Chapter 9

Sprudell lowered his lids that Bruce should not see the satisfaction in his eyes.

"Good luck to you, and once more, congratulations on your safe return."

Bruce reluctantly took the hand he offered, wondering why it was that Sprudell repelled him so.

"Good-bye," he answered indifferently, as he turned to go.

Abe Cone in his comparatively short career had done many impulsive and ill-considered things but he never committed a worse _faux pas_ than when he dashed unannounced into Sprudell's office, at this moment, dragging an out-of-town customer by the arm.

"Excuse me for intrudin'," he apologized breathlessly, "but my friend here, Mr. Herman Florsheim--shake hands with Mr. Sprudell, Herman--wants to catch a train and he's interested in what I been tellin' him of that placer ground you stumbled on this fall. He's got friends in that country and wanted to know just where it is. I remember you said something about Ore City bein' the nearest post-office, but what railroad is it on? If we need any outside money, why, Herman here--"

Bruce's hand was on the door-knob, but he lingered, ignoring the most urgent invitation to go that he ever had seen in any face.

"I'm busy, Abe," Sprudell said so sharply that his old friend stared. "You _are_ intruding. You should have sent your name."

Bruce closed the door which he had partially opened and came back.

"Don't mind me," he said slowly, looking at Sprudell. "I'd like to hear about that placer--the one you stumbled on last fall."

"We'll come another time," Abe said, crestfallen.

Bruce turned to him:

"No, don't go. I've just come from Ore City and I may be able to tell your friend something that he wants to know. Where _is_ your placer ground, Sprudell?"

Sprudell sat down in his office chair, toying with a desk-fixture, while Bruce shoved both hands in his trousers' pockets and waited for him to speak.

"Burt," he said finally, "I regret this unpleasantness, but the fact is you did not comply with the law--you have never recorded and you are located out."

"So you've taken advantage of the information with which I trusted you to jump my ground?" Bruce's eyes blazed into Sprudell's.

"The heirs could not be found, you were given up for dead, and in any event I've not exceeded my rights."

"You have no rights upon that ground!" Bruce answered hotly, "My locations were properly made in 'Slim's' name and my own. The sampling and the cabin and the tunnel count for assessment work. I had not abandoned the claim."

"Nevertheless, my engineer informs me----"

"Your engineer?" A light dawned.

"Wilburt Dill--pity you did not meet him, a bright young chap--"

"I met him," Bruce answered grimly. "I shall hope to meet him again."

"No doubt you will," Sprudell taunted, "if you happen to be there when we're putting up the plant. As I was saying, Mr. Dill's telegram, which came last night, informs me that he has carried out my instructions, and therefore, individually, and as the President of the Bitter Root Placer Mining Company, I now control one hundred and sixty acres of ground up and down the river, including the bar upon which your cabin stands." Sprudell's small, red mouth curved in its tantalizing smile.

"You'll never hold it!" Bruce said furiously.

"The days of gun-plays have gone by," Sprudell reminded him. "And you haven't got the price to fight me in the courts. You'd better lay down before you start and save yourself the worry. What can you do? You have no money, no influence, no brains to speak of," he sneered insultingly, "or you wouldn't be down there doing what you are. You haven't a single asset but your muscle, and in the open market that's worth about three-fifty a day."

Bruce stood like a mute, the blood burning in his face. Even toward "Slim" he never had felt such choking, speechless rage as this.

"You Judas Iscariot!" he said when he could speak. "You betrayed my hospitality--my trust. Next to a cache robber you're the meanest kind of a thief I've ever known. I've read your story in the newspaper, and so has the old man who saved your rotten life. We know you for the lying braggart that you are. You made yourself out a hero when you were a weakling and a coward.

"You're right--you tell the truth when you twit me with the fact that I have no money no influence, perhaps no brains--not a single asset, as you say, but brute strength; yet somehow, I'll beat you!" He stepped closer and looking deep into the infantile blue eyes that had grown as hard as granite, reiterated--"_Somehow I'm going to win!_"

To say that Abe Cone and Mr. Herman Florsheim departed is not enough--they faded, vanished, without a sound.

Sprudell's eyes quailed a little beneath the fierce intensity of Bruce's gaze, but for a moment only.

"I've heard men talk like that before." He shrugged a shoulder and looked Bruce up and down--at his coat too tight across the chest, at his sleeves, too short for his length of arm, at his clumsy miner's shoes, as though to emphasize the gulf which lay between Bruce's condition and his own. Then with his eyes bright with vindictiveness and his hateful smile of confidence upon his lips, he stood in his setting of affluence and power waiting for Bruce to go, that he might close the door.

XII

THORNS--AND A FEW ROSES

Helen Dunbar was exercising that doubtful economy, walking to save car-fare, when she saw Mae Smith with her eyes fixed upon her in deadly purpose making a bee-line across the street. If there was any one thing more needed to complete her depression it was a meeting with Mae Smith.

She stopped and waited, trying to think what it was Mae Smith resembled when she hurried like that. A penguin! that was it--Mae Smith walked exactly like a penguin. But Helen did not smile at the comparison, instead, she continued to look somberly and critically at the woman who approached. When Helen was low spirited, as now, Mae Smith always rose before her like a spectre. She saw herself at forty another such passé newspaper woman trudging from one indifferent editor to another peddling "space." And why not? Mae Smith had been young and good-looking once, also a local celebrity in her way when she had signed a column in a daily. But she had grown stale with the grind, and having no special talent or personality had been easily replaced when a new Managing Editor came. Now, though chipper as a sparrow, she was always in need of a small loan.

As Helen stood on the corner, in her tailor-made, which was the last word in simplicity and good lines, the time looked very remote when she, too, would be peddling space in a $15 gown, that had faded in streaks, but Helen had no hallucinations concerning her own ability. She knew that she had no great aptitude for her work and realized that her success was due more often to the fact that she was young, well-dressed, and attractive than to any special talent. This was all very well now, while she got results, but what about the day when _her_ shoes spread over the soles and turned over at the heels, and she bought _her_ blouse "off the pile?" When her dollar gloves were shabby and would not button at the wrist? What about the day when she was too dispirited to dress her hair becomingly, but combed it straight up at the back, so that her "scolding locks" hung down upon her coat-collar, and her home-trimmed hat rode carelessly on one ear?

All these things were characteristic of Mae Smith, who personified unsuccessful, anxious middle-age. But there was one thing, she told herself as she returned Mae Smith's effusive greeting, that never, never, no matter how sordid her lot became, should there emanate from her that indefinable odor of poverty--cooking, cabbage, lack of ventilation, bad air--not if she had to hang her clothing out the window by a string!

"I've been over to the _Chronicle_ office," Mae Smith chattered. "Left some fashion notes for the Sunday--good stuff--but I don't know whether he'll use 'em; that kid that's holdin' down McGennigle's job don't buy much space. He's got it in for me anyhow. I beat him on a convention story when he was a cub. I was just goin' down to your office."

"Yes? I'm on the way to the doctor's."

"You don't look well, that's a fact. Sick?"

Helen smiled, faintly. "I do feel miserable. Like every one else I got a drenching at the Thanksgiving Game."

"That's too bad," Mae Smith murmured absently. What was a cold compared to the fact that she needed two dollars and a half? "Say, I wonder if I could get a little loan for a few days? You know I bought this suit on the installment plan and I'm two weeks behind on it. The collector was around yesterday and said he'd have to take it back. I can't go around gettin' fashion notes in my kimono, and the milkman wouldn't leave any milk until I paid for the last ticket. I'm up against it and I thought maybe--"

"How much do you want?"

"About two dollars and a half." The tense look faded instantly from Miss Smith's face.

Helen did not mention, as she laid that amount in her eager hand, that it was part of the money she had saved to buy a pair of long gloves.

"Thank you"--gaily--"ever so much obliged! I've got a corking idea in my head for a Sunday special and just as soon as I write it and get paid--"

"No hurry," Helen answered with a quizzical smile, and she watched Mae Smith clamber joyously on a street car to ride two blocks and spend the fare that Helen had walked eight blocks to save.

The girl's spirits were low and her face showed depression when she mounted the broad stone steps of the physician's city office and residence, but when she came down the look had changed to a kind of frozen fright.

She had not felt like herself for weeks, but she did not dream that it was anything which time and a little medicine would not cure. Now, he had told her that she must leave the city--stop her work at once.

He advised the South or West--particularly the West--some place where it was high and dry. How lovely--and so simple! Just stop work and start! Why didn't he say St. Petersburg or the Arctic circle. With no income save what she earned from week to week they were equally impossible.

She had come in time, he had assured her, but she must not delay. Filled with consternation, sick with dread and horror of what she saw before her, Helen walked slowly to her hotel, the shabby place where she had found board and lodging within her means. She loathed it, everything about it--its faded tawdry splendor, the flashy, egotistical theatrical folk who frequented it, the salaried mediocrities who were "permanent" like herself, the pretentious, badly cooked food; but as she climbed the yellowish marble steps she thought despairingly that even this would be beyond her reach some day.

If only Freddie were alive! There was a lump in her throat as she removed her hat and looked at her pale face in the old-fashioned bureau mirror in her room. She might have gone to him in such an emergency as this--she had saved money enough to have managed that. He had been a bad son and an utterly indifferent brother, but surely he would not have turned her out.

Her shoulders drooped and two tears slipped from beneath her lashes as she sat on the edge of her narrow bed with her hands lying passively in her lap. Tears were so weak and futile in a world where only action counted that it was seldom they ever reached her eyes, though they sometimes came close.

Practical as Helen's life had made her in most things, she was still young enough to build high hopes on a romantic improbability. And nothing was more improbable than that "Slim" Naudain, even if he had lived, ever would have returned to make amends.

But she had thrown the glamour of romance about her scapegrace brother from the day he had flung out of the house in ignominy, boasting with the arrogance of inexperience that he would succeed and come back triumphant, to fill them with envy and chagrin. She never had heard from him directly since, but she had kept her childish, unreasoning faith that he would make good his boast and compensate her for her share of the fortune which it had cost to save him from his evil deeds.

She had not realized until Sprudell had told her of his death how strongly she had counted upon him. He was the only one left to her of her own blood, and had been the single means of escape that she could see from the exhausting, uncongenial grind and the long, lonely hours in the shabby hotel when her work was done. If the future had looked dark and hopeless before, how much worse it seemed with illness staring her in the face!

The money Freddie had left her would have gone a long way toward the vacation after she had used the larger part of it to pay off a long-standing obligation which her mother had incurred. The thought of the money reminded her of the letter and photograph. She brushed her wet cheeks with her hand and getting up took the soiled and yellowing envelope from the bureau drawer, wondering again why his murderer had sent it back.

The quick tears came once more as she read the ingenuous scrawl! What centuries ago it seemed since she had written that! She bit her lip hard but in spite of herself she cried--for her lost illusions--for her mother--for that optimistic outlook upon life which never would come back. She had learned much since that smiling "pitcher" was taken--what "mortgages" mean, for instance--that poverty has more depressing depths than the lack of servants and horses, and that "marrying well," as she interpreted a successful marriage then, is seldom--outside of "fiction and Pittsburgh"--for the girl who earns her own living. Young men who inherit incomes or older men of affairs do not look in shops and offices for their wives. Helen Dunbar had no hallucinations on this score.

Propinquity, clothes, social backing, the necessary adjuncts to "marrying well," had not been among her advantages for many years. There remained on her horizon only the friendly youths of mediocre attainments that she met in her daily life. She liked them individually and collectively in business, but socially, outside of the office, they made no appeal.

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.