The Tempering Part 40

Saul thrust the letter back into his pocket. A string of pack llamas swung grunting by under their loads, driven by ponchoed cholos. Overhead a vulture lumbered by. From the stand of a street vendor drifted the odours of skewered fowl-livers and black olives. Over the whole Spanish-American panorama brooded the treeless foothills of the Cordilleras that went back to the Andes. Everything that came to eye and nostril of Saul Fulton carried the hateful aspect and savour of the alien.

"I disgust the whole d.a.m.n land," he declared as he rose, for though he no longer felt in a mood of celebration it was time to meet the "Dutchman" for dinner.

Reticence was second nature to the plotter who had just heard of the growing power of a new enemy, but there was wine for dinner and a sympathetic listener, and under the ache of nostalgia and the need of outpouring, his discretion for once weakened.

It was late when over their coffee cups and cigarettes Saul realized that he had been talking too freely, but the German leaned forward and nodded a sympathetic head.

"I am discreet," he rea.s.sured. "I understand."

After a moment he added, "It may surprise you, mein friendt, to learn that I, too, have been in your Kentucky mountains. It was when they first talked of oil there some years back.... I did not remain long....

Oil there was but not in gushers ... at the price of the markets it did not pay. It only tantalized with false hope."

Saul looked up. A crafty gleam shot into his eyes as he started to speak, then he repressed the words on his lips and remained silent.

After a long while, however, he began hesitantly:

"There's oil there still--and there's places where it would pay. That's why I'm itchin' to go back. With what I know now and those fools there don't know, I could get rich; big rich, and this d.a.m.ned young Wellver stands barrin' my way."

"Perhaps,"--the German spoke tentatively--"we could do business together. I go to the States shortly mein-self."

"Business, h.e.l.l!" Saul Fulton's hand smote the table. "A stranger couldn't swing things. Folks would jump prices on you. They suspicion strangers, there."

He sat silent for a time, and the German puffed contemplatively at his cigarette. Outside somewhere a band was playing. Above the patio where they sat at table the stars were large and tranquil. A fountain plashed in silvery tinkles.

Saul Fulton's face grew sinister with its thoughts, and when at last he spoke again it was with the air of a man who has debated to a conclusion the problem that besets him and who, having decided, sets his foot into the Rubicon of action.

"I'm goin' back there, myself. There's ways an' means of gettin' rid of brash trouble-makers, an' if any man knows 'em in an' out, an' back an'

forth, it's me."

Otto Gehr shrugged his white-coated shoulders.

"The fit should survive," he made answer.

Saul raised his almost empty gla.s.s. "Here's Luck," he said. "This Wellver lad is marked down for what's comin' to him."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

Morgan's car was making the most rapid progress through the downtown traffic that the law allowed, and his electric energies were fretting for greater speed. The days were all too short for him with their present demands, and he forced himself with the merciless rigour of a man who is both overseer and slave. Now he was allowing himself just forty-five minutes for luncheon at the club, and back at the office men and matters were waiting.

He found gratification in the deference with which policemen saluted, and in the glances that turned toward him as his chauffeur slowed down at the corners. He knew that his fellow townsmen were saying, "That's Morgan Wallifarro!" It was enough to say that, for the name bore its own significance. It meant, "That is the man who has just carried a Democratic town for a Republican mayor, and who had much to do with carrying a Democratic State for a Republican governor. Even in national councils his voice begins to bear weight."

These things were incense in the nostrils of the hurrying young lawyer, but suddenly his attention was arrested from them, and he rapped on the gla.s.s front of the closed car. He had seen Anne on the sidewalk, and at his signal the machine swung in to the curb and halted.

"I'm on my way home," she told him, "and you're far too rushed to cavalier me during business hours," but he waved aside her remonstrances and helped her in.

"I'm so busy," he declared, "that I can't waste a moment--and every possible moment lost from you is wasted."

The November sun was clear and sparkling, and the girl settled back with an amused smile as she looked into the self-confident, audacious eyes of the man at her side.

"It gives me a feeling of exaggerated importance to ride in your machine, Morgan," she teased. "It's a triumphal progress through the bowing mult.i.tude."

Her companion grinned. "When are you going to make my car your car and my homage your homage, Anne?" he brazenly demanded.

The girl's laugh rippled out, and in her violet eyes the twinkle sparkled. She liked him best when he was content to clothe his words in the easy garb of jest, so she countered in paraphrase.

"When are you going to let my answer be your answer, and my decision your decision?"

"It's no trouble to ask," he impudently a.s.sured her. "You remember the man who

"Proposed forty thousand and ninety-six times, --And each time, but the last, she said, 'No.'

You see the whole virtue of that man lay in his pertinacity."

After a moment's silence he added, in a voice out of which had gone all facetiousness even while it lingered in the words themselves, "There are a thousand reasons, Anne, why I can't give you up. I've forgotten nine hundred and ninety-nine of them but I remember one. I love you utterly."

Her eyes met his with direct gravity.

"But why, Morgan?" she demanded with a candid directness. "I'm the opposite in type of every one else you cultivate or care for. I'm really not your sort of person at all, you know."

"Perhaps," he said, "it's because you are the most thoroughbred woman I know, and I want to be proud of my wife. Perhaps it's merely that you're you."

"Thank you," she said simply. "It's a pity, Morgan dear, that I can love you in every way except the one way. I wish you'd pick out a girl really suited to you."

"By the 'every way except the one way,'" he interposed, "you mean platonically?"

Anne nodded, and the man said, "Of course I know the reason. It's Boone."

"Yes." The admission was disarmingly frank. "It's Boone. I've just had a letter from him. He won his race for the legislature and now he's laying down his lines of campaign for the bigger prize of the congressional race next time."

Morgan's smile was innocent of grudge-bearing. "I know. I wired congratulations this morning. Of course his race was really won when he came out of the primaries victorious."

Anne reflected that in the old days Morgan would have spoken differently, and in a less generous spirit. To him a contest for a legislative seat from a rough hill district must appear almost trivial, and for the victor his personal rancour might have left no room for congratulation. He himself had, in a larger battle, just won more conspicuous prizes of reputation and power, and yet the heartiness of his tone as he spoke of Boone's little success was sincere and in no sense marred by any taint of the perfunctory.

"It was rather handsome of Boone to go back there and throw his hat into the ring," he continued gravely. "He might have harvested quicker and showier results here, but he wanted to be identified with his own people. G.o.d knows they need a Progressive, in that benighted hinterland."

Anne's eyes mirrored her gratification, but before she could give it expression the car stopped.

"What!" exclaimed Morgan; "are we here already?" He opened the door and helped her out, but as he stood on the sidewalk with his hat raised he added in a note of unalterable resolve:

"I don't want to persecute and pursue you, Anne, but the day will come--perhaps the forty thousand and ninety-sixth time of asking--when you'll say 'Yes.' Meanwhile I can wait--since I must. One thing I cannot and will not do; give you up."

"Good-bye," she smiled. "And thank you for the lift."

Morgan turned to the car again and said crisply to the driver: "Straight to the office. I sha'n't stop for lunch now."