Ridgway of Montana Part 11

Prisoner to love he had been and still was, but the business men who met him at his rooms, fellow adventurers in the forlorn hope he had hitherto led with such signal success, could have read nothing of this in the marble, chiseled face of their sagacious general, so indomitable of attack and insatiate of success. His steel-hard eyes gave no hint of the Arcadia they had inhabited so eagerly a short twenty-four hours before. The intoxicating madness he had known was chained deep within him. Once more he had a grip on himself; was sheathed in a cannonproof plate armor of selfishness. No more magic nights of stars.h.i.+ne, breathing fire and dew; no more lifted moments of exaltation stinging him to a pulsating wonder at life's wild delight. He was again the inexorable driver of men, with no pity for their weaknesses any more than for his own.

The men whom he found waiting for him at his rooms were all young Westerners picked out by him because he thought them courageous, unscrupulous and loyal. Like him, they were privateers in the seas of commerce, and sailed under no flag except the one of insurrection he had floated. But all of them, though they were a.s.sociated with him and hoped to ride to fortune on the wave that carried him there, recognized themselves as subordinates in the enterprises he undertook. They were merely heads of departments, and they took orders like trusted clerks with whom the owner sometimes unbends and advises.

Now he heard their reports, asked an occasional searching question, and swiftly gave decisions of far-reaching import. It was past midnight before he had finished with them, and instead of retiring for the sleep he might have been expected to need, he spent the rest of the night inspecting the actual workings of the properties he had not seen for six days. Hour after hour he pa.s.sed examining the developments, sometimes in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the workings and again consulting with engineers and foremen in charge. Light was breaking in the sky before he stepped from the cage of the Jack Pot and boarded a street-car for his rooms. Cornishmen and Hungarians and Americans, going with their dinner-buckets to work, met him and received each a nod or a word of greeting from this splendidly built young Hermes in miners' slops, who was to many of them, in their fancy, a deliverer from the slavery which the Consolidated was ready to force upon them.

Once at his rooms, Ridgway took a cold bath, dressed carefully, breakfasted, and was ready to plunge into the ma.s.s of work which had acc.u.mulated during his absence at the mining camp of Alpine and the subsequent period while he was s...o...b..und. These his keen, practical mind grasped and disposed of in crisp sentences. To his private secretary he rapped out order sharply and decisively.

"Phone Ballard and Dalton I want to see them at once. Tell Murphy I won't talk with him. What I said before I left was final. Write Cadwallader we can't do business on the terms he proposes, but add that I'm willing to continue his Mary Kinney lease. Dictate a letter to Riley's lawyer, telling him I can't afford to put a premium on incompetence and negligence; that if his client was injured in the Jack Pot explosion, he has n.o.body but himself to blame for it. Otherwise, of course, I should be glad to pension him. Let me see the letter before you send it. I don't want anything said that will offend the union.

Have two tons of good coal sent up to Riley's house, and notify his grocer that all bills for the next three months may be charged to me.

And, Smythe, ask Mr. Eaton to step this way."

Stephen Eaton, an alert, clear-eyed young fellow who served as fidus Achates to Ridgway, and was the secretary and treasurer of the Mesa Ore-producing Company, took the seat Smythe had vacated. He was good-looking, after a boyish, undistinguished fas.h.i.+on, but one disposed to be critical might have voted the chin not quite definite enough. He had been a clerk of the Consolidated, working for one hundred dollars a month, when Ridgway picked him out and set his feet in the way of fortune. He had done this out of personal liking, and, in return, the subordinate was frankly devoted to his chief.

"Steve, my opinion is that Alpine is a false alarm. Unless I guess wrong, it is merely a surface proposition and low-grade at that."

"Miller says--"

"Yes, I know what Miller says. He's wrong. I don't care if he is the biggest copper expert in the country."

"Then you won't invest?"

"I have invested--bought the whole outfit, lock, stock and barrel."

"But why? What do you want with it if the property is no good?" asked Eaton in surprise.

Ridgway laughed shortly. "I don't want it, but the Consolidated does.

Two of their experts were up at Alpine last week, and both of them reported favorably. I've let it leak out to their lawyer, O'Malley, that Miller thought well of it; in fact, I arranged to let one of their spies steal a copy of his report to us."

"But when they know you have bought it?"

"They won't know till too late. I bought through a dummy. It seemed a pity not to let then have the property since they wanted it so badly, so this morning he sold out for me to the Consolidated at a profit of a hundred and fifty thousand."

Eaton grinned appreciatively. It was in startling finesse of this sort his chief excelled, and Stephen was always ready with applause.

"I notice that Hobart slipped out of town last night. That is where he must have been going. He'll be sick when he learns how you did him."

Ridgway permitted himself an answering smile. "I suppose it will irritate him a trifle, but that can't be helped. I needed that money to get clear on that last payment for the Sherman Bell."

"Yes, I was worried about that. Notes have been piling up against us that must be met. There's the Ransom note, too. It's for a hundred thousand."

"He'll extend it," said the chief confidently.

"He told me he would have to have his money when it came due. I've noticed he has been pretty close to Mott lately. I expect he has an arrangement with the Consolidated to push us."

"I'm watching him, Steve. Don't worry about that. He did arrange to sell the note to Mott, but I stopped that little game."

"How?"

"For a year I've had all the evidence of that big government timber steal of his in a safety-deposit vault. Before he sold, I had a few words with him. He changed his mind and decided he preferred to hold the notes. More, he is willing to let us have another hundred thousand if we have to have it."

Eaton's delight bubbled out of him in boyish laughter. "You're a wonder, Waring. There's n.o.body like you. Can't any of them touch you--not Harley himself, by Jove."

"We'll have a chance to find that out soon, Steve."

"Yes, they say he's coming out in person to run the fight against you.

I hope not."

"It isn't a matter of hoping any longer. He's here," calmly announced his leader.

"Here! On the ground?"

"Yes."

"But--he can't be here without us knowing it."

"I'm telling you that I do know it."

"Have you seen him yourself?" demanded the treasurer incredulously.

"Seen him, talked with him, cursed him and cuffed him," announced Ridgway with a reminiscent gleam in his eye.

"Er--what's that you say?" gasped the astounded Eaton.

"Merely that I have already met Simon Harley."

"But you said--"

"--that I had cursed and cuffed him. That's all right. I have."

The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company leaned back with his thumbs in the armholes of his fancy waistcoat and smiled debonairly at his a.s.sociate's perplexed amazement.

"Did you say--CUFFED him?"

"That's what I meant to say. I roughed him around quite a bit--manhandled him in general. But all FOR HIS GOOD, you know."

"For his good?" Eaton's dazed brain tried to conceive the situation of a billionaire being mauled for his good, and gave it up in despair. If Steve Eaton wors.h.i.+pped anything, it was wealth. He was a born sycophant, and it was partly because his naive unstinted admiration had contributed to satisfy his chief's vanity that the latter had made of him a confidant. Now he sat dumb before the lese-majeste of laying forcible hands upon the richest man in the world.

"But, of course, you're only joking," he finally decided.

"You haven't been back twelve hours. Where COULD you have seen him?"

"Nevertheless I have met him and been properly introduced by his wife."

"His wife?"

"Yes, I picked her out of a snow-drift."

"Is this a riddle?"