Part 16

"Thanks, I knew that before," she said slowly. Further conversation was interrupted by their arrival at the Kinney House, a frame structure at the upper end of Main Street, where it stood in lonely dignity, quite dwarfing its nearest neighbors, which clambered part of the way up the slope and then paused--as though in sudden diffidence before the majesty of its three-storied preeminence. It wore at this time a coat of yellow paint of a somewhat bilious hue, but its cornices, moldings, and the rather coquettish ornaments about the "Ladies Entrance" were painted white. The letters C-A-F-E (without the accent), painted ostentatiously upon a window, gave a touch of modernity, and the words "Ladies' Parlor" advised the wearied traveler that here was to be found a haven for the females of refined and retiring dispositions. The sound of a piano was heard from that chaste apartment as Mrs. Cheyne registered her long angular signature beneath that of "Pat O'Connell, Santa Fe"; and the strains of "The Maiden's Prayer" came forth, followed presently by the "Carnival of Venice." Mrs. Cheyne smiled her tolerance.

"Do you want a room by the day, week or month, ma'am?" asked the clerk.

"I'm a little uncertain," she said; "I may be here only for a day or two or I may be here"--and she glanced at Jeff--"for a month--or even longer."

"Mrs. Cheyne is looking into some mining properties," said Jeff with an amused air. But when his companion followed the clerk up the stairway, jangling a key with a huge brass tag, Jeff departed thoughtfully. So far as he could see, Mrs. Cheyne had come to Mesa City with the express intention of playing the devil. The magnificence of her financial offer, while it dazzled, had not blinded him. But he was truly bewildered by her audacity, disarmed by the recklessness of her amiability. She always got what she wanted in the end, she said. What was it she wanted? Himself? He couldn't help thinking so, but it made him feel like a fool. In the East she had led him or as she led other men on, for the mere joy of the game, and he had followed her cautiously, aware of his own insufficiency but delighting in the opportunities her society afforded him to even his accounts with Camilla. Both had called their relation friendship for want of a better word, but Jeff knew that friendship had another flavor. The night when he had last visited her he had played his cards and had called that bluff. But to-day he realized that she had seen his raise and had now removed the limit from the game. From now on it was to be for table stakes, with Rita Cheyne dealing the cards.

And what did her amazing financial proposition mean? Could it be genuine? He knew that she was very wealthy--wealthy in the New York way--but it was not in his experience that sentiment and finance had anything in common. If her offers were genuine, her confidence in his financial integrity and in him was extraordinary. If they were not, her confidence in herself was likewise extraordinary.

Jeff smiled to himself a little uneasily. What would Mesa City be saying about the unexplained arrival of a captivating female from New York who sought him out at his office and whose claims upon his society (unless he fled) could not be denied. There was no chance for him to flee, even if he wished, the condition of his business requiring his presence here for at least a few days, and the trunk check in his hand reminded him that he had promised Rita Cheyne her trunk immediately, so that she might ride with him that very afternoon. What was to be done? Her ingenuity had always surprised him, and her resources were of infinite variety. To tell the truth, he was afraid of her, and was willing for the first time to acknowledge it frankly to himself. She interested him--had always interested him--but it seemed to be more the interest of curiosity than that of any real affiliation. To be with Rita Cheyne was like going to a three-ring circus, where one is apt to lose sight of the refined performance on the stage just in front in bewilderment over the acrobatic feats of the lady in spangles at one side. What was her real reason for coming West to Mesa City? He gave it up and turned in at the office, gave the trunk check to a clerk, and in a moment had taken up his business at the point where Mrs. Cheyne had interrupted him.

Eight hundred thousand dollars! If the Amalgamated took up that stock, General Bent's crowd would have control of the Development Company and the Denver and Saguache Railroad Company. If Rita Cheyne's offers were genuine--if he chose to use her money to redeem that stock--he could place himself on some kind of financial footing, could entrench himself for a long battle over the railroad connections, which he might eventually win. There was a chance. He did not dare to call in Mulrennan to talk the matter over. Pete had been catching at straws for a week, and Jeff knew what his advice would be. His superstitious mind would look on Mrs. Cheyne's visit as a direct interposition of Providence, as a message and an injunction. Jeff began to think himself mad not to have accepted her proposition at once. It dangled before him temptingly--but he let it hang there like ripe fruit upon the vine, hesitating to reach forth and seize. He could not believe it was real. It was "too aisy," as Pete would have said. Was he losing his nerve? Was it that the last victories of his enemies had sapped some of his old assurance, or had he suddenly developed a conscience? He put his head in his hands and tried to think. If he won his fight he could double Rita Cheyne's money in a year. If he lost--and he had to think of that more and more each day--the stock might not be worth the paper it was written on. Rita knew all this, but she still believed in him--more even than he believed in himself. Women were funny. He couldn't understand, unless she had some motive which had not been revealed to him. There would be a string of some sort to that extraordinary proposition.

He got up at last and sent a message to the Home Ranch, ordering two horses to be sent to his office at three o'clock.

*CHAPTER XX*

_*La Femme Propose*_

The wagon-road to the "Lone Tree" skirted the mountains for a way and then wound through a nick in the foothills into a level vale of natural parks, meadows, and luxuriant grass, bordered by pines and cottonwoods, beneath which tiny streams meandered leisurely down to the plains below.

Mrs. Cheyne emerged from the scrub-oak delightedly.

"It's like a Central Park for Brobdingnags," she cried. "I feel as though Apache ought to have seven-league horseshoes. As a piece of landscape gardening it's remarkably well done, for Nature is so apt to make mistakes--only Art is unerring." She breathed deep and sighed. "Here it seems Nature and Art are one. But it's all on such a big scale. It makes me feel so tiny--I'm not sure that I like it, Jeff Wray. I don't fancy being an insect. And the mountain tops! Will they never come any nearer? We've been riding toward them for an hour, but they seem as far away as ever. I know now why it was that I liked you--because your eyes only mirrored big things--nobody can have a mountain for a friend without joining the immortal Fellowship. It makes it so easy to scorn lesser things--like bridge and teas. Imagine a mountain at an afternoon tea!"

Jeff rode beside her, answering in monosyllables. The road now climbed a wood of tall oaks, rock-pines, and spruces, through which the sunlight filtered uncertainly, dappling fern and moss with vagrant amber. Somewhere near them a stream gushed among the rocks and a breeze crooned in the boughs. Rita Cheyne stopped talking and listened for she knew not what. There was mystery here--the voice of the primeval, calling to her down the ages. She glanced at Jeff, who sat loosely on his horse, his gaze on the trail. She had believed he shared her own emotions, but she knew by the look in his eyes that his thoughts were elsewhere. She spoke so suddenly that he looked up, startled.

"Why don't you say something? This place makes me think about Time and Death--the two things I most abhor. Come, let's get out of here."

Apache sprang forward up the trail at the bidding of his mistress, whose small heels pressed his flanks, again and again, as she urged him on and out into the afternoon sunlight beyond, while Jeff thundered after. He caught her at the top of a sand-ridge half a mile away, where they pulled their horses down to a walk.

"What was the matter?" said Jeff. "You rode as if the Devil was after you."

"Oh, no--I'm not afraid of the Devil. It's the mystery of the Infinite. That wood--why don't the dead oak-branches fall? They look like gibbets. Ugh!" She shuddered and laughed. "Didn't you feel it?"

"Feel what?"

"Spooky."

"No. I camped there once when I was prospecting. That stream you jumped was Dead Man's Creek."

"He must be there yet, the dead man. It was like a tomb. Who was he?"

"A soldier. He deserted from Fort Garland and was killed by some Mexicans. They buried him under a pile of stones."

"What a disagreeable place. It's like a cemetery for dead hopes. I won't go back; you'll have to take me around some other way."

"What are you afraid of?"

"I'm afraid of melancholy--I hate unhappiness. I was born to be amused--I _won't_ be unhappy," she said almost fiercely. "Why should I be? I have everything in the world that most people want. If I see anything I want and haven't got, I go and get it."

"You're lucky."

She shrugged. "So people say. I do as I please. I always have and always will. You were surprised to see me here. I told you why I came. I wanted to see you. You were the only person in New York who did not bore me to extinction. If it gives me pleasure to be here, this is the place where I ought to be. That's logical, isn't it?"

"It sounds all right. But you won't stay here long," he said.

"Why not?"

"You couldn't stand it. There's nothing to do but ride."

"I'd rather ride than do anything else."

Jeff looked straight forward over his horse's ears, his eyes narrowing, his lips widening in a smile.

"Well--if you don't see what you want--ask for it," he said slowly.

"I will. Just now, however, I don't want anything except an interest in your business. You're going to let me have it, aren't you, Jeff? You'd take some stranger in. Why not me? I'm the most innocuous stockholder that ever lived. I always do whatever anybody tells me to do."

"You don't realize the situation. I've told you I'm in a dangerous position. With that stock in my possession again, all my holdings would be intact and I might stand a long siege--or perhaps be able to make a favorable compromise--but there's no certainty of it. I don't know what they've got up their sleeves. As it is, I stand to lose the greater part of my own money, but I'm not going to lose yours."

"I don't believe you're going to lose. I'm not quite a fool. Those papers you showed me don't prove anything. The Development Company has two hundred thousand acres of land worth twenty dollars an acre and the coal fields besides. That's good enough security for me."

"It would be good enough security for any one if we had our connection. I could make you a lot of money." He broke off impatiently. "See here, Rita, don't press me in this matter, I'd rather wait a while. I've got a few days before those notes are due. Something may turn up----"

"Which will let me out--thanks, I'm not going to be left out. I know what you've done in these mountains and in this country, and I believe in you as much as I ever did. I'd like you to let me help you, and I'm not afraid of losing--but if I do lose, it won't kill me. Perhaps I'm richer than you think I am. I'm willing to wait. You'll be rich again some day, and I'll take my chances. They can't keep you down, Jeff--not for long."

Jeff thrust forth a hand and put it over hers.

"You're solid gold, Rita, and you're the best friend I ever had. I can't say more than that."

She smiled happily. "I've been hoping you'd say that. It's worth coming out here for. I want to prove it, though--and I hope you'll let me."

The road now turned upward toward the railroad grade. As they reached the crest of the hill Jeff pointed to the left at the mills and the smelter buildings hanging tier on tier down the side of the mountain. Below in a depression of the hills a lake had formed, surrounded by banks of reddish earth. The whole scene was surpassing ugly, and the only dignity it possessed was lent by the masses of tall black stacks, above which hung a pall of smoke and yellow gases. Rita Cheyne gasped. "So that's the bone of contention? I thought it would be something like the New York Public Library or the Capitol at Washington! Why, Jeff, it's nothing but a lot of rusty iron sheds!"

"Yes," he drawled, "we don't go in much for architecture out here. It's what's inside those sheds that counts. We've got every known appliance for treating ore that was ever patented, with a wrinkle or two the Amalgamated hasn't."

They rode around the lake while Wray explained everything to her, and then up the hill toward the trestles and ore-dumps of the "Lone Tree" mine. Wray's struggles for a right-of-way to the markets of the country showed no reflection here. From two small holes in the mountain side cars emerged at intervals upon their small tracks and dumped their loads at the mill, from which there came a turmoil of titanic forces. Jeff offered to show his companion the workings, but she refused.

"No, I think not," she said. "It's too noisy here. I haven't finished talking to you, and I want to ride."

And so they turned their horses' heads into another trail, which descended among the rocks and scrub-oak, after a while emerging at the edge of a great sand-dune which the wind had tossed up from the valley below--a hill of sand a thousand feet high, three miles wide and six miles long, a mountain range in miniature, in which trees, rocks, and part of a mountain were obliterated. Even the Great Desert had not presented to Rita Cheyne such a scene of desolation. Their horses stopped, sniffed the breeze, and snorted. Jeff pointed into the air, where some vultures wheeled.

Mrs. Cheyne shuddered. "It looks like Paradise Lost. We're not going there?"

"No--I only wanted you to see it. There's a thousand million dollars of gold in that sandpile."

"Let it stay there. I think it's a frightfully unpleasant place. Why do you show me all these things when all I want to do is to talk?" She turned her horse's head, and they followed a slight trail between groves of aspen trees, a shimmering loveliness of transparent color. "You're not giving me much encouragement, Jeff. You didn't believe in my friendship in New York, but you're trying your best to keep me from proving it here."

"I do believe it now. Didn't I tell you so?"

"Yes, but you don't show it. What do you think my enemies in New York are saying of my disappearance? What will they say when they know I've come out here to you? Not that I care at all. Only I think that _you_ ought to consider it."

"I do," he said briefly. "Why do you make such a sacrifice?"

"I never make sacrifices," she said, eluding him skillfully, "even for my friends. Don't make that mistake. I've told you I came because I'd rather be here than in New York. If I heard that your financial enemies were trying to ruin you, that only made me the more anxious to come. Besides, I had an idea that you might be lonely. Was I right?"

"Yes--I am."

"Was, you mean."

"Yes--was," he corrected. "I've been pretty busy, of course, night as well as day, but after New York this place is pretty quiet."

"Did you miss me?"

"Yes," frankly, "I did--you and I seem to get on pretty well. I think we always will."

"So do I. I've always wondered if I'd ever meet a man who hadn't been spoiled. And I was just about ready to decide that he didn't exist when you came along. The discovery restored my faith in human nature. It was all the more remarkable, too, because you were married. Most married men are either smug and conceited, or else dejected and apprehensive. In either case they're quite useless for my purpose."

"What is your purpose?" he asked.

"Psychological experiment," she returned glibly. "Some naturalists study beetles, others butterflies and moths. I like to study men."

"Have you got me classified?"

"Yes--you're my only reward for years of patient scientific endeavor. The mere fact that you're married makes no difference, except that as a specimen you're unique. Do you wonder that I don't want to lose you?"

"I'm not running away very fast."

"No. But the fact remains that you're not my property," she answered, frowning. "I can't see--I've never been able to see--why you ever married, any more than I can see why I did. I'm quite sure that you would have made me an admirable husband, just as I'm sure that I would have made you an admirable wife. You don't mind my speaking plainly, do you? I'm thinking out loud. I don't do it as a rule. It's a kind of luxury that one doesn't dare to indulge in often. I have so many weak points in which you are strong, and I have a few strong ones in which you are weak, we could help each other. You could make something of me, I'm sure. I'm not as useless as I seem to be; sometimes I think I have in me the material to accomplish great things--if I only knew where to begin, or if I had some one who is in the habit of accomplishing them to show me how. That is why I wanted to help you. It struck me as a step in the right direction."

"It was," he ventured, "only it was too big a step."

"One can't do big things by halves," she insisted. "Money is the only thing I have that you lack. It is the only thing that I can give--that's why I want to give it--so that you can use it as a measure of my sincerity. I'd like to make you happy, too----" She paused, and her voice sank a note. "Why should you be unhappy? You don't deserve it. I know you don't. I haven't any patience with women who don't know a good thing when they have it."

"Perhaps I'm not as good a thing as I seem. You yourself are not beyond making mistakes, Rita."

"Oh, Cheyne? I didn't make that mistake, Cheyne did. He thought marriage was a sentimental holiday, when everybody nowadays knows that it's only a business contract. Don't let's talk of Cheyne. I can still hear the melancholy wail of his 'cello. I want to forget all of that. You have helped me to do it. I've been looking at you from every angle, Jeff Wray, and I find that I approve of you. Your wife has other views. She married you out of pique. You married her because she was the only woman in sight. You put a halo around her head, dressed her up in tinsel, set her on a gilt pedestal, and made believe that she was a goddess. It was a pretty game, but it was only a game after all. Imagine making a saint of a woman of this generation! People did--back in the Dark Ages--but the ages must have been very dark, or they'd never have made such a mistake. I've often thought that saints must be very uncomfortable, because they were human once. Your wife was human. She still is. She didn't want to be worshipped. She hadn't forgotten my cousin Cortland, you see----"

"What's the use of all this, Rita?" said Wray hoarsely. "I don't mind your knowing. Everybody else seems to. But why talk about it? Let sleeping dogs lie."

She waved her hand in protest. "One of the dearest privileges of friendship is to say as many disagreeable things as one likes. I'm trying to show you how impossible you are to a woman of her type, and how impossible your wife is to you."

"I'd rather you wouldn't."

"She marries you to prove to my cousin Cortland that he isn't the only man in the world, and then spends an entire winter in New York proving to everybody that he is. There hasn't been a day since you left that they haven't been together, riding, motoring, going to the theatre and opera. It has reached the point when people can't think of asking one of them to dinner without including the other. If you don't know all this, it's time you did. And I take it as a melancholy privilege to be the one to tell you of it. It's too bad. No clever woman can allow herself to be the subject of gossip, and when she does she has a motive for what she's doing or else she doesn't care. Perhaps you know what Mrs. Wray's motive is. If you have an understanding with her you haven't done me the honor of telling it."

"No," he muttered, "I'm not in the habit of talking of my affairs. You know we don't get along. No amount of talking will help matters."

"What are you going to do?"

Wray's eyes were sullen. Rita Cheyne chose to believe that he was thinking of his wife. But as he didn't reply at once she repeated the question. It almost seemed as though her insistence annoyed him, but his tone was moderate.

"What is it to you, Rita?"

She took a quick glance at him before she replied.

"It means a good deal to me," she went on more slowly. "To begin with, I haven't any fancy for seeing my best friend made a fool of by the enemies of his own household. It seems to me that your affairs and hers have reached a point where something must be done. Perhaps you've already decided."

"I've left her--she's in love with Cort Bent. I have proof of it. We made a mistake, that's all."

"Of course you did," she said. "I'm glad that you acknowledge it. Are you going back to New York?"

"I haven't decided. That depends on many things. She thinks I'm in love with you."

They had come to a piece of rough ground sown with boulders and fallen trees, through which their horses picked their way carefully. Rita Cheyne watched the broad back of her companion with a new expression in her eyes. He had never seemed so difficult to read as at this moment, but she thought that she understood and she found something admirable in his reticence and in his loyalty to his wife. In a moment the trail widened again as they reached the levels, and her horse found its way alongside his.

"She thinks you're in love with me? What does she know about love? What do I know about it? or you? Love is a condition of mind, contagious in extreme youth, but only mildly infectious later in life. Why should any one risk his whole future on a condition of mind? You feel sick but you don't marry your doctor or your trained nurse because he helps to cure you. Why don't you? Simply because you get well and then discover that your doctor has a weak chin or disagreeable finger ends. When you get well of love, if you marry to cure it, there's nothing left but Reno. I don't believe in love. I simply deny its existence--just as I refuse to believe in ghosts or a personal Devil. I resent the idea that your wife should believe you're in love with me. You find pleasure in my society because I don't rub you the wrong way, and I like you because I find less trouble in getting on with you than with anybody else."

"You're a cold-blooded proposition, Rita," said Wray smiling.