From that moment Graham ceased to be an integral factor in the girl's history. His only hold on her imagination had been his moral superiority, and it was now gone. She treated him thenceforth as an admirer whose sincerity deserves the consideration which his insistence makes difficult to give ungrudgingly. He was not discouraged or frowned on. He was forgiven promptly as a child is forgiven. But he was kept always scrupulously to his place. The girl now held the whip hand. After a little, when he became too insistent, she cut him cruelly in punishment and only deigned to smile on him again when, to sue forgiveness, he had quite abandoned his attitude of fault-finding.
As for him, the girl's actions soon became hateful. He saw them all wrong, yet he felt his powerlessness to alter them in even the slightest degree. This aroused so powerful but so impotent a rage that shortly he came to react irritably against everything Molly did whether right or wrong. He instinctively arraigned himself in the opposition. He did not want to do this, and his common sense accused him strongly of unreasonableness, but he could not help it. It was greater than he. No matter what the plan, discussion or even conversation, his morbidly sensitive consciousness of the girl's error impelled him to object.
"Let's go over to Rockerville to-day," she would suggest.
"The horses aren't here."
"But it's no great matter to get them. Let's send the Kid."
"I don't know where the Kid is."
"Well, Frosty then."
"Frosty's busy."
"It wouldn't hurt you any to get them yourself."
"One of the saddles is broken."
"You know very well it's only a cinch ring. It can be fixed in five minutes."
"We'll—— Don't you think it is going to be pretty hot?"
"No, I don't; and if I can stand it, I should think you could."
"And——"
"Heavens and earth! It's harder than climbing trees to get you to do anything. Never mind!Idon't want to go to Rockerville or anywhere else if it's all that trouble!"
And then Graham would wonder at his stubborn fit. Why shouldn't they have gone to Rockerville? In five minutes he could have got the horses, fixed the saddle. And the day was beautiful. What real reason did he have? He did not know; only he felt an irresistible impulse to object. This was because he loved her, disapproved of her, and was quite powerless over her.
When he was not merely contrary, he was urging strong advice on an unwilling recipient. It was offered in either the pleading or the blustering spirit. If in the former, Molly merely teased him. If in the latter, she became very angry. It was always on the same subject. The girl was wearied with it.
And yet, if it were any consolation, Jack Graham could have comforted himself with the truth that, next to Cheyenne Harry, he claimed a greater share of her thoughts than any other in camp. His offices were ungrateful, but they had a certain sincerity which prevented their being ignored; and, not forgotten, their acid-like drop of truth ate into that conscience of which she did not yet realize the existence. Her horizon was becoming banked with thunderclouds, looming huge and black and heavy with portent. Graham, as an ideal, had stood for a higher existence. Now, however shrunken his image appeared, the ideal itself remained as something tangible in her collection of moral standards. She acknowledged to herself fiercely that she had fallen from it. She told herself that she did not care.
She was dreadfully alone. Lafond was always kind to her, but she never felt that she knew him. Graham, in spite of his frequent presence, was in reality quite estranged. The Kid and Peter and Kelly and Houston and even old Bill Martin had fallen away from her somehow. She did not know that the reason the older men were less intimate was because she was supposed to be Cheyenne Harry's mistress, and the rule of such cases is "hands off!" And then there was always the stifling formless weight at her heart which she did not understand. She was very unhappy. That with her meant that she was reckless. She threw herself passionately into her affair with Cheyenne Harry as the one tangible human relation left to her in its entirety.
The days followed each other in a succession of passionate exaltations and dumb despairs. Harry kissed her whenever he pleased now. She had long since got beyond mere coquetry. It meant much to her hereditary instincts so to yield, but she gave herself up to it with the abandon of a lost soul delivering itself to degrading wickedness. For in spite of her life and companions she was intrinsically pure, so pure that even Cheyenne Harry, with all his extraordinary influence, did not somehow care to go too far. He kissed her, and at the first, when the long resistance had enhanced her value, he was persuaded that he loved her—that these interviews meant to him what lovers' meetings mean—and so he responded to her passionate devotion with what seemed to be corresponding ecstasy.
But then after a little insensibly the flood ebbed. In the old days she had amused him with her bright laughter, her gay speech, her mocking superiorities, her little coquetries of manner or mannerism. Now she had thrown these weapons away. Her surrender was complete. Her life had simplified to one phase, that of dewy-eyed pleading adoration. At first it pleased his masculine vanity. After a time it cloyed ever so little; Cheyenne Harry missed the "comic relief" in all these heroics. He would have liked occasionally to have climbed hills; or taken long walks; or even run a short race, say to the bend of the road; or to have had played on him a small practical joke; or experienced some other such indication that man is a laughing animal. The girl seemed capable of enjoying nothing but slow and aimless saunterings. In the beginning he had experienced the nameless ecstasy and thrill inherent in the personal contact of the kiss. Now he missed something of those qualities. It seemed no longer strange to him to feel her body near his, to watch her wide eyes half-closed, to press his lips against hers, half-parted. It was still delightful above everything in the world, but there had been one thing better—the kiss of yesterday. In a word Cheyenne Harry's experience was beginning dimly to trace the word "satiety."
Not that either he or the girl realized it. To their thinking minds everything was as usual. But their subconsciousness appreciated it, and interpreted it according to its value. Cheyenne Harry, as has been pointed out, turned instinctively toward a desire for lighter phases in their relationship. Molly Lafond clung the more blindly to her passion. Her only excuse to herself for her abandonment of the better ideal was the reality of that passion. When it should go, her self-respect would vanish with it.
Harry found a certain amusement, too, in seeing Graham jumping around the outer circle like corn in a popper. Graham was usually possessed of so much innate dignity. Now his self-abandonment to the essentially undignified attitude of begging for the petty favor of a quarrelless ten minutes or even a little good-humored smile tickled the other's sense of the incongruous and pleased his vanity. To an extent he was held to the girl now by his pride. A man likes to have a rival when perfectly secure himself, especially when the girl tells him what the rival says to her. This may not be honorable in her, but it is very human. So amusing was it that Harry did not get angry over the reports of Graham's repeated warnings against him.
The latter seemed unable to keep off the subject. He knew that his suspicions only strengthened the girl's obstinate opposition, but he could not help their expression for all that. Sometimes he pleaded, sometimes he threatened, sometimes he assumed the prophet's mantle and foretold all sorts of dire disasters. The girl laughed, or became angry. It would have puzzled Graham to tell which of these moods he preferred: perhaps it would have depended on which of them he was experiencing at the moment.
His saving grace was a sturdy sense of his duty to himself. He felt that sense to be sadly shaken in many ways; but he clung to his work tenaciously, perhaps a little feverishly.
"Nuthin' like a woman to make a man work," observed Bill Martin sagely, "whether she'sfurhim, or agin' him."
"How about Billy?" inquired Old Mizzou.
Bill Martin laughed. "Billy? Oh, he'splayin'," he replied.
Billy did not think so, however. He posed to himself as the most industrious man in the territory. He had so much to see to that year, for throughout the mild winter that succeeded he had pushed forward with the greatest rapidity all work on the Great Snake and its sister claims. The log structures, the plans of which he had displayed to Lafond, were completed, so far as the mere erection of them went, within a fortnight. Billy gave a great deal of personal direction to this work; but after all it was simple enough, so he managed to chink in a moment here and there for the completion of certain bargains which came to him. For instance, a man in Spring Creek Valley offered eight draught horses at a marvellously low figure. That made two teams. Billy did not need two teams just then; but of course later, when the mill was up, he would need a great many more than two teams for the purpose of carting ore; and it seemed criminal to let such a bargain go. Then he found he required a man to take care of them. Some days later he came to the conclusion that it would be good economy to buy the ore wagons now instead of waiting until later, for the following ingenious reason: the horses must be fed; hay costs fifteen dollars a ton in the hills and five on the prairie; with wagons the horses could be utilized to haul their own forage from the plains at a net saving of ten dollars a ton on all consumed. So Billy placed an order for two heavy wagons, and dismissed the matter from his mind until they were delivered. During the interim he sat on top of a ladder and dabbed contentedly at a scroll-work cornice with a small red paint brush.
From that elevation he bought a whim, also a bargain. The man was anxious to sell, and it was a very good whim. To be sure one might have argued that inasmuch as whims are machines for hauling ore from depths which Billy's operations would not attain for a year at least, the purchase was a little premature; but then it is equally certain that all mines own whims, and another opportunity for getting one so cheap might never again present itself.
When the wagons came, he and the man drove fifty miles to Rapid, where they hobnobbed with Tom Sweeny and looked over his establishment. Billy bought his household goods. He also took a fancy to some large brass-bound collar hoods for the horses which he had marked with the company's initials "G. S. M. & M. Co.," also in brass. The return trip was made with difficulty on account of the low-hanging branches of trees. Then Billy spent an ecstatic week distributing things to suit him.
The work in the shafts went steadily forward. Billy was willing to offer a bonus on the contract price for a quick job, so the contractors took on extra men. They averaged almost a foot and a half a day, which is wonderfully good. The work indeed went on so well that Billy saw he would need the mill sooner than he had expected, so he resolved to begin its erection at once. He hired all the available men, but soon found that he would have to seek elsewhere for a gang adequate to such an undertaking. He imported one from Rockerville. As the winter came on, he found it expedient to start the boarding house in order, as he said, "To get those cusses up in the mornin' afore the sun sets." The move necessitated a cook and "cookee," and the weekly purchase of provisions. Since he had the men handy, he argued, there was no reason why he should not finish up the small details and odds and ends of the camp in a respectable manner, and so he made many little extraneous improvements, such as a flag pole and a rockery of pink quartz from the Custer trail. Three or four were always away from the mill, levelling up, clearing out or decorating. From Kansas City he imported some chickens with crested heads and a number of pigeons of ancient lineage. The latter promptly flew back to Kansas City. As the novelty of them had worn off Billy took their loss philosophically. In regard to externals the camp began to wear a very prosperous air.
Copper Creek too was busy. Over forty men were hard at work on the Great Snake itself. Upward of fifty claims were in the course of development near at hand. With the completion of the mill would begin the crushing of ore; with the crushing of ore would begin the camp's commercial output; with that, provided it were satisfactory, would come more capitalists anxious to invest. It behooved the claim owner to have his exhibit of shaft and tunnel ready for the public inspection. When you reflect that three men usually worked on a claim and that Copper Creek's entire population at that date was a little over two hundred and fifty, you can readily see that it was indeed a lively camp. Even those who were not actually engaged in prospecting operations found their time fully occupied in providing for those who were. Black Jack had an assistant now. Moroney's paper came out as often as once a fortnight and was beginning to be mentioned by theDeadwood Mineras "our esteemed contemporary." Bill Martin had been seen sweeping out his own office. The dozen of women and girls who had drifted in with newcomers, scrubbed, cooked, washed and sewed in a struggle to keep even with muddy boots, miners' appetites, and the destructive demands of miners' work. Even Frosty improved his customary mooning slouch.
The men who seemed to enjoy unlimited leisure could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Cheyenne Harry laughed at it all. His one claim was known to be a mere excuse for existence, a symbolic reason for his connection with Copper Creek. Everybody knew really why he stayed. He was supposed to be independently rich, though none claimed any knowledge of how he came to be so. Then there was the gambler, the faro man, who sat on the hotel "porch" all the morning smoking endless cigarettes, his broad straight hat tipped a little sideways, his moustache brushed neatly away to show his white teeth, his fine inscrutable eyes looking cynically from his equally fine clear-cut face, speaking seldom, smiling never, imperturbable, indifferent, cat-like. And there was Durand, but he did not count. And there was Michaïl Lafond.
To be sure the half-breed was building a new dance hall, to which the camp entire looked with anticipatory delight, but that was a matter of four walls and a smooth floor. He needed only to give his orders. After a perfunctory morning inspection he had the day to himself.
The work at the Great Snake interested him, as it did everybody. He occupied the morning about the works, poking into odd corners, questioning the workmen, making suggestions to Billy. He sent the horse dealer to Billy, and mentioned to the whim man that he might find a purchaser there. He often was enabled in his vaster leisure to perceive the little things that lacked and to point out their necessity to Billy, which individual was of course always duly grateful and hastened at once to remedy the defect. After a more or less lengthened visit the half-breed returned to camp. If it happened still to lack some time until dinner, he called on Moroney in the editorial rooms or exchanged sententious comments with Bill Martin, or chatted with one or the other of the visitors who happened to be in town. After dinner he disappeared until supper. The time was spent with Durand. The assaying was long since finished, but the two men had grown fond of each other's companionship. It was a silent companionship for the most part. Lafond smoked interminably his short black pipe, turned upside down, watching the naturalist setting carefully the delicate wings of a butterfly or arranging in a paper cylinder the skin of a bird, or searching, spectacled, in black volumes of Government reports. Occasionally, when Durand looked up from his absorption, they exchanged a few swift remarks, elided, compressed, telegraphic; for they understood each other so well that the unabridged form of speech was no longer necessary. On fine days they beat the brushy creek bottoms for theNitra, the rarePapilowhich men supposed to be extinct. And then, after the early darkness of winter fell, they would be seized by strange obsessions of loquacity. Jacques, the raccoon, a ball of fur under the faint red stove, blinked at them shrewdly, wondering what it was all about.
In the evening, of course, Lafond had the Little Nugget to take care of. The saloon had as yet no rivals. The size of the town perhaps warranted another establishment, but Lafond was a monopolist by nature. He treated the men well, with a geniality behind which were unsounded depths of reserve. Therefore they respected him. The space about the iron stove before the bar came to be the Town Hall. Matters of public importance were discussed every evening. Billy there told things he ought not to have told. The atmosphere was expansive, encouraged one to show off. After one had recounted the obvious, one was inclined in the heat of the moment to fall back on the confidential, merely for lack of something else to say. The camp to a man knew the amount of Billy's expenditures, the number of his shafts. It heard extracts from all his letters to and from the East. It was acquainted with all his and the Company's plans. A good many of the cooler heads felt the intrinsic injudiciousness of this; but after all there could be no traitors among them, because in the end the prosperity of every man present depended on Billy's success.
But while the Great Snake was the main topic of conversation, and always remained ultimately the most important, its present interest, as spring drew near, became overshadowed by that of the new dance hall.
The Westerner loves to dance. A street organ sets him shuffling. He will drive twenty miles in a springless wagon and twenty miles back again in the grayness of dawn to stamp his feet to the sound of an accordion. Every camp has its organized dance joint, a sort of hall mark of its genuineness as a camp. Now with the approach of the date for formal opening this long musicless community woke up to its deprivation. All the details of the new establishment were enjoyed in anticipation. It had a planed floor. The boards had been brought by wagon from McGuire's mill at Hermosa. It was to be lighted by real locomotive lanterns of an impressive but meaningless number of candle power. It was to be entirely draped with flags. The musicians were to be imported from Spanish Gulch. Lafond dispensed this and similar information sparingly, in order that it might be made the most of. He promised the "opening ball" for May if possible.
"That depends, of course," he always concluded his statements, short or long.
About the middle of February Lafond varied the monotony of his daily programme. He ceased to visit the Great Snake camp, on which work was proceeding as rapidly as ever, and took to writing letters. He wrote a great many, and always mailed them himself with Blair, the driver of the stage. He announced one evening in the middle of March that he was about to leave for a short trip.
"I have the round to make," he said resignedly. "There are many places which each year I must visit. I go to Deadwood, Spearfish, Custer, Sheridan, Edgemont, Rapid, Buffalo Gap, many others. I may be gone a month."
"But yore comin' back, ain't you?" asked someone.
"But yes," assured the half-breed. "Have we not the opening of the dance hall?"
So the very next morning he boarded the stage for Rapid. At Rapid he bought a return ticket to Chicago. This was one of the results of the correspondence he had been carrying on for a month past. His first letter had run about as follows:
"Mr. Frederick Stevens, Chicago.
"DEAR SIR—You will perhaps remember me as one of your hosts during your late visit to this camp. If you do, you will remember also that I am interested financially, and so the good of the camp is my good. You will further recollect that I was present at the meeting held in Knapp's shack for the purpose of settling with him. For that reason I happen to know your plans and expectations. The expectations were that your first investment of fifty thousand dollars would complete the works to a paying basis. I have no means of knowing the exact amount of Knapp's expenditures to now, but they must be considerable, and I feel that my interests and yours require that you know just what the returns are.
"The results you should get with your fifty thousand dollars are, that you should have, on each claim, shafts to below water level with cross-cuts and drifts, a mill set up and ready, a pump and hoist on each shaft, a month's fuel, a month's wages for men with food and expenses and a camp in good working order.
"The shafts are almost done, but they are sunk on contract and are not paid for yet. The mill is half up; there is one pump and two hoists not up yet. That is all that is done. It seemed to me Knapp has not spent his money well, because there is much about camp which he does not need.
"I tell you this because I am interested."
Here Black Mike paused and tapped his teeth thoughtfully with the end of his penholder. Then he smiled cynically to himself and went on—"To speak plainly, I think the waste has gone beyond what you can afford. Only a man living here and knowing mining well could make it pay. I do not ask you to believe this, but see for yourself how you stand, and I may be able to make you an offer."
By return of post Lafond was frantically called upon to explain. He did so. Billy had been wasteful and extravagant. It was not Billy's fault perhaps, but he was evidently not the man for the place. Lafond had had but a vague idea of how things were going, but lately he had been at more pains to gain an accurate knowledge of affairs. He had found things as above stated. He did not write at all as a friend of the Company, but because he believed he could perhaps make something by taking the property himself. Instinctively the half-breed knew that an insistence on his own selfishness was the surest way of impressing these Easterners with his sincerity. For that reason he demanded his expenses when he was asked to go East for consultation.
The Chicago men were badly frightened. Lafond repeated clearly at greater length what he had told them in his letters. It had been a case of a man unused to the handling of money. He insisted that in actual value there existed not one quarter of the sum Knapp had expended; and he further claimed that affairs were in such shape West that as much more would have to be invested before the mine could be put on a paying basis.
"Then," said he, "you have your cost of production and your camp expenses always. From your profits above them you have to make up what Knapp has spent and what you will have to spend. That takes your close attention and many years. For that I think you will not wish to go ahead; and for that I come to make you an offer that will make it for you not an entire loss. I do not ask that you believe me. Investigate."
"Would you be willing to wait here while we investigate?" asked Murphy.
"Always, for my expenses," replied Lafond calmly.
The Easterners consulted.
"Very well," said Stevens. "Call it that."
Lafond in the little room at his hotel looked at himself closely in the glass.
"A fool for luck! a fool for luck!" he cried at the imaged reflection, repeating his old formula.
Stevens was gone just ten days. Of course he said nothing of Lafond's presence in Chicago. He had merely dropped in to look over the property, as was natural. Most of the men wondered why he had not done so before. He was cordial to Billy, looked over what had been done, asked many questions, listened attentively to all Billy had to say and departed in the most friendly spirit. When he arrived in Chicago, he went directly to his office in the Monadnock Building, where he had already assembled his associates by telegraph.
Stevens was brief, business-like and coldly impartial. In a man of his sort that indicated that he was very angry and chagrined.
"I have the following figures to submit," said he, taking up a paper. "They are accurate, as I consulted with an expert as to the items of future expense before leading Rapid.
10 horses at 105.00 . . . . . . . $1,050.0010 sets harness at 60.00 . . . . . 600.00Mill machinery . . . . . . . . . . 6,500.00Pumps, hoists . . . . . . . . . . 1,250.004 months' wages at 4.00 a day . . 4,800.002 1/2 months' boarding expenses . 610.00Hay, tools, implements . . . . . . 1,165.00Wagons, household goods . . . . . 2,560.00Miscellaneous . . . . . . . . . . 2,112.00Building roads . . . . . . . . . . 829.00----------$21,476.00
"That is what has been spent up to date according to Knapp's accounts."
"But hold on!" interjected Murphy; "he has drawn six drafts. That makes thirty thousand. Has he eight thousand in hand? Why did he have to draw the last draft?"
"He doesn't know," replied Stevens grimly. "His bank balance," he declared, consulting the paper again, "is just $1,126.40. He says he doesn't know where the balance is."
"Do you think——?"
"Not at all. He is perfectly honest. That is the way he does things."
"Here," went on Stevens after a moment, "is what remains to be done before we can even start to work. It is an estimate, but it is a close one; for, as I told you, I had assistance in making it out:
Mills, pumps, hoists . . . . . . . $12,000.00Sheds, ore-dumps, etc . . . . . . 1,500.0020 horses and harness . . . . . . 3,200.00Men, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,000.00Wagons and tools . . . . . . . . . 5,000.00----------$26,700.00
That is to bring us up to the efficient working point. Now here are our liabilities:
Miscellaneous bills . . . . . . . $850.00Contract on 1,100 feet of shaft and tunnelat 20 a foot . . . . . . . . . 22,000.00----------$22,850.00
That is what we owe, gentlemen," concluded Stevens, slapping his papers on the table and looking about him. "Now if you want to throw good money after bad, you can do so," he continued after a moment; "but this is a limited liability company and I am done. I am strongly in favor of pulling out some way to save our names as promoters of such a fool enterprise, but I think we should pull out. This man Lafond thinks he can do something with the property if he has a fair show, and perhaps we can save something through him. Our fifty thousand isgone—and more, after we've paid our debt to those men—and anything we can save out of such a mess seems to me clear gain."
And so with equal haste they scrambled out.
The first inexplicable phenomenon is the sanguine blindness such men show in going into mining; the second is the headlong thoughtlessness with which they draw out. Anything to get back to daylight apparently.
Again the parallel of the button-hook factory. In case of failure these men would have first looked the ground over well for possible retrenchment along the old lines of expenditure: that failing, they would have examined closely for a possible new plan. But in the present case they never even conceived the possibility of any scale of operation different from that grand vision of eleven contiguous mines all going at full blast which Billy's vivid imagination had called into being. Lafond saw it clearly enough. Had he been so minded, he could have set the whole matter right; just as, if he had been so minded, he could have turned the trend of Billy Knapp's extravagance with a little timely advice.
"Gentlemen," he could have said, "has it ever occurred to you to start on a small scale and work up gradually to a larger? You can mine one shaft on one claim with one cheap five-stamp mill. In that way you could at least pay expenses from the very surface. After a little you can pay more. Then you might open up another claim. That would take time to be sure; but what business does not take time?"
His actual speech was of quite different tenor. When called before the meeting by a special messenger, and asked to name the terms he was willing to offer, he replied quite simply—
"Fifteen thousand dollars."
This was, of course, quite unthinkable. An animated discussion ensued.
"We have spent over twenty thousand dollars," said Stevens, "and we owe twenty-six thousand more. Then the claims are worth something, surely. It would be better to hold the property just as it stands, on the chance of some future sale."
"Of the twenty thousand you have spent," retorted Lafond, "fifteen has been spent uselessly. I mean not that it was all waste, but that if I had been running the mine I could have bought all I would need for five thousand. And as for the twenty-six thousand you owe, what with bonuses for fast work and contracts at a high price, it ought all to have been completed for fifteen thousand. And besides, if it was I who had developed the property, I would not have sunk all these shafts before making the mill to work. I would have my mine to pay before. I am making you the offer of five thousand for the mine and ten thousand for the works."
This argument carried some weight. It availed to induce an acceptance of Lafond's final offer of five thousand cash, and the assumption of the twenty-six thousand debt. A man in his position and in his business could easily reduce the latter item.
"Of course this is merely informal," explained Stevens. "We have to call a directors' meeting yet to take official action."
"We hold controlling interest," added Murphy, for the purpose of reassuring Lafond.
"I understand," said the latter. "And now another thing. What are you going to do about the camp itself?"
Stevens hesitated. "I suppose we'll shut down and give Knapp his walking papers," he answered at last.
"That is just it. I want that you look out for my interests in that. If you shut down, that gives the camp a bad name, and a bad name is of all things in the West the worst. And you know not that man Knapp. You discharge him. Eh, well? He is angry; he is without law; he is reckless. He is able to do that which he wishes. He can burn the buildings, break the machinery. Who is it that will stop him? No, when Knapp is discharged, it must be that the deeds are in my hands, so that I can protect my property."
All saw the justice of this argument.
"What would you suggest then?" asked the chairman.
"How is it that you intend to discharge him?" returned Lafond.
"What do you mean?"
"What is the formality? Do you just write and tell him he is discharged?"
"Oh! No; we call a directors' meeting, and pass resolutions to that effect, a copy of which we send him. We will do that at the same time we authorize the sale to you."
Lafond drummed for a moment on the polished table near his hand.
"Eh, well," he announced at last, "let it be like this. When it is that you have had your directors' meeting and have passed your resolutions, then you send your copy to me, and I will give it to Knapp. Thus I will be on the ground to see that he makes no trouble. And at the same time you send the deeds to this man"—he rapidly scribbled an address—"he is a notary public at Rapid. You will have time to look up his reliability. He can hold the deeds until I pay to him the five thousand dollars and sign a contract to take the debt we spoke of. Is that satisfactory?"
"Quite," they agreed.
"How long will it be before you finish your meetings?"
"Ten days. It takes a week's notice for a special meeting."
On the way to South Dakota again Lafond stared out of the windows with unseeing eyes in which lurked laughter. "Ten days," said he to himself, passing the fingers of one hand softly over the palm of the other. His dark bearded face in the twilight lost its outlines against the upholstery of the Pullman. A nervous little bride on her wedding trip to California grasped her husband's arm.
"What is it, dear?" inquired the latter.
"Foolishness," she laughed, a little forcedly. "But see that man's eyes. Aren't they uncanny?"
"Looks a bit like a maniac," admitted the groom, "but it's this queer light. Odd fellow. Looks as if he might have one of those interesting Western histories you read about."
"A fool for luck! A fool for luck!" Black Mike was repeating to himself. "Ten days! I can fix the date for that dance-hall opening now!"
As has been hinted, the outward and visible signs of prosperity had to some extent increased the feminine population of Copper Creek. Molly Lafond had long since lost the distinction of being the only woman in camp. Some of the newcomers were blessed with wives, one or two were favored with daughters. All told, there were perhaps fifteen or twenty of the gentler sex scattered among the new and old log cabins of the valley.
But from them Molly had little to fear in the way of rivalry. The older women were either buxom and decisive, representing the sturdier pioneer race, or dyspeptic and drawling, as typical of the effects of a high altitude on nervous and underfed organizations. The young girls were angular, awkward and shy, especially so when in the presence of Miss Molly's breezy self-possession. They would all make good "filling" at the new dance-house ball, but they would never obtrude into the foreground.
Then Bismarck Anne came to camp. She conceived the idea quite suddenly, late one afternoon, and without so much as a word to anybody she strapped her most becoming ball-gown inside a poncho and rode across from Spanish Gulch on her little pinto pony.
Bismarck Anne was at that time in the heyday of her youth and prosperity. She was of the dark-skinned, black-haired, black-eyed type, so "common" when it falls just short of attractiveness, but so abundantly vital when, as in the present case, it does not fall short. Bismarck Anne was instinct, charged with life. Into everything she did she threw a verve and abandon that carried the adventure well through with something to spare. And she was afraid of nothing. She denied the possibility of nothing.
About three o'clock of the afternoon she galloped in. A number of men recognized her and ran to help her down from her horse. Everybody knew her by sight or reputation, but few had ever dared attempt her acquaintance, for ordinarily Bismarck Anne chose her coterie from the powerful and wealthy. Now, however, there seemed to be little cause for anxiety on that point. Bismarck Anne had come over for a good time and she was going to have it. If the men who surrounded her on her arrival felt any momentary restraint or trepidation, they were almost immediately set at ease by the warmth of her manner.
It was Old Mizzou, I believe, who steadied her stirrup, and Dave Kelly who helped her from her horse and held her a moment longer than was necessary, and, to his vast astonishment, instead of being slapped was heartily kissed for his temerity. There was a breathless element of unexpectedness in this which appealed to the miners' sense of humor, and they all laughed consumedly and felt good comrades at once. Old Mizzou mentally added another exception to his sweeping rule about "grass widders and school ma'ams." There sprang up a rapid fire of good-humored joking back and forth in which no man was favored, where each had a chance to enter the lists, and in the course of which each conceived an inner conviction that all he needed to "win out" was a chance unhindered by the crowd. Bismarck Anne stood in the centre of the group, flashing her black eyes back and forth from one to the other and showing her white teeth in a series of dazzling smiles.
Just at this moment Cheyenne Harry and Molly Lafond, returning from one of their numerous expeditions, caught sight of the animated group near the hotel, and naturally turned aside to investigate its cause.
Bismarck Anne faced toward them.
"Why, Harry!" she cried, holding out both hands, "you here? I didn't know you-all hung out in this camp. You look just the same as ever. 'Spose you're goin' to take in th' dance to-night. Yes, that's what I came over for; that an' nothing else. We'll have to stir this camp up a bit and make her seem like old times. I'm afraid you boys have been getting a little slow," she flashed good-humoredly at the others. "Harry, you ought to have seen them when I kissed that boy over there, just for a 'kid,' you know. I don't believe you've got a girl in this camp who knows beans, and it's about time you did. I'mmightyglad to see you. But you got to watch out, though! This is a pretty good-looking lot of boys, and you'll have to hustle to hold your job." She said this still holding both his hands in hers, and alternately smiling now at him, now at the men about her. She had taken rapid stock of Molly—whom she now ignored for the moment—and had as rapidly come to the conclusion that if a rival were to appear at all, it would be Harry's companion. She hoped her speech would at the same time attach Harry to herself, and render assiduous his devotions by a fear of rivalry.
"You bet we will!" cried Harry. His manner was enthusiastic, not so much with joy over seeing Bismarck Anne, as with instinctive relief from the tension of his rather sentimental interview with Molly. He remembered the latter and performed some sort of an introduction.
The two women looked each other in the eye.
"How do you do?" asked Molly coolly, without moving an inch.
"Very well, my dear," replied Bismarck Anne smiling, "and very glad to get here."
The endearing epithet relegated Molly at once to the category of little girls.
The conversation continued for some moments longer, the men standing as silent spectators. Molly continued very reserved. The newcomer did not appear to notice it, but chattered on unconcernedly in a light-hearted fashion, appealing to the other just often enough to convey the idea that there was nothing noticeably repellent in her manner. In fact she did it so well that the group gained the impression that Molly carried her share of the small talk, which was not true. But in spite of the apparent good-feeling Cheyenne Harry felt uncomfortably that something was wrong. Searching about for the cause, he at last discovered it in Molly's attitude.
So on the way to the cabin he was vexed, and showed it. And Molly felt so strongly the innate justice of her position and appreciated so keenly the skill with which she had been made to appear sulky and unreasonable, that when she had finally shut her own door behind her, she threw herself on her bed and cried as though her heart would break. Then her blood told. She dried her eyes and in her inmost heart she declared war against this woman, war to the knife and to the uttermost. The momentary defeat dashed her at first, then it nerved her. After all nothing definite had occurred. This creature had planted several stinging thrusts which had hit home because Molly, in the innocence of her heart, was not expecting them. She was on her guard now. It would not happen again. Cheyenne Harry had known the woman before, evidently, and surely it was natural that in the first surprise of seeing her so unexpectedly, he should display a certain enthusiasm of recognition. But his relations with her—Molly Lafond—were too intimate, too long-continued, to be lightly broken.
As the twilight fell she saw, through the oblong of her sliding window, that men were hurrying by to dine early, in order that they might prepare for the festivities of the evening. Across the square she could make out the dim shape of the new dance hall, a long low structure trimmed with evergreens and bunting. Frosty was even then lighting the lamps in the Little Nugget. She sat there motionless, staring out into the night, fingering the soft white stuff of the gown lying across her lap, until a certain peace came to her and a conviction that all would be well.
The night was warm and balmy with the odors of early spring. Molly had slid back the halves of her narrow window, and over the boxes of flowers that fringed this little artificial horizon the mellow notes of the first whitethroat, that nightingale of the north, floated in on the tepid air. Beyond the nearer silhouette of the flowers another dimmer silhouette of the hills wavered uncertainly beneath a few uncertain stars. The girl watched these stars idly, dreaming in tune with the plaintive notes of the bird. Then silently another bulkier silhouette interposed itself, almost filling the window.
"What is it?" she cried, starting.
"It's I," came the voice of Jack Graham. The silhouette rested two black-outlined elbows against the sill.
"My, how you frightened me!" she cried pettishly. "What in the world do you want? Why aren't you at dinner?"
"Molly," said Graham solemnly, "I don't suppose you'll listen to me. We haven't gotten along very well lately, have we? But I want you to know that I am asking this for your sake, and that I believe it."
She was impressed by the sincere quality of his tone. "Why, Jack," she said softly, "I know you mean well, and I suppose Iamvery frivolous and careless. What is it?"
"I wish you would not go to the dance to-night."
There fell a pause. She was evidently in a softened mood and she wished to conduct the interview considerately. "But, Jack," she hesitatingly asked at last. "Do you think there is going to be trouble?"
"It will only give you pain. You are going to be forced against things you have never had to combat before."
"I don't understand you."
"I am going to talk very plainly, Molly; I hope you won't get angry. I can't help it if you do. It's because I love you so, girl; I love you so!"
His voice was deep and rich with emotion, so poignant and compelling that it forced her attention in spite of herself. This was a declaration, she dimly felt, and yet its import as such was somehow lost in the more pregnant subject-matter to which it but added emphasis.
"Go on," she said breathlessly.
"You are well liked by everybody here," he continued, carefully avoiding more pointed personalities, "and you have grown so used to being liked by everybody that it would hurt you cruelly if you were not. Isn't that true?"
"Yes," assented Molly gravely, after a moment's consideration.
"You want to hold first place in their thoughts and in their goodwill. You want to be first with them and you want them to show to you and to each other by their actions that they are your best friends and are going to stand by you. Do I read you right?"
"Yes, of course I want all the boys to like me. I've known them so long, and I should feel dreadfully if they didn't. But what do you mean by it? I don't understand."
The silhouette moved uneasily. "Now don't get angry," he pleaded. "Take to-night. To speak plainly, you want to be the woman who receives the most attention at that ball. Answer frankly."
"Well," confessed the gill after another moment's hesitation, "frankly then, I do."
"You will not."
"Why?"
"Because the woman who came this afternoon, Bismarck Anne, will take your place."
Molly Lafond would have become angry if her experience of the afternoon had not already made her uneasy on just this point.
"Do you consider her more attractive than me?" she asked a little resentfully.
"A thousand times No!" assured the silhouette.
"Has she known the boys as long as I? Is she as good friends with them? Can she talk better? Is she brighter?"
"No."
"Then I don't believe I quite see."
"It's just this. The men all like you and admire you, and would do anything for you, but at the same time they look up to you a little. You are better than they are, so, more or less, they are a little—well—a littlerestrictedwith you. This woman is their sort. She isn't a bit better than they are. When they are out to have a good time, like at the dance to-night, they want somebody they can have their sort of fun with.You are too good for them."
"That is very theoretical."
"It is very true."
"And supposing, just supposing, it were. You want me to lie down and quit without making a fight. Do you call that being game? What would you think of a man who would run away because the other man was a little stronger? Don't you think I'd fight?"
"That's just it. You'd fight too well."
"I don't——"
"She has ways of drawing men to her which you know nothing about. They are her weapons. I know you'd fight. You'd fight to the last because it is in you to, and I'm afraid, very much afraid, that when you found your weapons were not enough you'd use hers."
There fell between them a long silence, while Molly slowly pondered these last words and gradually apprehended their meaning. In the darkness she could feel the blood tingeing her face, forehead, and neck. At first she was inclined to be angry and to show it, but the man's evident sincerity, coupled with the fervor of his incidental declaration of love, softened her.
"I don't believe I ever had anybody tell me such things before," she could not restrain herself from saying, "and I don't know whether I ought to thank you for your lack of trust in me. However, you'll be there, and I can rely on your protection against these awful dangers."
"I will not be there," contradicted Graham bluntly.
"Well, then, there's Harry." She said the name out of bravado to show that there was no reason why she should not say it.
"Yes," cried Graham, with a burst of anger that astonished her. "It is he I mean."
It was the red flag to them both, the idea of this man. "I think you'd better go now," she replied coldly.
Graham turned away with a little curse.
She sat down again and tried desperately to regain her confidence of a few moments before, but it would not come. She was angry and insulted, and she was vexed at herself that she could not throw off the uneasiness which lay behind these emotions; but she could not. It grew on her as her nervousness increased. She sat staring straight before her into the dark, clasping and unclasping her hands, and striving with all the earnestness of which she was capable to seize and formulate the vague fear that seemed unreasonably to weigh on her spirits. Analyze it as she would, she could find no adequate reason for it. It was therefore the more terrible. The dinner hour passed quite unnoticed. The nervousness increased until she could have shrieked aloud. And then with a sudden start she recognized it—this old formless causeless sense of an indefinite guilt, as for something left undone; the voice, although this she did not know, of her inherited New England conscience.
At the discovery she rebelled. She had always rebelled, and heretofore she had succeeded in putting it down, in stifling it underneath mere surface moods. But now the surface moods proved inadequate. The uneasy guiltiness increased until it almost overflowed in tears. Molly was afraid, just as a child is afraid of the dark.
She lit the lamps and looked at herself in the mirror. This must not go on. To-night, the one night when she needed all her powers, it was foolish to allow a whim to weaken them. She shook her head at herself and smiled. The smile was not a success. She turned away wearily and thrust her hands through her hair. Why had Graham taken it into his head to bother her this one evening of all others? It was his fault. She stamped her foot angrily. All his fault. In spite of his denial, she believed he would be there and would set everything. The thought stung her pride and the desire for tears left her. She would show him just how much his advice and his fears were worth. On the impulse she spread her white dress out on the bed, and began hastily to smooth out the wrinkles in its pleats. After a moment she turned decisively to the mirror, and began to take down her hair.