XXIX
MEANWHILE the story of the Compton-Amalgamated war was the sensation not only of Montana but of the entire country. The Butte morning papers ignored it, but theEvening Buglereaped a golden harvest. The editor himself, who was the Montana correspondent of one of the great New York dailies, made his reputation with the most sensational “stuff” that had gone from the Northwest since Heinze retired from the field. The hill swarmed with reporters. Two Eastern newspapers sent special correspondents to the spot. In less than a fortnight the public knew all there was to know and far more. Perch of the Devil Mine was photographed inside and out, and its uncompromising ugliness but added to its magnetism; which emanated from a “solid hill of metal just below a thin layer of barren soil.” The general reader, who admired the colour of copper, conceived that it emerged in solid sheets.
Gregory refused to be interviewed or photographed, but was snapshotted; and his long sinewy figure and lean dark face, his narrow eyes and fine mouth, won the championship of every woman partial to the type. The women’s papers, as well as those run by radicals, socialists, and conservative men of independent tendencies, advocated his cause against the wicked trust; nor was there a newspaper in the country, however capitalised, that resisted the temptation to make him “big news.” To his unspeakable annoyance he began to receive letters by the score, most of them from women; but he lost no time employing a secretary whose duty was to read and burn them. He appreciated his fame very vaguely, for between his mine and the innumerable details connected with his new ranch, he had little time to devote to newspapers or his own sensations. But although personal notoriety was distasteful to him and reporters a nuisance, he felt more than compensated by the success of his publicity scheme, and the assurance thatit was causing the enemy unspeakable annoyance and apprehension.
He paid a visit to Chicago after work had begun on the first tunnel, and spent several days with the interested but cautious officials of the greatest of the land selling companies. Like all silent men, when he did talk it was not only to the point, but he used carefully composed arguments incisively expressed. He indulged in no rhetorical flights, no enthusiasms, no embellishment of plain facts. He might have been a mathematician working out an abstract problem in algebra; and this attitude, combined with his reputation as a “winner”, and the details of his cautious purchase of Circle-G Ranch, finally impressed the company to the extent of sending one of their number, who was an expert in land values, to the ranch. Gregory accompanied him, took him to the mountain river, showed him the engineer’s report, pointed out the undeviating slope between the river and the ranch, and the land’s rich chocolate brown soil of unlimited depth. The upshot was that the expert returned to Chicago almost as enthusiastic as if the original scheme were his. After consultation with several of the seed houses, the land company agreed to buy on Compton’s terms, and to pay $200,000 down, $500,000 at the end of sixty days, and $700,000 at the end of four months.
Ora and Ida had asked for an extension of leave, as they had not yet “done” Italy, Spain, and Egypt, and both husbands had given a willing consent; Gregory from sheer indifference; Mark because he was so busy that he no longer had time to miss his wife. He refused to give Ora’s picture to the enterprising correspondents, but they found no difficulty with the local photographer. They had not been long uncovering the romantic history of the Oro Fino Primo Mine, and it made a welcome pendant to the still recourseful “story” of Perch of the Devil. Ora’s beauty, accomplishments, charm, family history, as well as her present social progress in company with her “equally beautiful friend”, the wife of the hero of the hour, became public property.
Altogether, Butte, after several years of oblivion, was happy and excited. So far, although mineralogically the most sensational state in the Union, and the third in size,she had given to the world but four highly specialized individuals: Marcus Daly, perhaps the greatest mine manager and ore wizard of our time; W. A. Clark, who accumulated millions as a moving picture show rolls in dimes; F. Augustus Heinze, who should be the greatest financial power in America if brains were all; and the Sapphic, coruscatic, imperishable Mary McLane. An outstanding quartette. But Daly was dead, Clark was but one of many millionaires, submerged in New York, Heinze was reaping the whirlwind, and the poet was nursing her wounds. Montana was in the mood for a new hero, and the American press for a new and picturesque subject to “play up for all he was worth.”