“To stope the vein as far as the boundary line, which of course is my side-line, and as far down as possible. If they won in the courts I’d have to fork over eventually, but they’d have to wait for it, and they’ll get a good jolt underground.”

“You’re much too calm. What have you got up your sleeve?”

“I’ll tell you that when the time comes. It has nothing to do with the present case. The best thing you can do now is to make the whole thing public and get public opinion behind us. They don’t own all the newspapers in the state, and they don’t own all the newspapers in the rest of the country, either. Are you on?”

“You bet. Aren’t you afraid there’ll be a sudden strike among your miners? After all, Amalgamated is popular among the mining class. They pay good wages and treat the men pretty squarely all round. I’ll say that much for them.”

“I’m not worrying about that. I’ll raise the wages of my miners, and they like me. I call every one of them by his first name, and they’re men--not a Bohunk among them--and like the idea, too, of a fight under a good captain. If I’d put an Eastern manager in who’d put on dog, it might be different, but I’ve worked shoulder to shoulder with them, and not one of them has stuck harder to his job. Besides, Mann is devoted to me, and has great influence over them.”

“Well, Amalgamated can’t queer you in the East, for you get your roll from the Smelting Works. If that went back on you----”

“I’m not worrying about that, either. Torrence is a friend of mine. He’s also a Mason. If things get hot he’ll give headquarters a hint that my men, their blood being up, are as likely as not to make a bonfire somewhere. Get back to town and give the story to the new evening paper. Its lay is to fight Amalgamated for the sake of notoriety. See that their brightest man writes a story for one of the biggest New York and Chicago newspapers. Now, clear out. I’ve got to go below.”

XXVII

The next day Gregory visited a mine in Lewis and Clark County which recently had shut down, and bought a compressor at second hand. His miners with the air drills were soon working at five times the rate of speed that had been possible with the hand drills. The contractor in charge of the development work on what was impudently known as the Apex Mine, had installed a gasoline hoist, every new device, and as large a force as it was possible at that early stage to employ with profit. Gregory interviewed Osborne and Douglas, and obtained profuse assurances, but Mann soon discovered that there was an increased force on the Primo copper vein. Their original lease was nearly up but they had accepted Mark’s offer of two months’ grace; an offer he deeply regretted now, but the papers were signed and sealed. They made a feint of pushing the drift across the fault, but as they employed a small force at that point there was little room for doubt that they had been amply compensated for a doubtful undertaking.

Meanwhile work on the great surface chamber of Perch of the Devil Mine was drawing to a close. It had proved to be a hundred feet long, thirty feet wide, and seventy feet deep, and had netted half a million dollars. Some time since one of the larger houses on the West Side in Butte, built by a millionaire while still faithful to Montana, but whose family now spent twelve months of the year in Europe, New York, or California, had been thrown on the market for less than a third of its cost; new millionaires are not as plentiful in Amalgamated Butte as of old, and that unique camp is still a perch, even for those that make moderate fortunes; if no longer for the devil. It never will be a favourite roost for the gamecock’s hens and chicks. The hotels and “blocks” are always overcrowded, and even bungalows are in demand by the energetic but impermanent young engineers and managers of the various companies; but “palatial residences,” built by enthusiastic citizens who either died promptly or retired in favour of their families, are a drug on that great market they helped to build. When the Murphy house, therefore, was advertised for sale Gregory bought it for Ida and cabled her the news together with five thousand dollars Mark had recently made for him on the stock-market.

Above these and other expenditures, he now had half a million dollars to his credit, but he wanted a million more. The new vein was very rich for chalcopyrite, but its depth was problematical, and it might drop in values at any moment. If his belief in his hill was justified and there were huge primary deposits below, there would be no end to his riches; but it would take a year or more to determine that point; and meanwhile he wanted at least a million and a half, not only to meet the possible expenses of litigation, but to mine at depth and to open up his other claims in case Amalgamated, when it reached the chalcopyrite vein, claimed that it apexed in their property, got out an injunction, and forced him to cease work on it.

But he had another and to him a still more vital reason for wishing to make a great sum of money. Half a million dollars, particularly when spectacularly acquired, alters a man’s position in his community at once, and the readjustment of his own mental attitude toward life follows as a matter of course; particularly in a country where money not only talks but rules. He was now treated, when business took him to any of the towns, as a permanent capitalist of the great state of Montana; moreover, his romantic attitude toward his hill having been inevitably dampened by its yield of mere copper, his appreciation of its heavy contribution to his bank account was wholly practical. He not only began to forecast himself as one of the small group of front-rank millionaires which Montana has donated to the American Brotherhood of Millionaires, but to be sensible of the sudden and active growth of those business instincts he had always known were dormant in his brain. It had needed but the rousing of his fighting instinct, the success of its first move, and the swift countermove of the enemy, to awaken the permanent desire, not alone to pit his brains against Amalgamated, but to show the world what he could do. In short he was on his mettle, and conscious for the first time of his powers and ultimate ambitions.

He had found his mine by an accident. Nature had flung it into his lap. He was now determined to prove that he could make money with the resources of his brain as rapidly as the more famous of the Montanans had made it in the past, when opportunities were supposed to be more numerous. There never was a time when opportunity did not coincide with the man, and of this Gregory was contemptuously aware when he dismissed the usual Wall Street resource as commonplace, beneath the consideration of a man living in a state whose resources had barely been tapped.

When live brains of peculiar gifts think hard and uninterruptedly on a given subject they become magnets. Gregory paid frequent visits to Butte and Helena, talking casually with many men. In less than a fortnight he found his cue, and, accompanied by a civil engineer, disappeared for a week.

XXVIII

Twenty years ago it was the ambition of every Californian, no matter how blatant his state pride, to move to New York. Today he hopes to live and die in California, the main reason being that the women of his family find themselves members of a comparatively old and settled community, enjoying many advantages and no little importance; given frequent trips abroad they are content to remain at home in houses of modern architecture, and to command a social position that New York has granted to only two or three of California’s heiresses and millionaires. Montanans, at present, those that are rich or merely independent, are in the migratory phase of the earlier Californian; but as New York has extended to them an even more grudging welcome than it did to aspirants from the more picturesque state, they visit it, after successive social disappointments, merely for its dressmakers and those exterior advantages that may be exchanged for gold; the majority migrate to “The Coast,” more particularly to Southern California. There they not only find relief on the sea-level from an altitude that plays havoc with the nerves, but, in the mushroom Southern cities, social position may be had for the asking, and every advantage for growing children.

Gregory had heard of a man named Griffiths, owner of the Circle-G Ranch, a tract of land covering seventy-five thousand acres, who was anxious to sell and move to Los Angeles. As the ranch was practically waterless and thirty miles from a railroad, his only chance of disposing of it was by means of an alluring bargain. He was willing to sell the ranch, his large herds of horses and cattle, and bands of sheep for half a million dollars.

Gregory returned to Butte without the engineer, went directly to Blake’s office, and laid his programme before his astounded friend and legal adviser.

He had found Griffiths a man unaccustomed to business but with his mind set upon retiring with a capital of half a million dollars. His efforts in money-making hitherto, had been confined to acquiring rather than disposing of property, and his trading consisted of converting live stock into such cash as was necessary for the purchase of necessities not raised on his property. But he was nearly sixty, his wife and four daughters had besought him for years to sell out and take them to California, and he was now persuaded that he was as tired of life in the wilds of Montana as they were. He was, however, possessed of one fixed idea, to leave each of his “women folks” a hundred thousand dollars when he died. Therefore would he not take a cent less than five times that amount for his fine property; but although he inserted the advertisement that had caught Gregory’s eye, so far he had been unsuccessful. One man found the ranch too far from a railroad, another no good for farming, save intensive, as it was without a water supply; still another was willing to pay only a third of the amount down, with easy terms for the remainder.

“It’s five hundred thousand cold cash,” said Mr. Griffiths to Gregory; although in a burst of confidence later he had said: “What the dickens I’m goin’ to do with that great wad of money when I get it beats me! It turns me cold to think of it.”

Gregory had remained on the ranch two days, inventorying its stock, buildings, and natural resources. He estimated that seventy-five per cent. of the property was plow-land, the rest “rough, wooded, and rolling.” There were several sets of buildings on it, and the cattle and sheep sheds were in good condition. The cattle, sheep, and horses could be sold on a rising market for $200,000, thus reducing the cost of the land to four dollars an acre. After asking and receiving an option for thirty days, Gregory intimated that he would like to extend his trip into the mountains in search of float, and hired two riding horses and a pack horse from his host, besides buying of him the necessary food supply. Incidentally, in the course of conversation he learned that there was a river “somewheres in the mountains between thirty and forty miles northeast.”

He received more minute directions from a prospector regarding this body of water, which was the object of his trip, and six miles from Circle-G entered a ravine some twenty-five miles long. After climbing one of the mountain sides that bounded the ravine, descending and crossing another gulch, and climbing again, he and his companion saw, far below, between the narrow walls of a cañon, an abundant mountain stream.

The engineer proposed to divert this body of water to Circle-G Ranch. Through the nearest mountain side he should drive a tunnel six hundred feet long, and cross the short and crooked ravine with a thousand feet of flume to a point where it would be necessary to drive another tunnel, about two hundred feet in length. This would conduct the diverted body of water into the long ravine, down which it would flow to a point six miles above the ranch. Here the engineer purposed to construct a dam thirty feet high for the purpose of raising the water to an elevation from which it would flow through a canal or “ditch”, to the more level portions of the ranch. A rough estimate of the cost of this project, from headworks to ditch was $300,000.

He returned to Circle-G, told Mr. Griffiths that he had found no float, but nevertheless liked the neighbourhood and was inclined to buy the ranch and sell it in small farms to settlers. He would return to Butte and think it over. If he concluded to buy he would pay a half million dollars in cash, and, if Mr. Griffiths were agreeable borrow back $300,000, for improvements, giving a mortgage at seven per cent. on the forty thousand acres he proposed to make attractive for settlers. He gave no hint of his irrigation project. Griffiths had known of this body of water, but it had never occurred to him nor to anyone else to divert it. He was a stock-grower, pure and simple, with no “modern notions”, and Gregory had no intention of enlarging his vision. He would pay the man his price, but he had the ruthlessness of his type.

He had more than one motive for offering to borrow back $300,000 of the payment money; not only should he need it at once, but he feared, after Mr. Griffiths’ confidence, and knowing his kind, that the old man would withdraw in terror at the last moment, preferring the safe monotonies of his ranch to the unknown responsibilities of a capitalist; like others he had heard that it is sometimes easier to get money than to invest it. Gregory told him to think it over and write to the Daly and Clark Banks in Butte, and to the National Bank of Montana, in Helena, for information regarding his own standing and financial condition. He left the entire family in as hopeful a frame of mind as himself.

On confirmation of the report that forty thousand acres could be put under water by gravity, he should close the deal at once, file a notice of appropriation for forty thousand miner’s inches of water, and begin work on the first tunnel. He then intended to lay the matter before one of the great land selling organisations of Chicago or New York, proposing that he be paid $1,400,000 for the forty thousand acres of irrigated land, subject to mortgage; demonstrating that the land so purchased for thirty-five dollars an acre (or forty-three and a half dollars including the mortgage) could readily be sold to settlers for one hundred, if railroad facilities were provided. As a further inducement, to cover the cost of railroad construction, he would execute a deed and place it in escrow, as a guarantee and evidence of good faith, and accompanied by a contract authorising the land selling company to dispose of the remaining thirty-five thousand acres at ten dollars an acre. The construction of the railroad would add materially to the value of the unirrigated land also, and a pledge of this portion of the property as security that the railroad would be built would be acceptable, because the estimated cost, with liberal allowances, was under $350,000.

The sum paid him by the land selling company would, in addition to the large sum realised by the sale of the live stock, give him at least $1,600,000, or $1,100,000 over the half million originally invested.

Mark listened with his eyes and mouth wide open.

“By George!” he exclaimed, when Gregory finished. “Did you dope all that out yourself? That’s the talk of a man who’s been in the land business for years. How did you ever think of it?”

“What’s a man’s brain given to him for--to turn round in a circle? Do you find the plan feasible?”

“It’s feasible all right--given a cold half million in hand and brains behind it--plus imagination. That’s where you win out. You’ll be the richest man in Montana yet.”

“I intend to be.”

“And the first man born here to make one of the old-time fortunes.”

“I hadn’t thought of that!”

Mark dismissed enthusiasm and put his own astute brain to work.

“The hitch will be with your land selling company. They might be dazzled, even convinced, but they’re cold-blooded, and they never have any too much cash on hand. What special line of argument do you propose to hand out?”

“Several. I didn’t go to the Circle-G Ranch without making certain investigations beforehand. In the first place Government statistics prove the productivity of Montana soil without irrigation. I am not the first to discover that this same soil when irrigated is insured against crop failure. In the second place a study of the U. S. Government reclamation projects convinced me that I could, all things being favourable (such as water supply and gravity), put a large tract of land under water at a very small cost compared to the cost under the plan of procedure adopted by the Government. By the plan I have mapped out I can sell both land and water for less than the cost of water alone under the Government direction. But I have a final inducement which I believe will bring the selling company to terms. Those forty thousand acres when irrigated will be peculiarly adapted to the growing of seed peas. This is the best soil in the country for peas. Now the seed houses of the country are in great need of large quantities of seed peas, and the selling company could easily interest these concerns to the extent of securing their financial backing. They would no doubt buy large blocks themselves. Such an opportunity has never been offered them--forty thousand acres under the ditch, and adequate railroad service. This will enable the selling company to raise an initial payment to me of $200,000. And if I guarantee the ditch and the railroad they are in a position to make the same guarantee to settlers to whom they may make sales in a retail way. They’ll have no difficulty getting $100 an acre retail; and the seed houses no doubt would invest and become real owners, thus saving the profit now paid to farmers who grow for them under contract. Got it?”

“I get you. But why put all of your own money into the ranch? Ora has taken something like half a million out of that mine. I could let you have that.”

“I’ll risk no woman’s money. Of course I shouldn’t put my own in if I didn’t believe it to be a dead sure thing, but there’s always risk.” He took a packet of papers from his overcoat pocket. “Here are the option and abstract of titles. I wish you would examine them. Say nothing of all this at present--nor for a long time after. I’ll spring it when I’m ready--which will be after I’ve disposed of the irrigated land. Will you go out with me when I return to Circle-G? I shall want you to attend to the details of sale and to the location of the water rights.”

“I’ll go all right. And I’m only living to see what you’ll do next.”

XXIX

Meanwhile the story of the Compton-Amalgamated war was the sensation not only of Montana but of the entire country. The Butte morning papers ignored it, but the _Evening Bugle_ reaped a golden harvest. The editor himself, who was the Montana correspondent of one of the great New York dailies, made his reputation with the most sensational “stuff” that had gone from the Northwest since Heinze retired from the field. The hill swarmed with reporters. Two Eastern newspapers sent special correspondents to the spot. In less than a fortnight the public knew all there was to know and far more. Perch of the Devil Mine was photographed inside and out, and its uncompromising ugliness but added to its magnetism; which emanated from a “solid hill of metal just below a thin layer of barren soil.” The general reader, who admired the colour of copper, conceived that it emerged in solid sheets.

Gregory refused to be interviewed or photographed, but was snapshotted; and his long sinewy figure and lean dark face, his narrow eyes and fine mouth, won the championship of every woman partial to the type. The women’s papers, as well as those run by radicals, socialists, and conservative men of independent tendencies, advocated his cause against the wicked trust; nor was there a newspaper in the country, however capitalised, that resisted the temptation to make him “big news.” To his unspeakable annoyance he began to receive letters by the score, most of them from women; but he lost no time employing a secretary whose duty was to read and burn them. He appreciated his fame very vaguely, for between his mine and the innumerable details connected with his new ranch, he had little time to devote to newspapers or his own sensations. But although personal notoriety was distasteful to him and reporters a nuisance, he felt more than compensated by the success of his publicity scheme, and the assurance that it was causing the enemy unspeakable annoyance and apprehension.

He paid a visit to Chicago after work had begun on the first tunnel, and spent several days with the interested but cautious officials of the greatest of the land selling companies. Like all silent men, when he did talk it was not only to the point, but he used carefully composed arguments incisively expressed. He indulged in no rhetorical flights, no enthusiasms, no embellishment of plain facts. He might have been a mathematician working out an abstract problem in algebra; and this attitude, combined with his reputation as a “winner”, and the details of his cautious purchase of Circle-G Ranch, finally impressed the company to the extent of sending one of their number, who was an expert in land values, to the ranch. Gregory accompanied him, took him to the mountain river, showed him the engineer’s report, pointed out the undeviating slope between the river and the ranch, and the land’s rich chocolate brown soil of unlimited depth. The upshot was that the expert returned to Chicago almost as enthusiastic as if the original scheme were his. After consultation with several of the seed houses, the land company agreed to buy on Compton’s terms, and to pay $200,000 down, $500,000 at the end of sixty days, and $700,000 at the end of four months.

* * * * *

Ora and Ida had asked for an extension of leave, as they had not yet “done” Italy, Spain, and Egypt, and both husbands had given a willing consent; Gregory from sheer indifference; Mark because he was so busy that he no longer had time to miss his wife. He refused to give Ora’s picture to the enterprising correspondents, but they found no difficulty with the local photographer. They had not been long uncovering the romantic history of the Oro Fino Primo Mine, and it made a welcome pendant to the still recourseful “story” of Perch of the Devil. Ora’s beauty, accomplishments, charm, family history, as well as her present social progress in company with her “equally beautiful friend”, the wife of the hero of the hour, became public property.

Altogether, Butte, after several years of oblivion, was happy and excited. So far, although mineralogically the most sensational state in the Union, and the third in size, she had given to the world but four highly specialized individuals: Marcus Daly, perhaps the greatest mine manager and ore wizard of our time; W. A. Clark, who accumulated millions as a moving picture show rolls in dimes; F. Augustus Heinze, who should be the greatest financial power in America if brains were all; and the Sapphic, coruscatic, imperishable Mary McLane. An outstanding quartette. But Daly was dead, Clark was but one of many millionaires, submerged in New York, Heinze was reaping the whirlwind, and the poet was nursing her wounds. Montana was in the mood for a new hero, and the American press for a new and picturesque subject to “play up for all he was worth.”

XXX

Ora and Ida were sitting at one of the little round tables in the pretty green and wicker smoking-room of the Hotel Bristol in Genoa, drinking their coffee and smoking their after-luncheon cigarettes, when Ida, who was glancing over the _Herald_, cried,

“Aw!”

Ora looked round in surprise. Ida often relieved the strain when they were alone by relapsing into the vernacular, but was impressively elegant in public.

“What is it?” she asked apprehensively. “Anybody we know dead? That is about all the news we ever get in these Continental----”

“Dead nothing. Greg’s struck a bigger bonanza than I had any idea of, and Amalgamated is after it. They tried to corral your mine for delinquent taxes, but got left. Found a bit of unclaimed land between your claim and the ranch and staked off. They’re sinking a shaft and mean to prove that the vein--Greg’s--apexes in their claim. Wouldn’t that come and get you! Just listen.” And she read aloud an embellished but not untruthful tale. “Glory, I hope they don’t get him! That would be the end of all my fond dreams.”

“I have an idea that Mr. Compton was born to win. At all events you have your new house in Butte, and all the money you can spend for the present.”

“Yes, but I want money to spend in Butte, live in that house, and make things hum. However, I guess you’re right. I’ll bet on Greg. Here come the letters. Hope you get one from Mark as I’d like some real news.”

A page with letters in his hand had entered the room. He served the young American ladies first as their tips were frequent and munificent, particularly Ora’s. The other people in the room were English and Italian.

Ida’s letters were from Ruby and Pearl. Ora’s from Mark, Professor Becke, and two of her English friends. She opened her husband’s first. It contained an account of the threatened loss of her mine, her narrow escape, and Gregory’s rescue. It was graphically written. Mark fancied himself as a letter writer and never was averse from impressing his clever wife.

Ora’s face flushed as she read; she lost her breath once or twice. She pictured every expression of Gregory’s eyes as he perforated the clerk; her heart hammered its admiration. She was too thoroughly Montanan and the daughter of her father to be horrified at bribery and corruption. For the moment she forgot gratitude in her exultation that he had triumphed over the mightiest trust in the country. But before she finished the letter she sighed and set her lips. She handed it deliberately to Ida.

“Here is an account of the first development,” she said casually. “It will interest you.”

Ida read the letter hastily. “Well, they caught him napping after all,” she said with profound dissatisfaction. “He dreams too much, that’s what. He’s got a practical side all right, but he isn’t on the job all the time. I’d like to write and tell him what I think of him but guess I’d better keep my mouth shut.”

“It was Mark’s fault as much as Mr. Compton’s--more. He should have had a new map made of my claim; or, if he did have one made, he should have studied it more carefully. Anybody to look at it would assume that it touched the boundary line of your--Mr. Compton’s ranch.”

“Well, Greg’ll get out of it some way. When he does sit up and take notice he doesn’t so much as wink, and so far as he knew or cared the rest of the world might have waltzed off into space. Lucky it hit him to buy the house and send that last five thousand before he snapped close on Amalgamated----”

“What does Miss Miller have to say?”

“Nothing much but ecstasies over my house. The Murphys had taste, it seems, so I won’t have to do a thing to it. Say, Ora, don’t you feel as if you’d like to go back?”

Ora looked up and her face turned white. “Go back? I thought you wanted to stay over here for a year, at least. We haven’t half seen Europe yet--to say nothing of Egypt.”

“Yes--I know--but sometimes I feel homesick. It isn’t only that I want to make Butte sit up; but--well, I suppose you’ll laugh, but I miss the mountains. I never thought much about them when I was there, but they’ve kind of haunted me lately.”

“There are mountains in Europe.”

“I know, but they’re just scenery. Our mountains are different.”

Ora looked at her speculatively. It was not the first time that Ida had surprised her with glow-worms flitting across her spiritual night, although she seemed to be so devoid of imagination, or what she would have called superfluous nonsense, as to inspire her more highly organised friend with envy. Her mental and artistic development had been rapid and remarkable but uneven. She yawned through the opera and symphony concerts. She would always be bored by pictures unless she could read a “story” in them, although she had now mastered the jargon of art as well as most of her quick-witted country-women. In Florence and Rome she had “struck” after one morning of picture galleries, but she showed a spontaneous and curious appreciation of the architecture of the Renaissance. Ora had expected the usual ecstasies over the old castles of England and Germany, but although Ida admired them heartily, and even declared they made her feel “real romantic,” it was for the Renaissance palaces of France and of the cities they visited in Italy that she reserved her instant and critical admiration. Ora, who like most imaginative people played with the theory of reincarnation, amused herself visioning Ida in Burne-Jones costumes, haunting the chill midnight corridors of a Florentine palace, dagger in hand, or brewing a poisoned bowl. If Ida possessed a rudimentary soul, which suffered a birth-pang now and then, Ora had caught more than one glimpse of a savage temper combined with a cunning that under her present advantages was rapidly developing into subtlety. But Ida indulged too little in introspection to develop her inmost ego other than automatically. To mental progress she was willing to devote a certain amount of labour. Whenever they were not on a train or visiting at country houses, she spent an hour every morning with a teacher of either French or Italian; German she had refused to “tackle,” but, to use her own phrase, she “ate up” the Latin languages, and her diction was remarkably good. If picture galleries replete with saints, virgins, madonnas and Venuses bored her, she returned more than once to the portrait rooms in the Pitti and the Uffizi galleries, haunted the museums with their mediæval and Renaissance furniture and tapestries, and eagerly visited every palace to which the public was admitted.

And she proved herself as adaptable as Ora had hoped. In England she bored her way through the newspapers until she was able to sustain her part in political conversation. She soon discerned that English people of assured position and wide social experience liked a certain degree of picturesque Americanism when it was unaccompanied by garrulity or blatant ill-breeding. She amused herself by “giving them what they wanted,” and was a more pronounced success than Ora, who was outwardly too much like themselves, yet lacking the matchless fortune of English birth. But this did not disturb Ora, who made more real friends, and derived endless amusement observing Ida. On one occasion they visited for a week at one of the country homes of a duke and duchess that had entertained Mrs. Stratton many years ago, and Ida had enchanted these bored but liberal products of a nation that led with too much indifference the Grand March of Civilisation with her Western “breeziness” and terminology (carefully selected), combined with her severely cut and altogether admirable gowns, and her fine imposing carriage. From this castle she went on with Ora to one leased by an ambitious American more English than the English, who permitted herself to indulge in a very little fashionable slang, but had consigned the American vernacular to oblivion in the grave of her ancestors. Here Ida was languid and correct (save at the midnight hour when she sought Ora, not only for relaxation but the instructions she was never too proud to receive); her English slang (which she had “swapped” for much of her own with her various British admirers) was impeccable, and she flirted like a stage duchess.

She estimated the various aristocracies she entered under Ora’s wing as a grand moving picture show run for the benefit of Americans, and was grateful to have an inside seat, although nothing would have bored her more than to take a permanent position in their midst. With their history, traditions, psychology, she concerned herself not at all; nor did she in any way manifest a desire to cultivate the intellectual parts of her shrewd, observing, clutching brain. She threw away as many opportunities as she devoured, but on the whole proved herself somewhat more adaptable than the usual American woman elevated suddenly from the humbler walks of life to the raking searchlights of Society. In Berlin and Vienna she repeated her social triumphs, for, although Americans do not penetrate far below the crust of Continental society, smart men abound in the crust; Ida graduated as an adept in flirtation with agreeable and subtle men of the world, yet keeping the most practical at arm’s length with a carefully calculated Western directness and artlessness that amounted to genius.

In France and Italy the dazzling fairness of Ora had its innings. A vague suggestion of unreality, almost morbid, and a very definite one of unawakened womanhood, combined with a cultivated mind, ready wit, and air of high breeding, gave her a success as genuine as Ida’s and somewhat more perilous. But she soon learned to tread warily, after her theories of European men had been vindicated by personal experience. In fact, after the two girls had ceased to be mere tourists they had taken the advice of one of Mrs. Stratton’s friends and enlisted the services of an indigent lady of title as chaperon. Lady Gower had been little more than a figurehead but had served her purpose in averting gossip; and now that her charges were tourists again had returned to her lodgings in Belgravia. As maids also are a doubtful luxury when travelling they had recently dismissed the last of a long line.