Chapter V: Part 5

Ill-health was a misfortune she never had considered. It was a new spectre, the worst of all. If one were well one could always do something even without much talent, but helpless, dependent--the dread which filled her as she walked up and down the narrow confines of her room was different from the vague fears of the inexperienced. Hers came from actual knowledge and observation obtained in the wide scope of her newspaper life. The sordid straits which reduce existence to a matter of food and a roof, the ceaseless anxiety destroying every vestige of personal charm, the necessity of asking for loans that both borrower and lender know to be gifts--grudgingly given--accepted in mingled bitterness and relief--Helen Dunbar had seen it all. The pictures which rose before her were real. In her nervous state she imagined herself some day envying even Mae Smith, who at least had health and irrepressible spirits.

But there must be no more tears, she told herself at last. They were a confession of weakness, they dissipated courage; and the handkerchief which had been a moist ball dried in her hot hand. She said aloud to her flushed reflection in the glass:

"Well," determinedly, "I've never thought myself a coward and I won't act like one now. There's been many a thousand before me gone through this experience without whining and I guess I can do the same. Until I'm a sure enough down-and-outer I'll do the best I can. I must find a cheaper room and buy an oil-stove. Ugh! the first step on the down grade."

There was a rap upon the door and she lowered the shade a little so that the bell-boy with her evening paper should not see her reddened eyes. Instead of the paper he carried a long pasteboard box.

Flowers? How extraordinary--perhaps Peters; no, not Peters, as she read the name of a side street florist on the box, he was not to be suspected of any such economy as that. Roses--a dozen--a little too full blown to last very long but lovely. T. Victor Sprudell's card fell out as she took them from the box.

XIII

"OFF HIS RANGE"

Bruce stood before the blackboard in the Bartlesville station studying the schedule. A train went west at 11.45. The first train went east at 11.10. He hesitated a moment, then the expression of uncertainty upon his face hardened into decision. He turned quickly and bought a ticket east. If Sprudell had lied he was going to find it out.

As he sat by the car window watching the smug, white farm-houses and big red barns of the middle west fly by, their dull respectability, their commonplace prosperity vaguely depressed him. What if he should be sentenced for life to walk up to his front door between two rows of whitewashed rocks, to live surrounded by a picket fence, and to die behind a pair of neat green blinds? But mostly his thoughts were a jumble of Sprudell, of his insincere cordiality and the unexpected denouement when Abe Cone's call had forced his hand; of Dill and his mission, and disgust at his own carelessness in failing to record his claims.

They concentrated finally upon the work which lay before him once he had demonstrated the truth or falsity of Sprudell's assertion that Slim's family were not to be found. He turned the situation over and over in his mind and always it resolved itself into the same thing, namely, his lack of money. That obstacle confronted him at every turn and yet in spite of it, in spite of the doubts and fears which reason and caution together thrust into his mind, his determination to win, to outwit Sprudell, to make good his boast, grew stronger with every turn of the car wheels.

Ambition was already awake within him; but it needed Sprudell's sneers to sting his pride, Sprudell's ingratitude and arrogant assumption of success in whatever it pleased him to undertake, to arouse in Bruce that stubborn, dogged, half-sullen obstinacy which his father had called mulishness but which the farmer's wife with her surer woman's intuition had recognized as one of the traits which make for achievement. It is a quality which stands those who have it in good stead when failure stares them in the face.

It did not take Bruce long to discover that in whatever else Sprudell had prevaricated he at least had told the truth when he said that the Naudain family had disappeared. They might never have existed, for all the trace he could find of them in the city of a million.

The old-fashioned residence where "Slim" had lived, with its dingy trimmings, and its marble steps worn in hollows, affected him strangely as he stood across the street where he could see it from roof to basement. It made "Slim" seem more real, more like "folks" and less like a malignant presence. It had been an imposing house in its time but now it was given over to doctors' offices and studios, while a male hair-dresser in the basement transformed the straight locks of fashionable ladies into a wonderful marcelle.

Bruce went down to make some inquiries and he stared at the proprietor as though he were some strange, hybrid animal when he came forward testing the heat of a curling-iron against his fair cheek.

No, the hair-dresser shook his fluffy, blonde head, he never had heard of a family named Naudain, although he had been four years in the building and knew everyone upstairs. A trust company owned the place now; he was sure of that because the rent collector was just a shade more prompt than the rising sun. Yes, most certainly he would give Bruce the company's address and it was no trouble at all.

He was a fascinating person to Bruce, who would have liked to prolong the conversation, but the disheveled customer in the chair was growing restless, so he took the address, thanked him, and went out wondering whimsically if through any cataclysm of nature he should turn up a hair-dresser, sweet-scented, redolent of tonique, smelling of pomade, how it would seem to be curling a lady's hair?

Back in the moderate-priced hotel where he had established himself, he set about interviewing by telephone the Naudains whose names appeared in the directory. It was a nerve-racking task to Bruce, who was unfamiliar with the use of the telephone, and those of the name with whom he succeeded in getting in communication seemed singularly busy folk, indifferent to the amenities and entirely uninterested in his quest. But he persisted until he had exhausted the list.

Since there was no more to do that night, in fact no more to do at all if the trust company failed him, he went to bed: but everything was too strange for him to sleep well.

A sense of the nearness of people made him uneasy, and the room seemed close although there was no steam and the window was wide open. The noises of the street disturbed him; they were poor substitutes for the plaintive music of the wind among the pines. His bed was far too soft; he believed he could have slept if only he had had his mattress of pine-boughs and his bear-grass pillow. The only advantage that his present quarters had over his cabin was the hot and cold water. It really was convenient, he told himself with a grin, to have a spring in the room.

The street lamp made his room like day and as he lay wide-eyed in the white light listening to the clatter of hoofs over the pavement, he recalled his childish ambition to buy up all the old horses in the world when he was big--he smiled now at the size of the contract--all the horses he could find that were stiff and sore, and half dead on their feet from straining on preposterous loads; the horses that were lashed and cut and cursed because in their wretched old age they could not step out like colts. He meant to turn them into a pasture where the grass was knee-deep and they could lie with their necks outstretched in the sun and rest their tired legs.

He had explained the plan to his mother and he remembered how she had assured him gravely that it was a fine idea indeed. It was from her that he had inherited his passionate fondness for animals. Cruelty to a dumb brute hurt him like a blow.

On the trip out from Ore City an overworked stage horse straining on a sixteen per cent. grade and more had dropped dead in the harness--a victim to the parsimony of a government that has spent millions on useless dams, pumping plants, and reservoirs, but continues to pay cheerfully the salaries of the engineers responsible for the blunders; footing the bills for the junkets of hordes of "foresters," of "timber-inspectors" and inspectors inspecting the inspectors, and what not, yet forcing the parcel post upon some poor mountain mail-contractor without sufficient compensation, haggling over a pittance with the man it is ruining like some Baxter street Jew.

Like many people in the West, Bruce had come to have a feeling for some of the departments of the government, whose activities had come under his observation, that was as strong as a personal enmity.

He put the picture of the stage-horse, staggering and dying on its feet, resolutely from his mind.

"I never will sleep if I get to thinking of that," he told himself. "It makes me hot all over again."

From this disquieting subject his thought reverted to his own affairs, to "Slim's" family and his self-appointed task, to the placer and Sprudell. Nor were these reflections conducive to sleep. More and more he realized how much truth there was in Sprudell's taunts. Without money how could he fight him in the Courts? There were instances in plenty where prospectors had been driven from that which was rightfully theirs because they were without the means to defend their property.

Squaw Creek was the key to the situation. This was a fact which became more and more plain. However, Sprudell was undoubtedly quite as well aware of this as he was himself and would lose no time in applying for the water right. The situation looked dark indeed to Bruce as he tossed and turned. Then like a lost word or name which one gropes for for hours, days, weeks perhaps, there suddenly jumped before Bruce's eyes a paragraph from the state mining laws which he had glanced over carelessly in an idle moment. It stood out before him now as though it were in double-leaded type.

"If it isn't too late! If it isn't too late!" he breathed excitedly. "Dog-gone, if it isn't too late!"

With the same movement that he sprang out on the floor he reached for his hat; then he recalled that telegraph operators were sometimes ladies and it would be as well to dress. He made short work of the performance, however, and went downstairs two steps at a time rather than wait for the sleepy bell-boy, who did double duty on the elevator at night. The telegraph office was two squares away, the wondering night-clerk told him, and Bruce, stepping frequently on his shoelaces, went up the street at a gait which was more than half suspicious to the somnambulant officer on the beat.

The trust company's doors had not been opened many minutes the next morning before Bruce arrived. The clerk who listened to his inquiries was willing enough to give him any information that he had but he had none beyond the fact that the property in question had passed from the possession of a family named Dunbar into the hands of the trust company many years ago, and no person named Naudain had figured in the transfer, or any other transfer so far as he could ascertain from consulting various deeds and documents in the vault.

It was puzzling enough to Bruce, who was sure that he had read the number and the street correctly and had remembered it, but the clerk was waiting politely for him to go, so he thanked him and went out.

As Bruce stood in the wide stone archway of the building watching the stream of passers-by hastening to their offices and shops, some faint glimmerings of the magnitude of the task he had set himself in raising money among strangers to defend the placer ground if need be and install the hydro-electric plant for working it, came to him. He had little, if any, idea how to begin or where, and he had a feeling as he studied the self-centred faces of the hurrying throng that if he should fall on his knees before anyone among them and beg for a hearing they would merely walk around him and go on.

It occurred to Bruce that the clerk inside was an uncommonly good fellow, and friendly; he believed he would ask his advice. He might make some useful suggestions. Bruce acted at once upon the idea and again the clerk came forward cheerfully. Going to the point at once, Bruce demanded:

"How would a stranger go about raising money here for a mining proposition?"

A quizzical expression came into the clerk's eyes and a faint smile played about his mouth. He looked Bruce over with some personal interest before he answered.

"If I was the stranger," he said dryly, "I'd get a piece of lead-pipe and stand in an area-way about 11.30 one of these dark nights. That's the only way I know to raise money for mining purposes in this town."

Bruce stepped back abruptly and his dark face reddened.

"Sorry I bothered you," he eyed the clerk steadily, "but I made a mistake in the way I sized you up."

It was the clerk's turn to flush, but because he really was a good fellow and there was that in Bruce's unusual appearance that he liked, he called him back when he would have gone.

"I apologize," he said frankly, "I hadn't any business to get funny when you asked me a civil question, but the fact is the town's been worked to death with mining schemes. Nearly everyone's been bitten to the point of hydrophobia and I doubt if you can raise a dollar without friends."

"I wouldn't say I had much show if that's the case," Bruce answered, "for I'm a long way off my range."

In his well-worn Stetson, with his dark skin tanned by sun and wind and snow to a shade that was only a little lighter than an Indian's; using, when he talked, the wide, careless gestures that bespeak the far West, Bruce was so obviously of the country beyond the Mississippi that the clerk could not repress a smile.

"I've never promoted anything more important than a theatre party or a motor trip," the clerk vouchsafed, "but I should think some of the brokers who handle mining stocks would be the people to see. There's a good firm two doors above. I can give you the names of a few people who sometimes take 'flyers' on the side but even they don't go into anything that isn't pretty strongly endorsed by someone they know. There's always the chance though," he continued, looking Bruce over speculatively, "that someone may take a fancy to you personally. I've noticed that personality sometimes wins where facts and figures couldn't get a look in."

Bruce answered simply:

"That lets me out again, I've no silver tongue. I've talked with too few people to have much fluency."

The clerk did not contradict him though he was thinking that Bruce could thank his personality for the time he was giving him and the pains he was taking to help him.

"Here," handing Bruce a hastily written list. "You needn't tell them I sent you for it wouldn't do any good. Some of them come in here often but they look upon me as an office fixture--like this mahogany desk, or that Oriental rug."

"This is mighty good of you," said Bruce, as grateful as though he had written special letters of endorsement for him to all his friends. "Say," with his impulsive hospitality, "I wish you could come out and visit me. Couldn't you get away the end of August when the bull-trout and the redsides are biting good?"

"Me?" The clerk started, then he murmured wistfully: "When the bull-trout and the redsides are biting good! Gee! I like the way that sounds! Then," with a resigned gesture, "I was never farther west than South Bethlehem; I never expect to have the price."

He looked so efficient and well dressed that Bruce had thought he must receive a large salary and he felt badly to learn that the prosperity of such a nice chap was only clothes deep. He promised to look in on him before he left the city and tell him how he had gotten on; then he took his list and went back to the hotel prepared to spend some anxious hours in the time which must intervene before he could expect to hear from his night telegram. He hoped the answer would come in the morning, for disappointments, he had learned, were easier to bear when the sun shone.

The telegram was awaiting him when he returned from an excursion to a department store which had been fraught with considerable excitement. A majestic blonde had assumed a kind of protectorate over him and dissuaded him from his original intention of buying thirty yards of ruching for Ma Snow with a firmness that approached a refusal to sell him anything so old-fashioned, although he protested that it had looked beautiful in the neck and sleeves of his mother's gowns some fifteen years before. Neglecting to explain that his gift was for a woman all of fifty, a pink crepe-de-chine garment was held alluringly before his embarrassed eyes and a filmy petticoat, from beneath which, in his mind's eye, Bruce could see Pa Snow's carpet-slippers, in which Ma Snow "eased her feet," peeping in and out. In the end he fought his way out--through more women than he had seen together in all his life--with a box of silk hose in appallingly vivid colors and a beaded bag which, he had it on the saleslady's honor, was "all the rage."

Bruce took the yellow envelope which the desk-clerk handed him and looked at it with a feeling of dread. He had counted the hours until it should come and now he was afraid to open it. It meant so much to him--everything in fact--the moment was a crisis but he managed to tear the envelope across with no outward indication of his dread.

He took in the contents at a glance and there was such relief, such renewed hope in his radiant face that the desk-clerk was moved to observe smilingly: "Good news, I gather." And Bruce was so glad, so happy, that for the moment he could think of nothing more brilliant to answer than--"Well I should say so! I should say so!"

XIV

HIS ONLY ASSET

It would be a pleasure to record that Capital found Bruce's personality so irresistible that his need of funds met with instant response, that the dashing picturesqueness of his appearance and charm of his unconventional speech and manner was so fascinating that Capital violated all the rules observed by experienced investors and handed out its checks with the cheery "God bless you m' boy!" which warms the heart toward Capital in fiction. Such, however, was not the case.

It took only one interview to disabuse Bruce's mind of any faint, sneaking idea he may have had that he was doing Capital a favor for which it would duly thank him. The person whom he honored with his first call strongly conveyed the impression after he had stated his case that he considered that he, Bruce, had obtained valuable time under false pretenses. Certainly the last emotion which he seemed to entertain for the opportunity given him was gratitude, and his refusal to be interested amounted to a curt dismissal.

The second interview, during which Bruce was cross-examined by a cold-eyed gentleman with a cool, impersonal voice, was sufficient to make him realize with tolerable clearness his total unpreparedness. What engineer of recognized standing had reported upon the ground? None! To what extent, then, had the ground been sampled? How many test-pits had been sunk, and how far to bed-rock? What was the yardage? Where were his certified assay sheets, and his engineer's estimate for hydro-electric installation? What transportation facilities?

Bruce, still dazed by the onslaught, had turned and looked at the door which had closed behind him with a briskness which seemed to say "Good riddance," and muttered, thinking of the clerk's one sanguine suggestion: "Personality! I might as well be a hop-toad."

But in his chagrin he went to extremes in his contemptuous estimate of himself, for there was that about him which generally got him a hearing and a longer one than would have been accorded the average "promoter" with nothing more tangible upon which to raise money than his unsupported word. His Western phraseology and sometimes humorous similes, his unexpected whimsicalities and a certain naïveté secretly amused many of those whom he approached, though they took the best of care not to show it lest he mistake their interest in himself for interest in his proposition.

One or two went so far as to pass him on by giving him the name of a friend, but, mostly, they listened coldly, critically, and refused with some faint excuse or none. There was no harder task that Bruce could have set himself than applying to such men for financial help for, underneath, he was still the sensitive boy who had bolted from the dinner-table in tears and anger to escape his father's ridicule, and, furthermore, he was accustomed to the friendly spirit and manner of the far West.

The chilling stiffness, the skepticism and suspicion, the curtness which was close to rudeness, at first bewildered, then hurt and humiliated him, finally filling him with a resentment which was rapidly reaching a point where it needed only an uncivil word or act too much to produce an explosion.

But if he was like that boy of other days in his quick pride, neither had he lost the tenacity of purpose which had kept him dragging one sore, bare foot after the other to get to his mother when the gulches he had to pass were black and full of ghostly, fearsome things that the hired man had seen when staying out late o' nights. This trait now kept him trudging grimly from one office to another, offering himself a target for rebuffs that to him had the sting of insults.

He had come to know so well what to expect that he shrank painfully from each interview. It required a strong effort of will to turn in at the given number and ask for the man he had come to see, and when he saw him it required all his courage to explain the purpose of his call. Bruce understood fully now how he was handicapped by the lack of data and the fact that he was utterly unknown, but so long as there was one glimmer of hope that someone would believe him, would see the possibilities in his proposition as he saw them, and investigate for himself Bruce would not quit. The list of names the clerk had given him and many others had long since been exhausted. Looking back it seemed to him that he was a babe in swaddling clothes when he started out with his telegram and his addresses, so full of high hopes and the roseate expectations of inexperience.

Day after day he plodded, his dark face set in grim lines of purpose, following up clews leading to possible investors which he obtained here and there, and always with the one result. What credentials had he? To what past successes could he point? None? Ah, good-day.

One morning Bruce opened his eyes and the conviction that he had failed leaped into his mind as though it had been waiting like a cat at a mouse hole to pounce upon him the instant of his return to consciousness.

"You have failed! You have got to give up! You are done!" The words pounding into his brain affected him like hammer blows over the heart. He laid motionless, inert, his face grown sallow upon the pillow, and he thought that the feelings of a condemned man listening to the building of his gallows must be something like his own.

Those who have struggled for something, tried with all their heart and soul, fought to the last atom of their strength, and failed, know something of the sickening heaviness, the dull, aching depression which takes the vitality and seems actually to slow up the beating of the heart.

Out in the world, he told himself, where men won things by their brains, he had failed like any pitiable weakling; that he had been handicapped by unpreparedness was no palliation of the crime of failure. Ignorance was no excuse. In humiliation and chagrin he attributed the mistakes of inexperience to lack of intelligence. His mother had over-estimated him, he had over-estimated himself. It was presumption to have supposed he was fitted for anything but manual labor. Sprudell had been right, he thought bitterly, when he had sneered that muscle was his only asset.

He could see himself loading his belongings into Slim's old boat, his blankets and the tattered soogan and bobbing through the rapids with the blackened coffee-pot, the frying pan, and lard cans jingling in the bottom, while Sprudell, with his hateful, womanish smile, watched his ignominious departure. Bruce drew his sleeve across his damp forehead. If there was any one thing which could goad him to further action it was this picture.

He arose and dressed slowly. Bruce had known fatigue, the weakness of hunger, but never anything like the leaden, heavy-footed depression which comes from intense despondency and hopelessness.

As his finances had gone down he had gone up, until he was now located permanently on the top floor of the hotel where the hall carpets and furniture were given their final try-out before going into the discards. The only thing which stopped him from going further was the roof. He had no means of judging what the original colors in his rug had been save by an inch or two close to the wall, and every brass handle on the drawers of his dresser came out at the touch. The lone faucet of cold water dripped constantly and he had to stand on a chair each time he raised the split green shade. When he wiped his face he fell through the hole in the towel; he could never get over a feeling of surprise at meeting his hands in the middle, and the patched sheets on his bed looked like city plots laid out in squares.

He loathed the shabbiness of it, and the suggestion of germs, decay, down-at-the-heel poverty added to his depression. He never had any such feelings about his rough bunk filled with cedar boughs and his pine table as he had about this iron bed, with its scratched enamel and tin knobs, which deceived nobody into thinking them brass, or the wobbly dresser that he swore at heartily each time he turned back a fingernail trying to claw a drawer open.

Bruce had vowed that so long as a stone remained unturned he would stay and turn it, but--he had run out of stones. Three untried addresses were left in his note-book and he looked at them as he ate his frugal breakfast speculating as to which was nearest.

"If I'd eaten as much beef as I have crow since I came to this man's town," he meditated as he dragged his unwilling feet up the street, "I'd be a 'shipper' in prime A1 condition. I've a notion I haven't put on much weight since it became the chief article of my diet. If thirty days of quail will stall a man what will six weeks of crow do to him? I doubt if I will ever entirely get my self-respect back unless," he added with the glimmer of a smile, "I go around and lick some of them before I leave."

"I suppose," his thoughts ran on, "that it's a part of the scheme of life that a person must eat his share of crow before he gets in a position to make some one else eat it, but dog-gone!" with a wry face, "I've sure swallowed a double portion." Then he fell to wondering if--he consulted his note-book--J. Winfield Harrah had specialized at all upon his method of serving up this game-bird which knows no closed season?

As he sat in Harrah's outer office on a high-backed settee of teak-wood ornate with dragons and Chinese devils, with his feet on a rug which would have gone a long way toward installing a power-plant, looking at pictures of Jake Kilrain in pugilistic garb and pose, the racing yacht Shamrock under full sail, and Heatherbloom taking a record smashing jump, the spider-legged office boy came from inside endeavoring to hide some pleasurable excitement under a semblance of dignity and office reticence.

"Mr. Harrah has been detained and won't be here for perhaps an hour."

"I'll wait," Bruce replied laconically.

The office boy lingered. He fancied Bruce because of his size and his hat and a resemblance that he thought he saw between him and his favorite western hero of the movies; besides, he was bursting with a proud secret. He hunched his shoulders and looked cautiously behind toward the inner offices. Between his palms he whispered:

"He's been arrested."

It delighted him that Bruce's eyes widened.

"Third time in a month--speedin' in Jersey--his new machine is 80 horse-power--! A farmer put tacks in the road and tried to kill him wit' a pitchfork. Say! my boss _et_ him. I bet he'll get fined the limit." His red necktie swelled palpably and he swaggered proudly. "Pooh! he don't care. My boss, he--"

"Willie!"

"Yes ma'am." The stenographer's call interrupted further confidences from Willie and he scuttled away, leaving Bruce with the impression that the boy's admiration for his boss was not unmixed with apprehension.

The hour had gone when the door opened and a huge, fiery-bearded, dynamic sort of person went swinging past Bruce without a glance and on to the inner offices. The office boy's husky "That's him!" was not needed to tell him that J. Winfield Harrah had arrived. The air suddenly seemed charged electrically. The stenographer speeded up and dapper young clerks and accountants bent to their work with a zeal and assiduity which merited immediate promotion, while "Willie," Bruce noticed, came from a brief session in the private office with the dazed look of one who has just been through an experience.

When Bruce's turn came Harrah sat at his desk like an expectant ogre; there was that in his attitude which seemed to say: "Enter; I eat promoters." His eyes measured Bruce from head to foot in a glance of appraisement, and Bruce on his part subjected Harrah to the same swift scrutiny.

Without at all being able to explain it Bruce felt instantly at his ease, he experienced a kind of relief as does a stranger in a strange land when he discovers someone who speaks his tongue.

Harrah appeared about Bruce's age, perhaps a year or two older, and he was as tall, though lacking Bruce's thickness and breadth of shoulder. His arms were long as a gorilla's and he had huge white fists with freckles on the back that looked like ginger-snaps. Fiery red eyebrows as stiff as two toothbrushes bristled above a pair of vivid blue eyes, while his short beard resembled nothing so much as a neatly trimmed whisk broom, flaming in color. His skin was florid and his hair, which was of a darker shade than his beard, was brushed straight back from a high, white forehead. A tuft of hair stood up on his crown like the crest on a game-cock. Everything about him indicated volcanic temperament, virility, and impulsiveness which amounted to eccentricity.

Harrah represented to Bruce practically his last chance, but there was nothing in Harrah's veiled, non-committal eyes as he motioned Bruce to a chair and inquired brusquely: "Well--what kind of a wild-cat have _you_ got?" which would have led an observer to wager any large amount that his last chance was a good one.

Bruce's eyes opened and he stared for the fraction of a second at the rudeness of the question, then they flashed as he answered shortly.

"I'm not peddling wild-cats, or selling mining stock to widows and orphans--if you happen to be either."

Capital is not accustomed to tart answers to its humor caustic, from persons in need of financial assistance for their enterprises. Harrah raised his toothbrush eyebrows and once more he favored Bruce with a sweeping glance of interest, which Bruce, in his sensitive pride, resented.

"Who sent you?" Harrah demanded roughly.

"Never mind who sent me," Bruce answered in the same tone, reaching for his hat which he had laid on the floor beside him, "but he had his dog-gone nerve directing me to an ill-mannered four-flusher like you."

The color flamed to Harrah's cheek bones and over his high, white forehead.

"You've got a curious way of trying to raise money," he observed. "I suppose," dryly, "that's what you're here for?"

"You suppose right," Bruce answered hotly as he stood up, "but I'm no damn pauper. And get it out of your head," he went on as the accumulated wrath of weeks swept over him, "that you're talking to the office boy. I've found somebody at last that's big enough to stand up to and tell 'em to go to hell! Sabe? You needn't touch my proposition, you needn't even listen to it, but, hear me, you talk civil!"

As Harrah arose Bruce took a step closer and looked at him squarely.

A lurking imp sprang to life in Harrah's vivid eyes, a dare-devil look which found its counterpart in Bruce's own.

"I believe you think you're a better man than I am."

"I can lick you any jump in the road," Bruce answered promptly.

Harrah looked at him speculatively, without resentment, then his lips parted in a grin which showed two sharp, white, prominent front teeth.

"On the square," eagerly, "do you think you can down me?"

"I know it," curtly--"any old time or place. _Now_, if it suits you."

To Bruce's amazement Harrah took his hand and shook it joyfully.

"I wouldn't be surprised if you could! You look as hard as nails. Do you box or wrestle?"

Bruce wondered if he was crazy.

He answered shortly: "Some."

"Bully!" excitedly. "The best luck ever! We'll have a try-out in private and if you're the moose I think you are you can break him in two!"

"Break who in two?"

"The Spanish Bull-dog! Eureka!" he chuckled gleefully. "I'll back you to the limit!"

"What's the matter with you?" Bruce demanded. "Are you loco?"

"Close to it!" the eccentric capitalist cried gaily,--"with joy! He bested me proper the other night at the Athletic Club--he dusted the mat with me--and I want to play even." Seeing that Bruce's face did not lose its look of mystification he curbed his exuberance: "You see I've got some little reputation as a wrestler so when Billy Harper ran across this fellow in Central America he imported him on purpose to reduce the swelling in my head, he said, and he did it, for while the chap hasn't much science he's so powerful I couldn't hold him. But you, by George! wait till I spring _you_ on him!"

"Say," Bruce answered resentfully, "I came East to raise money for a hydro-electric power plant, not to go into the ring. It looks as if you're taking a good deal for granted."

"That's all right," Harrah answered easily. "How much do you want? What you got? Where is it?"

Bruce told him briefly.

Harrah heard him through attentively and when he was done Harrah said candidly:

"Perhaps you've been told before that without a qualified engineer's report it isn't much of a business proposition to appeal to a business man."

"Once or twice," Bruce answered dryly.

"Nevertheless," Harrah continued, "I'm willing to take a chance on you--not on the proposition as you've put it up to me but on you personally, because I like you. I'll head your inscription list with $5000 and introduce you to some men that will probably take a 'flyer' on my say-so. If you're still short of what you think you'll need I'll make up the remainder, all providing"--with a quick grin--"that you go in and wallop that Greaser!"

Bruce's expression was a mixture of many.

Finally he replied slowly:

"Well, it isn't just the way I'd figured out to interest Capital and I reckon the method is unique in mine promotion, but as I'm at the end of my rope and have no choice, one more meal of 'crow' won't kill me." He went on with a tinge of bitterness, thinking of Sprudell: "Since muscle is my only asset I'll have to realize on it." Then his dark face lighted with one of the slow, whimsical smiles that transformed it--"Unchain the 'Spanish Bull-dog,' feller!"

Harrah rang for the office boy and reached for his hat.

"William," he said sternly when the quaking youth stood before him, "tell those people outside not to wait. I'm called away on business--urgent, important business and I can't say when I'll be back."

XV

MILLIONS!

Would the car never come--would it never come! Helen walked once more to the corner from the shelter of a building in one of the outlying mill districts where an assignment had taken her.

The day was bitterly cold with a wind blowing which went through her coat and skirt as though they were light-weight summer clothing. She held her muff against her cheek and she peered up the street and the dark background accentuated the drawn whiteness of her face with the pinched, blue look about her mouth and nostrils. The girl was really suffering terribly. She had passed the chattering stage and was enduring dumbly, wondering how much longer she could stand it, knowing all the time that she must stand it as there was no place to go inside and missing the car which ran at half hour intervals meant missing the edition. She was _paid_ to stand it, she told herself, as she stamped her feet which were almost without feeling. The doctor's emphatic warning came to her mind with each icy blast that made her shrink and huddle closer to the wall of the big storage building. Exposure, wet feet, were as suicidal in her condition as poison, he had told her. She could guard against the latter but there was no escape from the former if she would do her work conscientiously for long, cold rides and waits on street corners were a recognized part of it.

She could not afford even to dress warmly. There was absolutely nothing but fur that would keep out such penetrating wind and cold as this, and anything at all presentable was beyond her means.

"And they tell us, these smug, unctuous preachers warming their shins before their study fires, that living is a privilege, and we should be grateful to the Almighty for being allowed to go through things like this! I can't see it!" she declared to herself in angry rebellion. "I haven't one thing on earth to look forward to--unless--" her hand tightened on a letter inside her muff--"unless I take a way out which, in the end, might be worse."

Sprudell's note had come by special delivery from the Hotel Strathmore just as she was leaving the office, so she had not stopped to answer it. He had made several trips from Bartlesville since their first meeting, under the pretext of business, but it did not require any great acumen to discover that he came chiefly to see her.

Now, thinking that it might divert her mind from her misery, Helen turned her back to the wind and drew out his note for a second reading. One would scarcely have gathered from her expression as she turned the pages that she was reading a cordial dinner invitation.

Everything about it grated upon her--and the note was so eminently characteristic. She observed critically the "My dear Miss Dunbar," which he considered more intimate than "Dear Miss Dunbar." She disliked the round vowels formed with such care that they looked piffling, and the elaborately shaded consonants. The stiffness, the triteness of his phraseology, and his utter lack of humor, made his letters dull reading but most of all his inexact use of words irritated her--it made him seem so hopeless--far more so than bad spelling. She even detested the glazed note paper which she was sure was a "broken lot" bought at a bargain in a department store.

"To-night I have a matter of supreme importance to impart," she read, "make every effort to join me. The evening may prove as eventful to you as to me, so do not disappoint me, Mignonne."

"Mignonne!" Her lips curled. "Idiot! Imbecile! Ignoramus!" Savagely--"_Donkey!_"

She leaned a shoulder against the cold bricks of the warehouse, her head drooped and a tear slipped down her cheek to turn to frost on the dark fur of her muff.

Helen was too analytical and she had had the opportunity of knowing and observing men in too many walks of life not to have by this time a fairly good insight into Sprudell's character. At least she understood him to the extent of reading his motives and interpreting his actions with tolerable accuracy. She tried to be charitable and endeavored not to dwell upon the traits which, in the light of his lover's attitude, made him ridiculous. When she received tender offering of stale fruit-cake and glucose jam from a cut-rate grocer, large boxes of candy from an obscure confectioner, and other gifts betraying the penurious economy which always tempered his generosity, she endeavored to assure herself that it came merely from the habit of saving in small ways which many self-made men had in common. She dwelt resolutely upon his integrity, upon the acumen which had made him a business success; yet in her heart she could not help likening him to a garment of shoddy material aping the style of elegance. While endeavoring to palliate these small offenses Helen knew perfectly that they were due to the fact that he was innately what was known in the office vernacular as a "cheap skate," striving to give the impression of generosity at a minimum of expense.

Helen had grown sensitive about her cough and shrank from comment upon it. She did her best to stifle it and she herself spoke of it lightly; but to-day, when she came into the warm air of the office after the nightmare of a wait on the corner and the long, cold ride afterward, it set her coughing violently, so violently that it attracted the attention of her neighbor, who called over the partition jocularly but with a note of seriousness in his voice--

"We'll have to ship you to Colorado, Miss Dunbar, if you go on like that!"

Helen caught her clasped hands quickly to her breast, a trick she had when startled.

"Yes?" she answered lightly but her expression was frightened.

People were noticing! It was the last straw needed. When she laid out her most becoming frock that evening it was the white flag of capitulation. The odds were too heavy--she felt she must surrender before it was too late. While she dressed her hair with more than usual care she scrutinized her face closely for that indefinable look which conveys to the initiated a hint of something deeper-seated than the languor of fatigue.

If Helen had cared at all for Sprudell's approbation she would have had the reward for her pains in the pleased, self-satisfied air of proprietorship with which he followed her to the table he had reserved in the fashionable restaurant of the Hotel Strathmore. He missed none of the interested looks directed at her as she passed, and glowed with satisfaction.

"If they notice her like this in a city," he thought triumphantly, "she'll make 'em sit up in Bartlesville!" Sprudell's cup of happiness seemed running full.

"You're looking great to-night," he whispered as they sat down.

"Fine feathers--" she smiled slightly--"my one good gown."

"My dear, you can have a hundred--a thousand!" he cried extravagantly. "It's up to you!"

She studied him curiously, wondering what had happened. He was tremulous with suppressed excitement; his high spirits were like the elation of intoxication and he ordered with a lavishness which made him conspicuous.

But Sprudell was indifferent to appearances, seeming to survey the world at large from the height of omnipotence and it seemed to Helen that every objectionable trait he had was exaggerated, twice enlarged under the stimulus of this mysterious, exalted mood. His egotism loomed colossal, he was oblivious to everything and everybody but himself, else he could not have failed to see the growing coldness in her eyes.

Helen herself had little appetite, so while Sprudell partook of the numerous dishes with relish she inspected him anew from the critical viewpoint of the woman who intends to marry without love. As she dissected him it occurred to her that Sprudell exemplified every petty feminine prejudice she had. She disliked his small, red mouth, which had a way of fixing itself in an expression of mawkish sentimentality when he looked at her, and there was that in the amorous, significant light in his infantile blue eyes which sickened her very soul. She disapproved of his toddling walk, his fat, stooped shoulders, his spats and general appearance of over-emphasized dapperness. The excessive politeness, the elaborate deference which he showed her upon occasions, exasperated her, and it was incredible, she thought, that a part in a man's back hair should be able to arouse such violence of feeling. But it did. She hated it. She loathed it. It was one of her very strongest aversions. She had always hoped never even to know a man who parted his back hair and now she was going to marry one.

She tried to imagine herself going through life making a pretense of taking his learning and his talents seriously, of refraining carefully from calling attention to his errors or correcting his misstatements, of shielding him from the ridicule which his pedantry must bring upon him when he mingled with his superiors, smoothing over smarts when he bullied and "talked down," without convincing his adversaries--as Helen had seen other women do. But could _she_ do it? When it came right down to brass tacks, she asked herself, could she exchange herself, her freedom, her individuality, all the years to come if many were spared her, for the chance to get well and for relief from anxiety about food and clothes and shelter?

To marry Sprudell meant immunity from freezing on street corners, from mental and physical exhaustion, from the rebuffs which were a part of her work and which hurt far worse than anyone guessed because she could never regard them as impersonal. Women were making such exchanges every day and with less excuse--for luxury or position merely--but could she do it?

Must she grow into an old woman without a single romance in her life? That much seemed every woman's right. What had she done that the Fates should "have it in for her" like this? She clenched her hands under the shelter of the tablecloth. This thing she had made up her mind to do seemed such a horrid, sordid, vulgar end to youth and sentiment.

Sprudell meanwhile was revolving in his mind the best method of imparting effectively and dramatically the news which was burdening him. He considered beginning with a Latin quotation from his Vest-Pocket Manual--"_Labor omnia vincit_"--or something like that--but ended, when he felt the right moment had arrived, by stating the fact bluntly and abruptly:

"I'm going to be as rich as Croesus."

Helen looked up, to see his red lower lip trembling with excitement.

"My dear," solemnly, "I shall have fabulous wealth."

Undoubtedly he was in earnest. She could see that from the intensity shining in his eyes. Wonderingly she took the pamphlet which he withdrew from its envelope and passed to her, watching her face eagerly as she read.

PROSPECTUS OF THE BITTER ROOT
PLACER MINING COMPANY

proclaimed the outside page, and the frontispiece contained a picture of seven large mules staggering up a mountain trail under a load of bullion protected by guards carrying rifles with eight-foot barrels.

"That illustration is _my_ idea," he said proudly.

"It's very--very alluring," Helen conceded. "And you are interested?"

"Interested!" gleefully, "it's all mine! Wait till you go on."

The first paragraph of the text read:

We have, with infinite hardship and difficulties and a large
personal expense, secured absolute legal ownership, and physical
possession, of eight placer claims, making 160 acres of the
richest, unworked placer ground in the United States.

THE PROPERTIES

Queen of Sheba No. 1:--Area about 15 acres.

Section 1--600 × 300 feet. Examined by the best obtainable
placer experts and under the most favorable conditions money
could afford. Prospect Shaft No. L:--Through natural, clean sand
and fine river gravel. Depth of pit 10 feet. Every foot showed
gold in paying quantities. A four foot streak, extremely rich,
passes through this section. Red-rock was not reached but the
values increase with depth, as is usually true.

Average workable depth of this section 60 ft.
Average assay .6235 per cubic yard.
600 × 300 × 60----400,000 cu. yds. @ .6235 $249,400
Estimated cost of working 5 cents per cu. yd. 20,000
--------
Estimated Net Profit $229,000

"That's one of the poor claims," he explained carelessly, "we probably won't bother with it."

"The yardage of 'The Pot of Gold' and claims 'Eureka' 1 and 2 totalled millions, while the leanest next to 'The Queen of Sheba,' yielded a net profit of $700,000."

Then the monotony of facts and figures was varied by another illustration showing a miner in hip-boots and a sou'wester blithely handling a giant which threw a ten-inch stream into a sand-bank.

"I drew the rough sketch for that and the artist carried out my ideas." Sprudell wished to convey the impression that along with his many other gifts he possessed artistic talent, had he only chosen to develop it.

Helen read at random:

Numerous prospect holes, cuts and trenches fully corroborate the
value of the ground. There are rich streaks and spots yielding
25 cts. to 50 cts. to the pan of what area the Giant alone will
tell. Every surface foot yields gold in paying quantities. It is
pay-dirt from the grass-roots. While we confine our estimates to
the actual ground examined, nevertheless we are certain the real
wealth lies on bed-rock.

The home claim with its rustic log cabin provides a delightful
home for those interested in the enterprise, supplying comforts
and luxuries which money cannot purchase in large cities. Game
and fish in greatest abundance infest its door-yard. We have
seen fifty grouse and twenty mountain sheep within three hundred
feet of the doorway. Bear may be had at any time for the going
after.

It must be borne in mind, all of these placers are the ancient
beds of a least two separate periods of a great river,
consequently, bed-rock will undoubtedly reveal fabulous wealth
which cannot be uncovered in an examination. It would be useless
to attempt to exaggerate the possibilities of these properties.
The plain, simple facts are far more potent than unestablished
fiction could possibly be.

All the claims we have described represent virgin ground,
something seldom found, now, anywhere in the U. S. There is not
a wagon track in the whole valley. It has heretofore been too
difficult of access to tempt capital to come in here. We have
changed the whole situation. Our Saw-mill, which we now have in
operation, is the wonder of the place, and is, of course, our
salvation, for without that, of course, we could not construct
flumes to put water upon our placer ground.

We have partially constructed a wagon road to shorten and make
less arduous the difficult trip into this paradise.
Nevertheless, it is a paradise, when once within its charmed
environments. Gold is the commonest product there.

This is quite sufficient.

The confidential details which accompany this prospectus will
make known our financial requirements.

We know we have a great fortune in sight, but, hidden away in
the greater depths are unknown possibilities of fabulous riches,
for this great river is noted for its richness on bed-rock.
Millions have been taken out of its sand with the crudest
devices.

We have demonstrated our good faith and our confidence in the
worth of these properties by a personal expenditure
approximating fifty thousand dollars in cash.

We have taken every legal precaution and necessary physical step
to insure an absolutely safe and profitable investment.

We are now ready, and desire, to finance a close corporation,
with a limited capital, to operate this property on a scale
BEFITTING ITS IMPORTANCE.