Sally of Missouri Part 13

Out on the streets of Canaan, among the puppets who danced at his touch upon the strings, Madeira never faltered in his exposition of the Company's affairs and enterprises, and in the Company's offices behind the Bank of Canaan, his direction was steady, resourceful and comforting. He could build up potential profits for the investing Canaanites and build down potential failure in a manner so satisfying that the Canaanites gladly gave him their money and fondly hung upon him.

It was Mr. Quin Beasley, that conclusive reasoner, who said, "Simlike ef you talk to Crit fer abaout th'ee bats of your eye he cand show you that ef innybody,--don't keer who,--would putt, wall say,--wall, don't keer haow much you say,--as much as tin thousand,--in the Comp'ny an' leave it slumber fer say--wall, don't keer haow long you say,--as much as fo', five months,--it 'ud be wuth,--be wuth,--wall, I don't keer to over-fetch, but I reckin f'm whut Crit says, th'aint no tellin' whut it _would_ be wuth."

And it was the _Canaan Call_ that endorsed Mr. Madeira in that emphatic editorial, which is herewith reproduced, just as it was doled out relentlessly to the few Canaan sulkers, under the caption of

"IT WILL BE DRAMATIC, BY GOs.h.!.+

"When Crit Madeira, the Colossus of Canaan, accomplishes what he surely shall accomplish, when the roar of mill machinery begins to reverberate through the hills of the future Joplin, arousing the vast energies and resources of We-all, Pewee and Big Wheat, let us be generous. If there was a sponge, kicker, s.h.i.+rk or drone, let us cover his selfishness with the mantle of charity. Leave him under the beating light of progress to wrestle with whatever remnant of a conscience he may happen to have. If he can stand by and coolly watch us work our gizzards out for the common good, and then reach out to share the fruits of our sacrifices, energies and enterprise, without a qualm, we can remember that there are many things in this world worth far more than money, one of which is that sense of having done our neighbour's share as well as our own. It will be enough for us to watch when, bewildered by the l.u.s.ty life and growth and the maze of new-made streets of the future city, the laggard stands debating with that other self, that genius that has kept him what he is. Fancy his striking att.i.tude, thumbs in arm-pits and eyes rolling up to some tall spire, crying out to his other self, 'Thou canst not say I helped do this! Shake not thy towseled locks at me!'--By gosh, it will be dramatic!"[2]

Within a month after Bruce Steering had entered the portals of Missouri, Madeira had put his first steam-drill into the hills. Within two more weeks he had put in another. It took him less time to do the things that other men think about and talk about and put off than any man Steering had ever known. One day, not so very long after old Bernique's find in Choke Gulch, word had gone over Canaan like an eagle's scream that ore had been struck in the Canaan Tigmores. Old Bernique had wrung his hands, and Steering had gone grimly back to a little up-river shack, at Redbud, below Sowfoot Crossing, where he was spending a great deal of his time these later days.

As the winter broke, Madeira's ability to seize the pivotal point on which to turn theory into practice wrought so surely and so swiftly as to be inexplicable to anyone unaware of the fever that drove him on. His first face of ore had cut blind, but he only put two more drills to work, and in the early spring one of the drills struck ore again, a small face, but ore. They had not found the big lode yet, but every indication was that much to the good. The _Canaan Call_ became so jubilant over the second find that even the sulkers lost sight of the fact that the find was on entailed property. Confidence in Madeira went to high pitch, a supreme tension that a touch might snap.

All Canaan was waking up in these days, all Tigmore County was nervous.

Town and county were in a pleased, tortured, ante-boom consciousness that, first thing you know, there would be a new Canaan. Some new streets were laid out; a number of people bought chenille portieres; and though Crittenton Madeira quietly drew his money out of the Grange, for other and weightier uses, the Grange secured new capital elsewhere and flourished mightily. For farmers from We-all Prairie and Pewee and Big Wheat Valley, cotton raisers from the "Upper Bottom" and corn and cattle men from the "Lower Bottom" came into Canaan "to trade," and filled the aisles of the Grange, gossiping, getting information about the ore developments, then crossing swiftly and determinedly to Madeira's bank to leave their money with the president of the Canaan Mining and Development Company.

Out at his house, in his office, in the garden, on horseback, on foot, Madeira kept his daughter Sally near him. He watched his daughter almost constantly, just for the satisfaction of seeing her. As the girl went about her household duties, or walked in the garden with her long, supple stride, or rode the high-tempered horses from the stable, or drove with him, the fine glow on her face, her magnificent health and honesty and strength radiating from her, she was, for Madeira, a continual justification.

"Catch me taking anything away from a girl like that to give it to a d.a.m.n Yankee like Steering," he would tell himself over and over. "Won't she do the most good with it? It'll be hers soon. Won't she do the most good? Answer me that, now."

So much for the outside where Madeira lived in the world of realities and met the various demands of each day's relations capably and coolly.

Inside his private office behind the bank, at his desk, he lived in another world, a world where shadow became substance, possibility became actuality and fear made facts out of fancy.

At night, after Canaan had put its lights out and had lapsed into the shroud-like stillness of a country town's sleep, Madeira was there, with his ghost, in his office,--figuring, figuring. On the roll-top of his desk he kept a letter spread out in front of him. It always happened that he took that letter out of his vest pocket for the purpose of destroying it, and it always happened that when he got up, far into the night, he picked the letter up and replaced it in his pocket. If the words of the letter had been seared across eternity with the red-hot iron of fate they could not have been more indestructible.

Besides the letter, Madeira always had on the desk maps, geological surveys, time estimates. Von Moltke never figured half so carefully nor on half so many shaky hypotheses as did Madeira in his office during these nights. He came to know, through awful, blood-sweating hours, that with so much blasting, so much pick-and-shovel work, allowing for so many back-sets from water and blind rock, so many s.h.i.+fts of men could progress to certain points, in so many days. He sometimes realised that all this was unnecessary; that it was aging him and crazing him; that he could put his work through on the Tigmores long before word of old Grierson's death would, by any unfortuitous accident, leak into Canaan, if it ever got there; that he would never have to resort to the subways that he was figuring on to steal the ore out of the Canaan Tigmores; that all this ceaseless, merciless calculation was but the reaction of a conscience, stalking, gaunt and lunatic, through the charnel-house of its own experience. But for all that he had to go on crossing bridges that he was never to reach, covering black tracks that he was never to make. Often at his desk there, his mind became strangely obtunded and he babbled vapidly; his big face pinched up till it seemed lean and grey, and he pitched forward, face down, upon the desk.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] The author acknowledges a conspicuous indebtedness to a Southwestern weekly for this editorial.

_Chapter Thirteen_

MISS SALLY MADEIRA'S SWEETHEART

Miss Sally Madeira, trying to make her way down Main Street one Sat.u.r.day afternoon, in the early spring of the year 1900, had to go very slowly because of the country people in front of the Grange. Occasionally some of the farm-wives called to her s.h.i.+ly. The road was noisy and dusty with the pa.s.sing of mule-teams, buggies, buckboards, riders on horseback. Out of the continuous rattle a child's voice piped shrilly. The owner of the voice was a little girl who wore a hat with a bunch of cherries on it.

She stood up in the bed of a farm-waggon and screamed at Miss Madeira, who at once made her way to the edge of the side-walk of broken bricks and waited for the little girl's waggon to come in to the curb. The waggon was full of children, but Miss Madeira was somehow able to call them all by name.

"He gimme fifty cents!" was what the cherry-hat little girl said immediately, with some genius for steering conversation toward the things that interested her.

"You rich thing!" cried Miss Madeira, and then foolishly, and unnecessarily, inquired, "who is he?"

"Yo' sweetheart."

Miss Madeira lowered her voice in such a suggestive manner that when the little girl spoke again her voice was lowered, too.

"When did you see him?" asked Miss Madeira.

"See him ev' day. I cand go daown to Sowfoot by myse'f. He's sick." Miss Madeira looked quickly at some of the older members of the family in the waggon. They were a hill farm family from Sowfoot Crossing neighbourhood. "Yep, he's been sick,--with the malary simlike," was what the older members had to say upon the subject. Miss Madeira quickly left the subject and talked about the corn crop and the price of chickens for a little while, then presently went on down Main Street toward her father's bank, where her black horses were hitched.

Far down Main Street, in front of one of the frame houses that edged the street on either side, some children were enjoying a bonfire of dead leaves, front doors were opening and women were coming out to watch the fire; and, by their interest-lit eyes and by what they called to each other across the slumberous afternoon air, were showing that they were skilled in getting diversion out of smaller things than bonfires. It was the neighbourhood of Canaan's biggest and best. The doors that had opened had shown glimpses of the finest three-ply carpets in all Tigmore County, and though the women who had come out on the porches had grammatical peculiarities of their own, they were distinctly unapologetic and a.s.sured. You could easily imagine them laughing, with a consciousness of advantage, at the other grades of grammar and carpets in Canaan.

"Smells real good, don't it?" called one who was comfortable and portly, and who had her ap.r.o.n wrapped about her hands, "always makes me feel that spring's came when the rakin' and burnin' begin."

"Mrs. Pringle told me that they had some big fires aout toward the Ridge las' night. Burned the rakin' aout to Madeira Place. I missed that.

D'you see it? I mighta seen it just as well's not from my back porch, tew!" shrilled another woman, in whose words a well-defined jealousy was patent, the jealousy of the person whose life is too small for her to afford to miss any of it.

"Yes, you oughta saw it," chimed in another. "Cert'n'y was no little-small flame. I could see Sally movin' araoun' in the flare. Had that tramp-boy taggin' abaout with her. I declare, if he di'n' look like a gipsy!"

The neighbourly throng was at this moment augmented by the appearance of two ladies who fluttered out on the porch of a rose-trellised cottage, like small, proud pouter pigeons. They were the Misses Marion, twin-sisters, quite inseparable, and, because their minds had run in exactly the same groove for all of their lives and because they were of about equal mental readiness, apt to get the same impression at exactly the same time, and apt to attempt expression in exactly the same breath.

Occasionally this was trying, both to the Misses Marion and to their hearers, and it was particularly trying when the two now called simultaneously from the rose-embowered porch to the women in the neighbouring yards:

"Have you heard----"

"Have you heard----"

Miss Sh.e.l.ley Marion turned to Miss Blair Marion with delicate courtesy: "Continue, sister," she said, just as Miss Blair said, "Sister, continue."

"Have we heard what, for goodness' sake?" snapped one of the would-be hearers, breaking in rawly upon the soft waves of the hand and the imploring taps with which each of the two gentlewomen was endeavouring to make way for the other.

"I continued last time, sister."

"I think not, Blair; I think I did. Proceed."

"Have you heard the news?" Miss Blair having yielded with great self-rebuke to Miss Sh.e.l.ley, the question gurgled liquidly from yard to yard, like a small twisting brook.

The two women whose yards adjoined the Misses Marions' yard came down to the separating fences and leaned their arms on the paling rails waitingly; the third woman moved up to the corner of her yard which was nearest the Misses Marion. She was the woman who had deplored missing the hill fires, and there was a resolute look on her face.

"Talk loud, Miss Blair," she said commandingly. But before Miss Blair could get her mouth open to talk at all there was the sound of horses'

hoofs from up toward Court House Square, and a light vehicle, drawn by two powerful Kentucky blacks, rolled into view.

"Lawk, it's Sally Madeira!" cried Miss Blair impulsively, and then looked immediately convicted, for Miss Sh.e.l.ley had got only as far as "Lawk!"

When the slender equipage, with its spirited, long-tailed horses, and its high springy seat, with the erect young figure on it, had gone by, the women looked at each other, with pursed lips and knowing eyes.

"There, aint I been sayin'," cried the fat one, "she's a-lookin'

peaked!"

Then somebody noticed that the Misses Marion were in the throes of another spasm of courtesy, and, reminded by that of the critical juncture where Miss Blair had left off a few minutes before, one of the women called to her:

"What news was that, Miss Blair? Say, you! Miss Blair! What news?"