The Valley of the Giants Part 32

She had called him by his first name. He thrilled. "I'm lost in a quagmire of debts--I'm helpless now," he murmured. "I'm not fighting for myself alone, but for a thousand dependents--for a principle--for an ancient sentiment that was my father's and is now mine. You do not understand."

"I understand more than you give me credit for, and some day you'll realize it. I understand just enough to make me feel sorry for you. I understand what even my uncle doesn't suspect at present, and that is that you're the directing genius of the Northern California Oregon Railroad and hiding behind your friend Ogilvy. Now, listen to me, Bryce Cardigan: You're never going to build that road. Do you understand?"

The suddenness of her attack amazed him to such an extent that he did not take the trouble to contradict her. Instead he blurted out, angrily and defiantly: "I'll build that road if it costs me my life-- if it costs me you. Understand! I'm in this fight to win."

"You will not build that road," she reiterated.

"Why?"

"Because I shall not permit you to. I have some financial interest in the Laguna Grande Lumber Company, and it is not to that financial interest that you should build the N.C.O."

"How did you find out I was behind Ogilvy?"

"Intuition. Then I accused you of it, and you admitted it."

"I suppose you're going to tell your uncle now," he retorted witheringly.

"On the contrary, I am not. I greatly fear I was born with a touch of sporting blood, Mr. Cardigan, so I'm going to let you two fight until you're exhausted, and then I'm going to step in and decide the issue.

You can save money by surrendering now. I hold the whip hand."

"I prefer to fight. With your permission this bout will go to a knockout." "I'm not so certain I do not like you all the more for that decision. And if it will comfort you the least bit, you have my word of honour that I shall not reveal to my uncle the ident.i.ty of the man behind the N. C. O. I'm not a tattletale, you know, and moreover I have a great curiosity to get to the end of the story. The fact is, both you and Uncle Seth annoy me exceedingly. How lovely everything would have been if you two hadn't started this feud and forced upon me the task of trying to be fair and impartial to you both."

"Can you remain fair and impartial?"

"I think I can--even up to the point of deciding whether or not you are going to build that road. Then I shall act independently of you both. Forgive my slang, but--I'm going to hand you each a poke then."

"s.h.i.+rley," he told her earnestly, "listen carefully to what I am about to say: I love you. I've loved you from the day I first met you. I shall always love you; and when I get around to it, I'm going to ask you to marry me. At present, however, that is a right I do not possess. However, the day I acquire the right I shall exercise it."

"And when will that day be?" Very softly, in awesome tones!

"The day I drive the last spike in the N. C. O."

Fell a silence. Then: "I'm glad, Bryce Cardigan, you're not a quitter. Good-bye, good luck--and don't forget my errand." She hung up and sat at the telephone for a moment, dimpled chin in dimpled hand, her glance wandering through the window and far away across the roofs of the town to where the smoke-stack of Cardigan's mill cut the sky-line. "How I'd hate you if I could handle you!" she murmured.

Following this exasperating but illuminating conversation with s.h.i.+rley Sumner over the telephone, Bryce Cardigan was a distressed and badly worried man. However, Bryce was a communicant of a very simple faith--to wit, that one is never whipped till one is counted out, and the first shock of s.h.i.+rley's discovery having pa.s.sed, he wasted no time in vain repinings but straightway set himself to scheme a way out of his dilemma.

For an hour he sat slouched in his chair, chin on breast, the while he reviewed every angle of the situation.

He found it impossible, however, to dissociate the business from the personal aspects of his relations with s.h.i.+rley, and he recalled that she had the very best of reasons for placing their relations on a business basis rather than a sentimental one. He had played a part in their little drama which he knew must have baffled and infuriated her. More, had she, in those delightful few days of their early acquaintance, formed for him a sentiment somewhat stronger than friends.h.i.+p (he did not flatter himself that this was so), he could understand her att.i.tude toward him as that of the woman scorned. For the present, however, it was all a profound and disturbing mystery, and after an hour of futile concentration there came to Bryce the old childish impulse to go to his father with his troubles. That st.u.r.dy old soul, freed from the hot pa.s.sions of youth, its impetuosity and its p.r.o.neness to consider cause rather than effect, had weathered too many storms in his day to permit the present one to benumb his brain as it had his son's.

"He will be able to think without having his thoughts blotted out by a woman's face," Bryce soliloquized. "He's like one of his own big redwood trees; his head is always above the storm."

Straightway Bryce left the office and went home to the old house on the knoll. John Cardigan was sitting on the veranda, and from a stand beside him George Sea Otter entertained him with a phonograph selection--"The Suwanee River," sung by a male quartet. As the gate clicked, John raised his head; then as Bryce's quick step spurned the cement walk up the little old-fas.h.i.+oned garden, he rose and stood with one hand outstretched and trembling a little. He could not see, but with the intuition of the blind, he knew.

"What is it, son?" he demanded gently as Bryce came up the low steps.

"George, choke that contraption off,"

Bryce took his father's hand. "I'm in trouble, John Cardigan," he said simply, "and I'm not big enough to handle it alone."

The leonine old man smiled, and his smile had all the sweetness of a benediction. His boy was in trouble and had come to him. Good! Then he would not fail him. "Sit down, son, and tell the old man all about it. Begin at the beginning and let me have all the angles of the angle."

Bryce obeyed, and for the first time John Cardigan learned of his son's acquaintance with s.h.i.+rley Sumner and the fact that she had been present in Pennington's woods the day Bryce had gone there to settle the score with Jules Rondeau. In the wonderful first flush of his love a sense of embarra.s.sment, following his discovery of the fact that his father and Colonel Pennington were implacable enemies, had decided Bryce not to mention the matter of the girl to John Cardigan until the ENTENTE CORDIALE between Pennington and his father could be reestablished, for Bryce had, with the optimism of his years, entertained for a few days a thought that he could bring about this desirable condition of affairs. The discovery that he could not, together with his renunciation of his love until he should succeed in protecting his heritage and eliminating the despair that had come upon his father in the latter's old age, had further operated to render unnecessary any discussion of the girl with the old man.

With the patience and gentleness of a confessor John Cardigan heard the story now, and though Bryce gave no hint in words that his affections were involved in the fight for the Cardigan acres, yet did his father know It, for he was a parent. And his great heart went out in sympathy for his boy.

"I understand, sonny, I understand. This young lady is only one additional reason why you must win, for of course you understand she is not indifferent to you."

"I do not know that she feels for me anything stronger than a vagrant sympathy, Dad, for while she is eternally feminine, nevertheless she has a masculine way of looking at many things. She is a good comrade with a bully sense of sportsmans.h.i.+p, and unlike her skunk of an uncle, she fights in the open. Under the circ.u.mstances, however, her first loyalty is to him; in fact, she owes none to me. And I dare say he has given her some extremely plausible reason why we should be eliminated; while I think she is sorry that it must be done, nevertheless, in a mistaken impulse of self-protection she is likely to let him do it."

"Perhaps, perhaps. One never knows why a woman does things, although it is a safe bet that if they're with you at all, they're with you all the way. Eliminate the girl, my boy. She's trying to play fair to you and her relative. Let us concentrate on Pennington."

"The entire situation hinges on that jump-crossing of his tracks on Water Street."

"He doesn't know you plan to cross them, does he?"

"No."

"Then, lad, your job is to get your crossing in before he finds out, isn't it?"

"Yes, but it is an impossible task, partner. I'm not Aladdin, you know. I have to have a franchise from the city council, and I have to have rails."

"Both are procurable, my son. Induce the city council to grant you a temporary franchise to-morrow, and buy your rails from Pennington. He has a mile of track running up Laurel Creek, and Laurel Creek was logged out three years ago. I believe that spur is useless to Pennington, and the ninety-pound rails are rusting there."

"But will he sell them to me?"

"Not if you tell him why you want them."

"But he hates me, old pal."

"The Colonel never permits sentiment to interfere with business, my son. He doesn't need the rails, and he does desire your money.

Consider the rail-problem settled."

"How do you stand with the Mayor and the council?"

"I do not stand at all. I opposed Poundstone for the office; Dobbs, who was appointed to fill a vacancy caused by the death of a regularly elected councilman, was once a bookkeeper in our office, you will remember. I discharged him for looting the petty-cash drawer. Andrews and Mullin are professional politicians and not to be trusted. In fact, Poundstone, Dobbs, Andrews, and Mullin are known as the Solid Four. Yates and Thatcher, the remaining members of the city council, are the result of the reform ticket last fall, but since they are in the minority, they are helpless."

"That makes it bad."

"Not at all. The Cardigans are not known to be connected with the N.

C. O. Send your bright friend Ogilvy after that franchise. He's the only man who can land it. Give him a free hand and tell him to deliver the goods by any means short of bribery. I imagine he's had experience with city councils and will know exactly how to proceed. I KNOW you can procure the rails and have them at the intersection of B and Water streets Thursday night. If Ogilvy can procure the temporary franchise and have it in his pocket by six o'clock Thursday night, you should have that crossing in by sunup Friday morning. Then let Pennington rave. He cannot procure an injunction to restrain us from cutting his tracks, thus throwing the matter into the courts and holding us up indefinitely, because by the time he wakes up, the tracks will have been cut. The best he can do then will be to fight us before the city council when we apply for our permanent franchise.

Thank G.o.d, however, the name of Cardigan carries weight in this county, and with the pressure of public sympathy and opinion back of us, we may venture, my boy, to break a lance with the Solid Four, should they stand with Pennington."

"Partner, it looks like a forlorn hope," said Bryce.

"Well, you're the boy to lead it. And it will cost but little to put in the crossing and take a chance. Remember, Bryce, once we have that crossing in, it stands like a spite-fence between Pennington and the law which he knows so well how to pervert to suit his ign.o.ble purposes." He turned earnestly to Bryce and waved a trembling admonitory finger. "Your job is to keep out of court. Once Pennington gets the law on us, the issue will not be settled in our favour for years; and in the meantime--you perish. Run along now and hunt up Ogilvy. George, play that 'Suwannee River' quartet again. It sort o'

soothes me."