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_Title:_ Roads of Doubt
_Date of first publication:_ 1925
_Author:_ William MacLeod Raine (1871-1954)
_Date first posted:_ November 14, 2026
_Date last updated:_ November 14, 2026
Faded Page eBook #20261124

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines, Cindy Beyer & the online
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                          [Cover Illustration]




                             ROADS OF DOUBT


                                   BY
                        WILLIAM  MacLEOD  RAINE


                               AUTHOR OF
                      CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT,
                           A MAN FOUR-SQUARE,
                        THE DESERT’S PRICE, Etc.


                             [Illustration]


                           _GROSSET & DUNLAP_
                      _PUBLISHERS_      _NEW YORK_




                COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY WILLIAM MACLEOD
                RAINE. COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY THE CROWELL
                PUBLISHING COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE
                COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.




                                 TO BOB

                                CONTENTS
    CHAPTER                                                      PAGE
          I. Thin Ice  .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .         1
         II. “No Gentleman” .    .    .    .    .    .    .         8
        III. Sweet Nineteen Wrinkles a Forehead .    .    .        19
         IV. “Where the Brook and River Meet”   .    .    .        29
          V. Wese Has an Attack of Poetry  .    .    .    .        42
         VI. “Will You Stand the Gaff?”    .    .    .    .        51
        VII. “I’ll Jump at the Chance”.    .    .    .    .        61
       VIII. An Invitation Declined   .    .    .    .    .        74
         IX. The Hour and the Man.    .    .    .    .    .        82
          X. A Disengagement is Announced  .    .    .    .        89
         XI. Joyce Jumps    .    .    .    .    .    .    .        97
        XII. The Fire Fighters   .    .    .    .    .    .       109
       XIII. An Infant Crying in the Night .    .    .    .       115
        XIV. Storm-Tossed   .    .    .    .    .    .    .       124
         XV. The Philosophy of “If”   .    .    .    .    .       134
        XVI. Flies on a Wall.    .    .    .    .    .    .       145
       XVII. Joyce Takes Command .    .    .    .    .    .       155
      XVIII. Big Rocks Point.    .    .    .    .    .    .       165
        XIX. Joyce at the Wheel  .    .    .    .    .    .       180
         XX. Hallack Guesses, but not out Loud  .    .    .       189
        XXI. Elliott Whispers a Secret.    .    .    .    .       196
       XXII. Punishment.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .       206
      XXIII. With a Stipulation  .    .    .    .    .    .       215
       XXIV. On Special Service  .    .    .    .    .    .       222
        XXV. Into the Hills .    .    .    .    .    .    .       230
       XXVI. Joyce Sets Her Teeth and Carries On.    .    .       239
      XXVII. The Battle Front    .    .    .    .    .    .       247
     XXVIII. Ordway Explains His Business Code  .    .    .       260
       XXIX. Across the Snowfields    .    .    .    .    .       267
        XXX. Falling Barriers    .    .    .    .    .    .       276
       XXXI. Two—Alone .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .       284
      XXXII. Snow Blind.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .       289
     XXXIII. A Mountain Lion Howls    .    .    .    .    .       297
      XXXIV. The Eternal Triangle.    .    .    .    .    .       309
       XXXV. Louise Says “Christmas”  .    .    .    .    .       315
      XXXVI. “And Ever”.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .       320




                            ROADS  OF  DOUBT


                               CHAPTER I
                                THIN ICE

Beneath a starlit sky the car followed a winding road among the
hilltops. The night was chill, as May nights are likely to be in the
front range of the Rockies. Snow crunched under the wheels, and the
crisp of frost was in the air. It stung the face of the girl snuggled
down beside the driver in spite of the protection of the wind shield and
of the upturned fur collar which wrapped her to the gleaming eyes.

By Joy’s wrist watch it was two-thirty when the mountain cliffs drew
near and the brown ribbon along which they were speeding plunged into
Box Elder Cañon. Almost instantly the darkness pressed in on them.
Except for a narrow strip of the milky heavens that canopied the gorge
it seemed to fill the world with a tangible presence that was almost a
threat.

The road wound tortuously along the face of the cliff. It was filled
with unexpected turns. The headlights flung, nearly every minute,
fan-shaped shafts of light into gulfs of space over the edge of which
they seemed about to dive.

The driver handled the wheel expertly and surely. The least deviation to
the right, and they would go crashing hundreds of feet to the creek
below. Too narrow a swing at the sharp curves would send the machine
into the rock wall; too wide a one would throw it headlong at the abyss.

Winthrop Ordway knew the road and his car. He had throttled down a
little, but one unused to mountain travel would have thought the pace
dangerously fast. For every inch of the way that black obscure chasm
hugged the road like some monster of diablerie. In the darkness it had
become a titanic living demon, and the murmur of the creek far below a
voice out of the pit whispering a mesmeric invitation to leap into its
depths.

But for an occasional word neither of them spoke. The girl was thrilling
to the excitement of this wild night ride. She had no right here. The
place was for her at this hour inhibited. The man was taboo. In
accepting his invitation she had flung away the reins of discretion, had
yielded to the spirit of adventure that sometimes set her reckless
little feet on forbidden paths. Joyce Elliott was under the spell of the
swift rush through perilous blackness, of her companion’s dominant
personality, of her own eager instinct for life abundant.

Ordway did not sound the horn as he swept around curves. Travel was
light over the pass, and it was not likely any car would be coming up at
this hour.

Again, as for the twentieth time they circled a high promontory, the
headlights illumined the cañon enough to show green pine tips lifted out
of blackness. The swinging car flung their flare on something else—a
great boulder that had crashed down on the road.

The mental and physical reaction of the driver was instantaneous. Ordway
cut off the power, jammed home brakes, and steered into the rock wall.

The car smashed to a halt and lurched sideways. Joyce was flung from the
seat and momentarily stunned.

From a long distance Ordway’s voice came to her faintly. “You hurt,
Joy?”

A strong arm slid under her waist. She was lifted out of a litter of
broken glass from the floor of a lopsided car. The girl was still a bit
dazed, but she felt no pain. The heavy furs had protected her from the
full shock of the impact.

“Don’t think so, Win. How about you?”

“Right enough.”

Set on her feet, Joyce found the ground still weaving dizzily. She
caught at the astrakhan facing of Ordway’s coat.

“Li’l’ old world jazzing,” she explained.

Again his arm slipped around her shoulders. Behind the firs across the
abyss a full moon had come up. By its light she saw blood trickling down
his cheek from a cut.

“You’re hurt,” she cried.

“It’s nothing. I went through the wind shield. Sure _you’re_ all right?”

“Umpha!” She released herself with a short nervous laugh. Her glance
took in the car. “Some smash. How bad is it?”

Ordway made an examination. “Wheel in splinters. Front axle badly
twisted. Hood and fender junked. Fine business.”

“Damn,” she said tersely.

“Rotten luck,” he agreed.

“I’ll say so. What’ll we do?”

“Have to wait here till someone picks us up.”

“We can’t do that. Maybe a car won’t be along till morning. I’ve got to
get to town.” There was a note of excited protest in the girl’s voice.
“We’ll have to do something.”

He was a man of resource, but one cannot make adobe bricks without
straw. They were fifty miles from the city, in a desolate gulch, no
outside help within reach. The roadster was due for a week in a repair
shop before it could travel.

Ordway shook his head. “No use starting to walk. It’s ten or twelve
miles to the mouth of the cañon. We’ll have to stick it here.”

Joyce Elliott was not of the panicky sort. All her life she had done as
she pleased. Heiress of the ages, she had gone her gay and arrogant way
as only an American girl of the Twentieth Century can. Conventions were
made for others, not for her, she held confidently. Therefore she had
ignored them, trampled them down, laughed scornfully at them when they
got in her road. Always she had despised the whispering tongues that
found evil in high spirits and disregard of rules.

But there was a limit, and in this foolish escapade she had overstepped
it. Even she, with all the prestige of her father’s influence and
standing, dared not come to town with the story of a broken car that had
held her in the hills alone with Winthrop Ordway all night. If he had
been another kind of man—one less notoriously ready to take all a woman
would give—such a tale might pass muster. But it would not go in his
case. He was too possessive. Why, it had been less than three months
since rumours of a night ride of his with another woman had reached her.

She realized too that she had put herself out of court by her own lack
of wisdom. The words with which she had scoffed at conventions, the
freedom with which she had trod her careless path, would earn her a
verdict of thumbs down now. If she was alone with Ordway till morning,
no matter how high she held her head afterwards, it would be at best a
scotched scandal. With pellucid clearness she saw this.

“I’ve _got_ to get away, Win,” she urged. “If I don’t, there will be a
lot of talk. You know that. They’ll say all sorts of horrid things.”

“Yes, they’ll talk some,” he admitted. “But it’ll die down. Anybody’s
car is likely to get smashed.”

With the astonishing candour of the modern _jeune fille_, eyes
unembarrassed lifted to his frankly as those of a boy. “I happen to be
just the one girl a scandal of this kind will hurt awf’ly. It doesn’t
have to be true—what they’ll say about me. Some of the women that count
most have rather got it in for me. I’ve never kow-towed to them—and I
_have_ hit the high spots, you know. If I’m trapped like this—with you
of all men—they’ll take it out of me.”

“Why with me of all men?”

His question needed no answer. At any rate, she gave it none. Her mind
was travelling to another phase of the situation. “And there’s Dad. What
am I going to tell him? How am I going to explain it?”

“Tell him the truth. He’ll believe you.”

She felt a flare of irritation at his failure to understand. Of course
she would tell the truth to her father if it became necessary to tell
him anything, and equally of course he would believe her. That was not
the point she had in mind.

“You’re wrong about this hurting you much, Bubbles,” he went on to
argue. “If you were another kind of girl, less frank and open in all you
say and do——but people know you and won’t believe harm of you.
There’ll be some joking, if it happens to get out we had a smash—a
little fun about joy riders and torch bearers. That’s about all.”

“You’re ’way off,” she snapped. Her nerves were a bit overwrought, but
she was essentially fair-minded. After all, she was the victim of her
own folly rather than his. The blame lay at home. “You’d better do
something to that cut in your cheek, Win. It’s still bleeding. I’ll get
the thermos bottle.”

She stepped lightly toward the car, a slender exquisite creature with
the lilt of youth in her tread.

On the light breezes of the night a sound was carried to them. They
listened. It was the blare of a horn.

“A car coming,” Joyce cried eagerly.


                               CHAPTER II
                             “NO GENTLEMAN”

Ordway ran to the horn of his car and began sounding it.

A shaft of light leaped across the gulf of evergreen foliage. There was
a slither of locked wheels. An automobile came round the bend and slid
to a halt.

It was a cheap touring car. On the front seat sat two men.

Into the rays of the spotlight Ordway stepped, a clean-cut well-groomed
figure in the middle thirties. The close-shut mouth, hard resolute eyes,
and salient cleft chin were hall marks of character. They announced him
what he was—forceful, successful, and probably ruthless.

“I’ve had a smash. How about a lift to town?” he asked.

Arrow-swift came the answer from the driver. “No!”

“Down to the plains, then, if you’re not going to the city. I can pick
up a car at a ranch.”

Again that explosive “No.”

“What?” demanded the belated traveller sharply.

He was not easily disconcerted, but the roughness of the refusal took
him by surprise. There was a challenge in the voice, hostile,
acrimonious.

“I’m not taking passengers to-night,” the man behind the wheel said
curtly.

“It’s Mr. Ordway, Hallack,” the man beside the driver murmured. The
words were an explanation and a protest. They had back of them annoyance
and bewilderment. Why should Bob talk like this to one who sat in the
seats of the mighty and might some day be very useful to him?

“I see who it is,” the driver answered brusquely.

The value of Winthrop Ordway to the interests with which he was
affiliated lay largely in his versatility. He was a master of finesse,
but he could use the direct attack with brutal efficiency. Not the least
of the qualities which had carried him from the insecure position of a
financial freebooter to a place in the inner councils of the leaders of
Wall Street had been his audacity.

He walked quickly to the side of the car and looked up at the driver.
“Oh, it’s you!” There was something akin to contempt in the great man’s
voice.

The one to whom he spoke said nothing. He swung the spotlight round so
that it fell full on the handsome florid face, so strong, so arrogant,
and so complacent. What he found in it was a stark and pitiless
selfishness, a sinister force that expressed itself insolently in
success. He had battled with its potency and been beaten by it.

“I need your car. What are your terms?” Ordway asked crisply.

“I won’t do business with you.”

“I’ll buy it. What’s your price?”

“Not for sale.”

That the human eye is a prince of deadly weapons is a true word. The
steady regard with which each looked at the other was like the grinding
of rapiers, harsh and steely.

Nervously the third man broke in. He was small, with a mind cut on the
same pattern. If he had been a piece of merchandise the manufacturer
would have labelled him a second. It was a deep-rooted instinct of his
soul to bow down to wealth and power.

“There’s room enough for them behind, Bob,” he suggested, mentioning the
obvious.

The eyes of Ordway pivoted to him instantly. “Do you own the car?”

“No, Mr. Ordway. It’s Hallack’s car, but of course——” The sentence
died indefinitely. The thought behind it remained suspended in air,
amounted in fact to no more than vague apology and exasperation.

At a glance Ordway sized up his value as a factor in the situation. He
wiped him from the map and gave his attention wholly to the other.

When he spoke it was clear that his will was restraining an imperious
temper. “I have a lady with me,” he said in a low voice. “It is
necessary that she get back to town. She’s been out in the cold for
hours.”

In the darkness none could see the change that passed over Hallack’s
face at mention of the woman, the tightening behind closed teeth of
ropelike muscles in the lean cheeks.

“You can’t refuse to take her. You can’t leave her here to suffer,”
Ordway continued. “Whether you want to take her or not you’ll have to do
it.”

After a moment, Hallack: “Have I said I wouldn’t take her?”

“You said you wouldn’t carry passengers——”

“But nothing about a passenger.”

“I’m not splitting words. What are you driving at? Will you take us?”

“No.”

“What then?”

“I’ll take her, not you.”

A spark of anger flashed into the cold eyes of the financier. “You’ll
take her and leave her at the address I give?”

“When she’s my guest I’ll arrange details with her, Mr. Ordway,” the
younger man answered frigidly.

Ordway ripped out, his temper lost. “You’re a damned uncivil brute,
Hallack. I’d like to drag you down and thrash you till you can’t stand.”

The words had not died out of his mouth before the driver was beside
him.

“Soon as you like,” Hallack said with quiet ferocity, a dangerous light
blazing in the dark eyes.

The big man glared at him, battling back the lust of combat. He did not
accept the invitation. An impasse blocked the desire that surged up in
him. He owed something to the girl whom he had led into a compromising
situation. Her reputation must be protected. That was the first
obligation on him. It would be an idiotic thing to fight the man who had
it in his power either to help clear or tarnish this. Hallack was
trading on his necessities, but just now he had to put up with the
affront.

“I’ve got to stand your insolence,” he said in a low, thick voice.
“You’ll never know how much I’d give to lay hands on you, young fellow.
But it’s a luxury I can’t afford. I accept your offer. Take the lady
home and I’ll stay here with the car.”

Hands clenched in coat pockets drawn tightly forward over the hips,
Hallack laughed with bitter irony. “It’s lèse-majesté to oppose when
your royal highness gives orders. I ought to jump at the crack of the
whip as your slaves do. Too bad you can’t have me strung up by the
thumbs.”

“Maybe I can some day. I’ll live in hope,” Ordway flung back angrily.

Taken with a proper allowance of salt, the indictment thrown out by
Hallack was a true enough one. Ordway was in the habit of riding
roughshod over opponents and of driving subordinates to the limit. Back
of his restless energy was a flinty quality of moral fibre that
expressed itself callously. Enemies said that he was colour-blind in
points of rectitude, wholly unscrupulous in the weapons with which he
fought. It was not necessary to show that he was masterful. The evidence
of it rode in every word and gesture.

From the darkness of the wrecked car the young woman came into the
light. If anybody had been watching him closely Hallack might have been
seen to register surprise, as directors of the silent drama put it. This
was not the person he had expected to discover with Ordway.

She went straight to her friend. “What is it, Win? Doesn’t he want to
take us?”

“He’s a sulky devil and he’s got a grudge at me,” her companion
answered, not troubling to lower his voice. “You’ll have to go alone
with them.”

“And leave you here?”

“Yes. I’ll get in somehow before morning.”

A child of impulse, she spoke quickly now. “I’ll not go.”

Ordway drew her back toward his car to gain more privacy of speech.
“’Fraid you’ll have to, Joy,” he said. “You can’t stay here. It won’t
do.”

She knew it would not do, as well at least as he did. Facts and
probabilities marshalled themselves as arguments. But there was in her a
loyalty that rebelled against leaving in trouble the partner of her
escapade.

“Make him take you too. What’s the matter with him? It’s all nonsense
you staying here. I wouldn’t do it.”

The voice of Ordway fell to a murmur. He explained, without going into
detail, that it was wiser not to anger the fellow. She contended with
spirit. Stressed words flashed out of her sentences. It was easy to see
that her slim body was a dynamo of energy and will.

The other two were at work rolling the boulder from the road. Hallack
resented savagely the situation, its implications and obligations. He
did not want to help Ordway or any of his friends out of trouble. He did
not want to have anything to do with them. In his soul he carried scars
burned deep into his life from contact with him and his kind.

As to the girl, he was moved to no reaction of chivalrous feeling at her
plight any more than he was to gentleness at her young wilful beauty.
Clearly she was used to having her own way. Once she stamped her foot
with a flapper’s gusty temper. Yet, he judged, she was less crude than
the average of her years and sex. The flowerlike head was gracefully
poised. From the turban-bound coils of golden hair through which an
amethyst-headed pin was stabbed, to the firm but finely modelled ankles
she was wholly patrician, a product of a background of wealth and
leisure where she had been carefully and carelessly nourished.

The boulder hung on the edge of the embankment a moment before it
crashed down through the firs into the bed of the creek below. The
echoes of its descent reverberated from cliff to cliff.

As Hallack returned to the machine the girl moved quickly to meet him.

“Why won’t you take Mr. Ordway? You’ve got to let him go. He’s been
hurt. You can’t leave him here.” The words rang out, urgent and
imperious.

He smiled, cynically, with no warmth. “If Mr. Ordway will put it that
way—ask me to take him in because he’s hurt and afraid to be left
alone—I’ll rush him to a hospital. I wouldn’t leave a yellow dog if it
needed help.”

Ordway, coming forward into the light, told him bluntly where he might
go. He did not want any favours for himself. In the back of his mind was
another thought. It had occurred to him that perhaps it would be better
for the sake of appearances to send Joyce in and stay with the damaged
automobile.

“No—no!” she insisted. “I’ll not go without you.”

Ordway’s gloved hand caressed lightly her fur-clad shoulder. “Oh, yes,
Joy. It’ll be all right. I’d as soon stay as not.”

“I’m not going.” She flung her decision like a challenge at Hallack.

“Please yourself about that,” was his instant cold retort.

The man travelling with him spoke up, peevishly. “That’s foolish.”

“But it goes, Randall,” the younger man snapped.

“But why—why?” she demanded. “It’s outrageous. It’s hateful.”

“Yes?” he mocked.

“Nobody with any right feeling would do it. And Mr. Ordway hurt, too.”

“So dangerously wounded,” he jeered.

“Come, Joyce. Forget that part. I’m not hurt. It’s a scratch,” her
friend assured.

The girl’s attention was wholly concentrated on this stranger who stood
like a rock in the way of what she wished. She had not gone very far in
life yet. The inexorable force of it had been warded from her by wealth
and love. Always she had been able to get what she wanted when she set
her strong will to it. An opposition so senseless and so obdurate
irritated her.

Beside Ordway’s well-packed bulk the man looked slender. But with the
quick sure judgment of the outdoor girl she guessed him a trained
athlete. He had flung off his coat to work at the boulder, and as he
stood under the spotlight he showed brown and tough. There was in his
leanness no looseness of frame, no stringiness, no ill-nourished
muscles. Probably supple cords of steel moved lightly at command beneath
the firm flesh.

Her sense of baffled annoyance flashed into hot words. “If you claim to
be a gentleman—and I suppose you do——”

“I’m making no claims whatever, except that I own this car and mean to
decide who rides in it.”

“Well, will you let Mr. Ordway go with me?”

“I will not,” he answered stonily.

Her eyes were wells of glowing anger. “I never was treated so in my
life—never. Even though you’re not on good terms with Mr. Ordway—since
that’s what’s the matter with you, I suppose—if you have any
generosity, any——”

“I haven’t,” Hallack cut in with sardonic bitterness. “You’ll get along
faster if you just assume I’m no gentleman and let it go at that. Are
you going down with me or not?”

“No,” she flamed.

“Yes,” said Ordway.

She turned on her friend with the little touch of feminine petulance not
unbecoming in one of her age. “What do you think I am, Win? I’ll not go
and leave you here. I’ll not do it.”

“We’ve been all over that,” Ordway reminded her patiently, a friendly
smile on his bloodstained face. “I’m not hurt, I keep telling you. And
you’ve got to go. It’s best all round.”

He did not rehearse again the arguments to support his case. They raced
through her mind as she stood torn by doubt. He was right. She had to
go. For her father’s sake she must go, even if she herself had been
willing to face a scandal. And she was not. It was all very well to
laugh at the clacking tongues of the jealous when one had the upper hand
and was riding the top wave. But these tongues were whips of scorn to
the defenceless. She had once seen a woman at the Rocky Mountain Club
under the lash of a social condemnation that ignored her. She could see
her now, smiling resolutely to hide an aching heart, while former
acquaintances contrived to miss meeting her pathetically wistful
glances. Even a tenth part of such humiliation Joyce had no mind to
endure.

“I’ll go,” she said sulkily.


                              CHAPTER III
                   SWEET NINETEEN WRINKLES A FOREHEAD

Hallack stood back while Ordway brought a wrap from his own car. About
to take the seat beside that of the driver, Joyce hesitated an instant.
It was in her mind to reject the place and join Randall in the tonneau.
But her training had given her a touch of the hard worldly finish of the
modern débutante. She was not going to let this detestable man who had
declared himself no gentleman think that she was daunted by his
rudeness. Moreover, she was cold and it would be warmer in front.

“Call me up in the afternoon, Win. Auction at the Stantons, you know.”
Ordway had finished tucking the rug about her. Their eyes were locked
together and sending wordless messages.

“Yes,” he said significantly. “Don’t worry. Get your sleep out, Joy. You
need rest.”

Under the hood the starter was giving forth jerky protests. The driver
had taken his seat and was plainly anxious to be off.

“I won’t,” she promised. “Good luck. And tie up your cheek.”

The engine purred. The wheels turned. Joyce looked back and saw Ordway
swallowed in the black void they left in their rear.

The car flew down the mountain road, its driver intent on the immediate
business before him. The automobile was light, inclined to skid and jump
the track. There were places where the road had been blasted into the
quartz. This was ice-coated and very slippery. If Hallack carried chains
he did not stop to adjust them.

Always close beside them ran the gorge, a misty pit of bottomless depth
throwing out a sinister threat of disaster. Joyce sat on the side next
the chasm. When they swept around curves and the lights flung a glare of
white brightness into the upper voids of the cañon a tingle of
excitement ran through her. A driver herself, she knew the peril of
mountain travel with reckless hands at the wheel. This man was an
expert. She could feel it in his touch, in the certainty with which he
took the dangerous spots. But he drove fast, and as the car lunged into
the black emptiness ahead she had the feeling that each instant they
were coming to the edge of the world and were about to leap off.

She sat tight, offered no protest, let no small cry of alarm escape her
during the ten-mile plunge down to the plains. Indeed she responded to
its thrills, nerves stimulated to high tension. There were moments when
the excitation of the senses keyed her to a psychosis bordering on
apprehension. The rush of the night air, the darkness ahead, the close
risk, all contributed to give zest to the ride.

For a mountain road the Box Elder one was good. It had been surfaced
with disintegrated sandstone taken from the immediate vicinity. But even
while Joyce was congratulating herself on this they struck an ice glaze
and the back wheels skidded out.

It was touch and go, but Hallack apparently never had an instant of
doubt. He knew exactly what his car could be depended on to do, and with
sure skill he swung it time and again back to the road.

The passenger counted herself a good sport. It was her pride that she
played the game. She rode and swam well, turned in a rather low golf
score, and was the best tennis player among the women of her set at the
Country Club. From these athletic pursuits she had taken on an outdoor
point of view on the surface at least essentially masculine. Native
courage and a certain downright candour contributed to make her what she
was, one of more independent cast of mind than most of those with whom
she associated.

All night she had felt herself lifted on the wave of an adventure. It
had been with her through the dinner and dance at Mountain Crest, and it
had swept her into the mad prank of a joy ride with Winthrop Ordway. The
smash had brought her back to earth, but she found herself rising to the
swell of it again.

It was this quality of effervescence in her spirits that made the name
Joy so appropriate, though with their accustomed perversity her flapper
friends preferred to call her Bubbles. It expressed for them that state
of mind which set her skipping sometimes on the mountain-tops of
delight. At such hours emotions rode her, swept her into unwise
decisions. She was now the victim of one of these impulses.

After Hallack guided the car through the gateway of the cañon to the
plains her elation died and gave place to the inevitable reaction. She
was in a pickle, or she would be if the story got out. What had
possessed her, after leaving the lodge at Mountain Crest, to let
Winthrop Ordway swing into the hills to cross Ramshorn Pass instead of
making him take her home with the others through Red Cañon? The sensible
thing would have been to run straight back to town.

Second thoughts were often wiser ones with her, but the trouble was that
she seldom waited to take them. Before they had gone a hundred yards she
felt she had made a mistake, but her pride made her reluctant to
acknowledge it. She was afraid Winthrop and the people in the other cars
might laugh at her for a quitter.

He had promised to get her home soon after the others. None the less it
had been an error to go racing over the moonlit hills with him long
after midnight for a fifty-mile detour. She had done it, she supposed,
because the exhilaration of her spirits craved expression in the freedom
of that rush through a world of dim and sleeping mountains. It did not
occur to her that the primary motive might have been the fascination
exerted over her by Ordway’s splendid vitality.

Of course, some version of the story would get out. She was too
conspicuous in her small world to escape. It would be discovered that
she had not got home till morning, and all the tongues she despised
would start clacking. Her cheeks burned at the thought of it. She would
hold her head up and there would be no open scandal. It would all be
discreet whispering. But her name would be smirched. There were plenty
of people ready to believe the worst of her. It had not been the first
of her indiscretions by many, but she was afraid it would turn out to be
the most disastrous.

It was characteristic of Joyce that the thought of her father distressed
her most. She could dismiss the others with an impatient “Oh, well,
what’s done is done; a joy ride’s only a joy ride.” But she could not do
that with Jarvis Elliott.

He was never a man to scold or to give her many directions as to the
ordering of her life. But he had distinctly gone out of his way to warn
her about Winthrop Ordway. He had said nothing about the fact that
Ordway was the most prominent of his business enemies and was leading
the combination to defeat the construction of the railroad upon which he
was engaged. That no doubt had been in the back of his mind. Perhaps he
had thought her disloyal, but he had not implied it. The few curt
sentences he had spoken had referred wholly to the reputation of the man
in his relations with women. He knew nothing about the facts, he
admitted, but no girl could afford to be seen much with one about whom
such things were said. She had better give him up.

Joyce understood that his advice held the quality of a command. But it
had caught her at an unfortunate time, while she was in the grip of one
of her swift, eager enthusiasms. Ordway was different from the slangy
slick-haired boys she had known. He was bigger, harder, altogether more
forceful and vigorous. About him was a glamour of success, of a fighting
and perhaps not altogether blameless past, of a future that might carry
him to the top rung in the struggle for supremacy. He was so sure of
himself that he made others sure. It flattered her that he had offered
her comradeship and was, she guessed, going to ask her to be his wife.
She liked him. How much, she did not know, but she was sure it was a
lot. He had a way with women.

So she had let herself go with him. The fascination had grown, and she
had been seen with him everywhere. This had been easier because her
father had been called back to New York on financial matters connected
with the funding of the cut-off. He had returned only two days before.
Mrs. Antwerp, her chaperon, was a kindly old lady with no control
whatever over the wilful tempestuous girl.

Joyce wondered if her father would hear about this foolish frolic. She
was afraid he would. He knew a good deal more than he mentioned as to
what she was doing. And if he heard about it, how seriously would he
regard it?

Not a word had been spoken since the car had started in the cañon. They
were drawing near the city when Joyce took note of this. She glanced at
the sombre young man beside her and her resentment stirred at his
indifference. He was no negligible personality. The lean, clean-cut
face, so dark and sardonic, belonged to one of at least potential mark.
Why his insolence to her when she had asked a favour? Why his cool
dismissal of her now as one with whom he did not care to talk? Heaven
knew she did not want to talk with him, that if he gave her a chance she
would snub him promptly. But that was no reason for ignoring her. She
had always been the centre of her world. It was her heritage and the
achievement of her individuality. She accepted attention as a matter of
right. What was the matter with the stick?

If she had been able to read Hallack’s thoughts they would have
surprised her. He had not the remotest idea who she was, but he would
have hazarded a bet that she was a spoiled child of fortune unable to
pay her way in the world by doing a single useful thing. She looked a
hothouse plant, delicate and dainty and disturbing, an orchid of a rare
variety developed at great cost. Such women moved him to exasperation,
deeper for a recent bitter experience through which he had passed.

Yet curiously there ran through his disapproval an undercurrent of
reluctant admiration. He did not look once at her. But he saw the lovely
head set proudly above the small white throat. An impression renewed
itself in his mind that nature had with soft caress modelled the light
body lovingly, alive to all the infinite seductions of grace and charm.

They drew into the suburbs of the city and crossed a long viaduct.

“Where shall I leave you?” Hallack asked with businesslike curtness.

“About Third and Williams, if it won’t take you too far out of your
way.”

He followed a boulevard along the bank of a stream for a mile until he
came to the Country Club district. In the grey light of coming day he
could see dimly a putting green to the right. Beyond this, he knew, was
the polo field, hidden in pre-dawn mists.

“I’ll get out here,” the girl said abruptly.

“Thought you said Williams and Third.”

“This suits me better.”

When he had stopped the car she stepped out, said a formal and ironic
“Thank you,” and turned on her heel.

The engine was still running, but Hallack did not engage the clutch. His
dissatisfied eyes followed her light-stepping progress to the sidewalk.
He did not like to leave a woman, almost a girl, alone in the silent
street at this time of night. But if he offered to see her home he knew
she would turn on him and joyfully flay him.

“Hadn’t you better go with her, Randall?” he suggested.

The older man—in point of fact the chief under whom he was
working—negatived the proposal. “No. She had you put her off here so we
wouldn’t know who she is or where she’s going. That young woman knows
her way about. I expect she’s been hitting it up lively with Ordway and
has to cover her tracks. Did you notice that soulful look they gave each
other just before we started? They’ve got their alibi all fixed up
probably, but he’ll call her up like he said to make sure it’s getting
across and they’re not getting their wires short-circuited. It won’t
look any too good if it gets out she reached town after five in the
morning from an all-night joy ride with him. I don’t know much about
society folks but I guess even they have to draw the line somewhere,”
the little man surmised.

Hallack listened gloomily without comment.

“Where’d she been with him anyhow?” went on Randall. “What business has
a girl of her age being out with a fellow like Ordway at three o’clock
in the morning—joy riding alone with him away up in the hills? What are
her folks thinking about? Haven’t they got any sense? Don’t they look
after her at all?”

The man at the wheel had no answer. He had asked himself the same
questions. Were these audacious flappers of the new age innocent in
spite of their shrewd, hard wordliness, their incessant hunt for
pleasure? Or had civilization really slipped a cog and abolished all the
old standards of virtue and decency?

Swiftly the car rolled along the silent street into another flanked by
expensive houses set spaciously in ample grounds. After a time it struck
a section of smaller homes packed closer together and from this ran into
a crosstown thoroughfare which brought them to their hotel.

They entered and registered, leaving the car at the curb.

Ten minutes later Hallack was asleep.


                               CHAPTER IV
                    “WHERE THE BROOK AND RIVER MEET”

Joyce crossed the boulevard and moved up a side street. The day was
still very young, if it could be said to be day at all. Over the street
and the houses bordering it the impalpable atmosphere of night hung
heavy. The grey sifting into the sky was scarcely more than a promise of
light.

A milk wagon, with a lantern hanging close to the hand of the driver,
rattled across the street and into an alley just before she reached it.
Halfway up the second block she cut across a lawn, skirted the corner of
a big house, and stopped directly under a second-story window.

She hesitated. It had seemed at long range a simple thing to come here
and rouse her friend, so much wiser than to face the curious blank-faced
servants at home, but now that the moment had come she grew panicky.
Suppose the butler should hear her instead of Louise, or suppose it
should be Mr. Durand, or even Mrs. Durand. What explanation could she
give that would suffice? She could see incredulous suspicion freeze the
face of her chum’s father when she told him that Ordway’s car had broken
down in the hills. Her acquired reputation for recklessness, for disdain
of conventions, would serve her ill now.

She wished she had not come, but wishing it, could think of no
alternative that would be better. In any case, she had to go through
with it now. She could not stay here till daylight or go wandering
through the streets.

From the drive, after an ineffective little shout or two, she gathered a
handful of gravel and threw it at the window above.

“Wese! Wese!” she called in a sibilant whisper.

No answer. Apparently all the world and his neighbour were sunk fathoms
deep in sleep. Again her voice sounded, and again, at intervals, for
several minutes.

She flung more gravel at the unresponsive window. Her voice was no
longer a whisper. It held a note of anxious shrillness. Was she going to
spend the rest of her life trying to waken Louise?

In despair she gave up, then more resolutely tried again.

From a third-story window a head appeared.

“What is it?” a sleepy voice wanted to know.

Joyce recognized it as belonging to a housemaid. “Will you come down and
let me in, Katie?” she asked.

“Who is it?”

“Joyce Elliott. I’m locked out. Hurry, please.”

The head was withdrawn. It seemed many hours before the door opened, all
of them compressed within five minutes.

Miss Elliott thought it well to give a careless sketchy explanation of
the cause for her being here. “Thanks, Katie. I’ll go to Louise’s room.
You needn’t come with me. Car broke down and kept us all for hours.
Awf’ly cold.”

“Yes, miss.” The maid’s voice was deferential, but for an instant in her
eyes was a fugitive flicker of sly mockery. She had the downstairs
suspicion of those whom she was paid to serve. The story would, Joyce
knew, be all over the servants’ quarters before breakfast.

“Thought we never would get away. Dreadful nuisance.” Joyce yawned
elaborately, to suggest a stupid time among a group of stranded people.

“Yes, miss.” Katie smoothed her tousled hair and gathered the dressing
gown closer to her. “You never can tell with them automobiles.”

They separated at the stairs, the maid to take the back way. Joyce had a
sinking sensation in the neighbourhood of the heart. She had scored her
first failure. Katie was too demure, too decorous. She believed what she
believed, and it was not the version that had been given her.

“Good of you to let me in. I’ll remember it,” Joyce said with a little
smiling nod of dismissal.

She took the treads softly and moved gingerly along the dark hall,
keeping contact with the wall by the touch of an outstretched hand.
Louise had the third room on the right. Finding the door knob, she
turned it slowly and noiselessly. She stepped into the room and closed
the door behind her.

A girl lay asleep on the bed, her slim body resting on one side, an arm
outflung over the coverlid which was moulded to the shape of her slender
limbs.

Joyce moved forward quickly, took the hand in hers, gave it a little
pressure, and whispered “Wese.”

Brown eyes, dewy and filmed with sleep, struggled open and fastened
themselves, startled, on Joyce.

“Why, Bubbles! You here? I thought——”

“I’ve had rotten luck, Wese. The car broke down in Box Elder Cañon.
Thought it better to come here than to go home. Just got to town.”

Louise glanced at the radium-faced clock on the dressing table. That
look brought her wide awake with the information it gave. “Hot dog! It’s
past five.” She sat up, one side of the small face flushed where the
pillow had pressed it. “Whereever have you been? Why, it’s been _ages_
and _ages_ since I got home.”

Her friend nodded. “Yes. First it was tire trouble. Then we had a smash
in Box Elder Cañon, as I said. Just wrecked the car.” A ghost of a smile
twitched at the sweet mouth whimsically. “I expect Winthrop’s still
there blessing the man who left him.”

“Didn’t he come back with you?” Louise laced her fingers round two small
knees. The filmy nightdress, clinging to the lines of the form, brought
out the immature contours of throat and bosom.

“Did you hop off and _fly_ back?”

Italicized words had a way of leaping out of her sentences impetuously.
She was a piquant and colourful young person, usually very much alive
from the small dancing feet to the small dancing eyes.

“Two men came along in a flivver—civil engineer kind of men, or
something of that kind, though one of ’em wasn’t a bit civil. He had a
grudge at Win and wouldn’t bring him in. I told Mr. Man a few things
about himself.”

“I’ll bet you did,” the girl in the bed agreed promptly.

Joyce was in process of undressing. Her fingers were busy as she talked.
“But I didn’t get very far. He put me out of court by saying he wasn’t a
gentleman anyhow and it didn’t matter what I said.”

“The plot thickens,” declaimed Louise, and she flashed a quick sidelong
look at her friend. “What _time_ was it when this grouch with the tin
Lizzie rescued you? Pajamas in that lower drawer there, kiddie.”

Joyce took her time to answer. She was rummaging in the chiffonier. “It
was a scandalacious hour, Wese. I’m trying to forget it.—Where’s the
coat that goes with this pink suit? Oh, here it is.—Of all the fool
things I ever did, that was the craziest, to go scooting over the hills
with Win Ordway at that time of night.”

“I’ll say it was,” agreed Louise cheerfully. “I’ve been on petting
parties of my own. I claim to be some speed, but Winthrop Ordway, in the
wee a.m.’s—going some, if you ask Wese. It’s not as if you didn’t know
his line. Everybody does.”

“Oh, his line!”

“’S all right,” Louise defended, nodding her wise little head. “All the
samey, you know it. How long is it since Tessie Barnes——?”

Indignantly Joyce remonstrated. “If you’re going to class me with Tessie
Barnes——”

“I’m not, but you have enemies, my che-ild. You ought to have seen
Esther Dare lift her eyebrows and smile when you two started up the hill
road. She made a _scandal_ out of it without a word said.”

“Oh, well, you know Esther! A thimbleful of brains and no judgment.”

“Yes,” admitted Louise, and added in the slang of her set: “A necker
too. But don’t forget she can talk a mile a minute.”

Joyce laughed ruefully, buttoning the coat of the pajamas round her
slender supple body. “Hope she doesn’t find out when I got in.”

“Oh, she will. Make your mind uneasy about that.” The brown eyes of the
girl in bed rested on her friend thoughtfully. Joyce was and had been
for some weeks carrying on a desperate flirtation with Ordway. How much
was back of it? Did she know exactly how far she meant to go? Louise had
a good deal of the gamin in her and something of the faun. She was in
for a good time and knew how to look after herself. It was in character
for her to be a hard and wary young nymph. But Joyce—well, she had a
way of letting her emotions and enthusiasms run riot. She was perhaps
too generous in friendship, not out for herself enough.

“You’re a Job’s comforter, whatever that is.”

Louise hugged her knees with her arms and rested an impudent little chin
on them. “I like speed myself, and nobody can say I’m a gloom. But
you’re such a _fast_ worker, Bubbles, so full of the devil when you get
started. You’re keen.” A little laugh welled out of her, a blend of
admiration and expostulation. “You step on the gas _hard_, I’ll say.”

Slipping on a negligee, Joyce sat down before the glass, shook out her
hair, and began to comb it. “I do let myself get carried away
sometimes,” she admitted judicially. “But if you think Winthrop Ordway’s
trying his line on me you’ve got another guess coming. Far as that goes,
you don’t like to miss anything yourself, Wese.”

“Ye-es, but I don’t let my temperature run up. I pop a thermometer into
my mouth whenever I suspect myself of it.”

“I pull up too once in a blue moon, you know.”

“It’s not what you do, Bubbles. It’s the way you do it,” Louise
explained. “You’re such a whirlwind, and you never stop to think how a
thing will _look_. I’m crazy enough, goodness knows, and I go petting
lots more than you do, but you get so kinda _carried away_ when you’re
having a good time. Everybody thinks you’re a whiz, and of course people
talk.”

“I can’t keep stupid people from talking, can I?” Joyce asked
impatiently. “Is it my fault if they think horrid things?”

“It is, and it isn’t,” the wise little flapper decided. She let the
question uppermost in her mind flash out. “Did you go to his chalet on
Ramshorn?”

Joyce answered, without equivocation. “Yes.”

Her friend wagged a small head sagely. “That’s you, Bubbles. You go and
do a crazy thing; then when someone asks you about it you tell the truth
instead of fibbing.”

“Why should I fib? We only stopped to get a rifle Win wanted.”

“Do you expect anybody’s going to believe that?” Louise asked bluntly.
She added an exclamation of meaningless flapper slang: “Sweet mamma,
take my hat and shoes!”

“Wese Durand, you pig-minded little snip, if you think——”

“I don’t, and you know I don’t,” interrupted the philosopher on the bed.
“I _know_ you. But you can’t get away with that story—not with folks
who _want_ to think the worst. Forget it. You never went near that Swiss
chalet.”

“I didn’t mean to scatter the information broadcast,” Joyce explained.

“Don’t. It’ll only get you into trouble. I’m a clam. Lucky you didn’t
tell someone else.”

Joyce protested indignantly. “It’d be pretty rotten of any one to think
I can’t go driving with a man without harm.”

Momentarily Louise changed the subject. “Who let you in?”

“Katie. I suppose she’ll talk.”

“Will she? Like a house afire.”

“Oh, well!”

“It was kinda foolish of you,” Louise ruminated aloud. “Honest Injun,
Bubbles, has Winthrop Ordway got you going?”

“Not so you’d notice it,” Joyce answered quietly.

“Course you’d _say_ that. But _has_ he?”

“I wonder.”

“Don’t blame you a bit. I’m _crazy_ about him too. If it was a bit of
use I’d vamp him. Let him crook a finger and I’d come running.” Louise
always spoke in superlatives. Her friend understood that she meant only
to indicate an interest in Ordway. “But what’s the use? I hang
around—and _look_—and _look_—and he doesn’t know I’m on earth.”

“Shall I tell him?” Joyce asked, an edge of satiric humour in her voice.

“Absolutively no use.”

“He may wake up some day and discover you. Winthrop doesn’t miss many
bets of that kind. He’s a big man—the biggest I know except Dad—and
he’ll go a long way before he gets through. But——”

“Are _you_ going with him on that long journey, dearie?” Louise asked in
the interests of information.

“I was saying, when you interrupted with your impertinence, my dear,
that he does like to be admired by attractive and attracted young women.
He purrs like a sleek cat when you feed it cream.”

“I’m an attracted young woman all rightie, but am I an attractive one?”
Louise wanted to know, a smile twitching at the sweet spoiled mouth that
expressed her careless and audacious personality.

“You’ll do in a crowd.”

The girl in bed watched the comb passing through long, heavy ripples of
wavy gold. She yawned sleepily.

“You do have the _loveliest_ hair, Bubbles. I don’t see how you take
care of so much the easy way you do. Mine’s a mop.” Her mind had strayed
from that most interesting theme of the young girl’s thoughts, _He_ and
_She_, but it switched back promptly. “You’re the funniest _ever_. If a
man was rushing me off my feet the way Winthrop Ordway is you, such a
whiz as he is—and if I went around with him everywhere like you do—and
got myself talked about for him, I couldn’t any more sit back and pick
him to pieces——”

From her father Joyce had inherited a mind that faced facts, an
imperative to look at people and things clear-eyed and straight. She
would be swept into an instant friendship, but she could, given time,
detach herself and watch her friends as part of the passing show. For
one of her ardent temperament it was a rare and saving gift. More than
once it had made her pull up one of her impulses with a tight rein while
in full tilt.

She stifled a yawn. “Is it so funny that I use my eyes and my brains,
Wese? That’s what they’re supposed to be for, you know.”

Joyce put out the light and crept into bed beside her chum.

“You’re cold, you poor kid,” Louise said, her soft warm body cuddling
close. “I don’t wonder—up all night in that _horrible_ gulch.” Her
velvet-smooth arms tightened around the neck of her friend in a tender
little hug. “Don’t you worry, Bubbles. I’ll swear on a stack of hymn
books you got in soon after I did.”

“You’re a dear,” murmured Joyce drowsily.

The arms of Louise relaxed and fell away. The two snuggled into
comfortable positions and began to breathe regularly and deeply. They
fell asleep, these charming young creatures not so many years emergent
from the chrysalis of childhood.

Types of that amazing complex, the American girl of good family, they
were paradoxes full of contradiction. Least of all did they understand
themselves. It was impossible for them to realize why they were such a
problem to the older generation. Innocent yet full of shrewd worldly
wisdom; flippant and audacious, and cherishing in their heart’s
sanctuary an unconquerable belief in romance; soft and sensuous, but
hard as nails; tricky as fauns, yet responsive to a rigid though
peculiar code of their own; pampered and spoiled, still holding within
them an unsuspected capacity for sacrifice that is the inheritance of
their sex: they were Twentieth-century variants of all the daughters of
Eve, modern to their fingertips, sophisticated to the _n_th power—and
primitive as those who walked in the forgotten childhood of the race.

A strange complex, surely! The standards of their sex and class that had
been building for generations they tossed carelessly away. Experience
began with them, in their own persons. It ended with them. Were they
products of their environment—of relaxation due to war weariness, of
the moving picture and jazz and the automobile, of a slow loosening of
moral fibre going on for generations? Were they merely the extreme
expression of world-wide pathological conditions? Or is the swing of the
pendulum about to carry back to types of earlier days?

Who knows?


                               CHAPTER V
                      WESE HAS AN ATTACK OF POETRY

The clock on the dressing table was striking twelve when Louise stirred,
turned, flung out her lean arms in a yawn, and opened drowsy eyes.

Joyce, sitting at an end table, hung up the telephone receiver. She wore
a pair of her friend’s mules and over the pajamas a negligee. There was
a look of comical dismay on her mobile face.

“I’m in for it, Wese. Called up the house to let ’em know where I am.
Been talking with Aunt Ant.” Thus she designated with affectionate
disrespect her chaperon, Mrs. Antwerp. “She says Dad’s hot on my trail.
He ’phoned everywhere this morning and found I’m here. Soon as I wake
I’m to call him up at the office.”

“What’ll he do?” asked Louise. She was a loyal little soul, but she was
human. If her friend was in a pickle she naturally wanted to get all the
enjoyment out of it she could.

“Good gracious! How do I know? Paddle me. Put me on bread and water.
Stand me in a corner. Shut me in a dark closet.”

“I’d hate to have him get after me. He’s so—so rod-of-ironish. What is
it they called those old Roman fellows who put out their kidlets to
freeze to death so’s they’d grow up strong—Spartans?”

“I won’t exactly enjoy my little talk with him,” Joyce admitted
ruefully. “But I’ve got to buck up and go through with it.”

She reached for the telephone again.

“Main 222, please. . . . Oh, is this Mr. Smithers? I want to speak with
Dad. . . . Yes, Joyce Elliott. . . . If you please. . . . Joyce talking,
Dad. . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . I’ll be there . . .”

“What’d he say?” demanded Louise as soon as her friend had hung up.

“Not much, but, my! the way he said it. I’m to meet him at his office
this afternoon at three.”

“But we’re going to the Stantons.”

The face of Joyce bubbled to a smile that momentarily filled it. She had
a way of doing things thoroughly, with all her might, of throwing
herself wholly into the emotion of the hour.

“You’re going to the Stanton’s, my dear. A subsequent engagement for me.
I’d like to catch myself telling Dad I couldn’t come when he calls me up
on the carpet and giving as a reason a bridge drive at the Stanton’s.”

“Maybe you can come when he’s through with you—if there’s enough of you
left. . . . Wonder if Winthrop Ordway is back yet.”

“He’s to call me up.”

“To find out whether you got safely home with the ice man or the garage
helper or whoever he is,” Louise added, twisting her small-featured face
to a grimace. “Did you try to vamp him on the way, by the way?”

“He was horrid. I didn’t say a word to him.”

“But that _would_ be a good line,” her friend persisted, struck by its
possibilities. “If you didn’t go too far with it. Think I’ll try a crush
on that Viking at the filling station. I might get a whang out of that.
Isn’t he a _splendiferous_ thing? And probably _heaps_ more interesting
than Jimmie. I’m fed up with _him_. There’s not a surprise left in him
for me. I know him from A to Z. Two minutes before he means to kiss me
I’m reading his signals.”

“Tableau of Wese Durand giving Jimmie Stanton the bounce. Tableau of
Wese snaring another poor man,” prophesied Joyce. “Let’s dress, baby
vamp. I’ve a million things to do to-day.”

She passed lightly to the bathroom, her slender athletic body perfectly
poised. From it she emerged, glowing, radiant, tingling with life.

Joyce had perhaps overstated the case when she had spoken of a million
things to do that day, but the remark was essentially true. The tired
business man does not work half as hard as the American girl of leisure.
She begins her day late, but to make up for that she ends it early.
About midnight she blithely says, “It’s a peach of a night. Where’ll we
go now?”

As all the world knows, she has been travelling fast since the War; but
not even the wisest can answer, except in an immediate sense, her own
question as to where she is going. She is blasé, but her sophistication
is skin deep. She cannot help letting a gay enthusiasm sparkle out of
her when she forgets her pose. It is born of her enduring faith in
romance waiting for her just around the corner. To-morrow is always for
her a new day. Meanwhile, she is wholly occupied with the present one.

They reached the luncheon table late, for breakfast. Louise was full of
chatter. She hardly gave her mother a chance to get in an occasional
word. It was the easiest way of parrying inconvenient questions. Like
many of our present-day mothers, Mrs. Durand had a very vague
understanding of her daughter. The glimpses she had into the soul of
that eager, vivid, restless bundle of contradictions perplexed and
disturbed her. She shrank from learning too much about the girl’s
activities and her reactions to them, even though from a sense of duty
she tried to keep herself informed.

“What time did you get home, Wese?” Mrs. Durand managed to interject in
a pause.

“The clock does not strike for the happy, Mother. See Schiller,
third-term German, Scrafford teacher. ’Member how she used to take off
her glasses and say, ‘_Young ladies_,’ Bubbles?” Louise, with a
grapefruit spoon to represent the pince-nez, gave an elaborate and
finished imitation.

Presently Mrs. Durand returned to the attack. “Katie says she let you in
this morning, Joyce. Didn’t you all come home together?”

“Oh, cars get separated, Mother.” Louise shrugged this away as of small
importance. “Mr. Ordway had tire trouble.”

“What time did you say you got in, Joyce?”

“Oh, Mother darling!” protested her daughter, and plunged into another
lead of poetry that providentially jumped to her mind:

      “‘We live in deeds, not years, in thoughts, not breaths;
      In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
      We should count time by heart throbs.’

English Three, Senior year, Miss Reynolds. Aren’t you glad I didn’t
waste all that money you and Dad spent to make a perfect lady out of me,
Muzzy?”

“You’re talking nonsense, Wese. I’ve asked two questions, and you
haven’t answered either of them.”

“We got home early, Mother. That is, kinda late. You know how crazy a
crowd gets about sticking around, and the moon was _scrumptious_.”
Louise rather fancied the poetic inspiration as a distraction. She
declaimed once more.

                 “‘’Tis the witching hour of night,
                 Orbed is the moon and bright,
                 And the stars they glisten, glisten,
                 Seeming with bright eyes to listen—
                   For what listen they?’

Keats. English Three. Again Reynolds.”

Joyce read in Mrs. Durand’s manner a quiet determination to find out the
facts. She decided it was better to face the situation rather than to
try to dodge it.

“Wese got in about two o’clock,” she explained. “We had an accident—ran
into the wall of the cañon—and we didn’t get a lift for a long time. I
got in after five.”

“So Katie said. Anybody hurt?”

“Mr. Ordway was cut a little—not seriously.”

“How many were in the car?”

“Just the two of us.”

“Oh!” The monosyllable was eloquent of meaning. “Where did you say the
accident took place?”

“Mother strikes a trail and follows it to a funeral,” Louise said with a
giggle meant to decentralize attention.

“In the gorge,” Joyce answered the matron. “It was awf’ly dark. We swung
round a curve and there was a boulder in the road. Mr. Ordway had to run
into the side of the road to miss it. He smashed a wheel.”

“Did the boulder fall after the other cars had passed?”

“We came home another way—down Box Elder.”

“Across Ramshorn Pass and through the cañon?”

“Yes.”

Mrs. Durand fell silent, and in that silence Joyce felt that judgment
was being passed. She wished her friend’s mother would scold her for
what she had done, would fuss in a motherly way over her folly. Instead
she let the fact stand frigidly.

Louise rushed into small talk to cover the embarrassment, but Joyce was
wretchedly aware that Mrs. Durand was busy with thoughts.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The girl carried to the interview with her father a sense of being
already under condemnation.

This did not show in her manner. She parked the car and walked, a
glowing picture of arrogant youth, into the outer office of the Mile
High Investment Company. Her little heels clicked firmly on the tiled
floor. She held high the small golden head. A delicate colour glowed
through the creamy silk sheen of the cheeks.

“I have an appointment with Dad, you know,” she told her father’s
secretary.

Smithers was middle-aged and subdued. He had a militant wife and two
up-and-coming daughters. “He’s busy just now, Miss Elliott, but he said
you were to wait.”

The door of the inner office opened. Joyce rose and moved forward. A man
came out, the one who had driven her down from Box Elder Cañon a few
hours earlier. On his face was the look of one who has just come into a
fortune.

The girl and the man stared at each other as they passed without a word.
It would be difficult to say which was the more surprised at the
meeting. Joyce did not give him another glance as she stepped toward the
desk behind which her father was standing.

They faced each other for a long moment in a steady silence, Jarvis
Elliott and his daughter. At first sight the relationship between them
was not apparent. The contrast between the grim railroad builder and
this pampered child of his wealth was striking. The slender grace of the
girl, her lovely golden charm, seemed to hold little in common with his
rugged strength. What freak of nature was responsible for so alien an
offspring to this man of iron?

In the grizzled sixties though Elliott was, he stood foursquare as a
grey mediæval castle. In frame he was heavy but not tall. Long arms hung
from very broad deep shoulders. The head, magnificent in the impression
of poised power it gave, was leonine. Keen eyes gleamed from under
shaggy overhanging brows. One glance told that he was a man’s man.

Yet, oddly enough, a close observer would have found in Joyce some part
of her inheritance from Jarvis Elliott. She had his steady eyes, though
the colouring was different. There was something of his force, of his
courage, in the upstanding way she faced him even though he was the one
person in the world she feared. It was plain she did not intend to
resort to any feminine plea for mercy, to the weakness of tears. And
that was characteristic of Joyce, always had been since the days of her
childhood.

“You wanted to see me, Father?” she said at last.

He walked to the door and closed it.

“Sit down,” he said brusquely.


                               CHAPTER VI
                       “WILL YOU STAND THE GAFF?”

Hallack had put in a call with the night clerk for eight-fifteen. It
seemed to him that he had not been asleep a minute before the room
telephone began to buzz. Just three hours earlier he had tumbled into
bed.

He took his bath, shaved, dressed, and was in an adjoining restaurant
within twenty-five minutes. Here Randall joined him. The older man was
still heavy-eyed with sleep, and he brought with him an early-morning
grouch. He was past the age—if there ever had been such a time for
him—when he could work all day and drive all night without impairing
his vitality.

The glance he flung at the clear-eyed brown-faced man opposite him
reflected an irritation born of fatigue and envy. Beneath the tan a warm
colour glowed in Hallack’s cheeks. He was wearing laced boots, corduroy
suit, and flannel shirt, all of them the worse for service. But he was
one of those men who can come out of a manhole looking clean and fresh.

“Don’t you ever get tired, dammit?” Randall growled as he picked up the
bill of fare.

His assistant laughed at this characteristic greeting. Still hardly
thirty, he had an iron constitution and an inordinate capacity for work.
He could go till he was ready to drop, snatch two or three hours sleep,
and buckle to the job again with zest for another grilling stretch.

“You’d think Elliott would have more consideration than to drag us down
here in the night,” continued the smaller man testily. “That’s always
the way with big guns like him. They’re slave drivers—don’t care how
much trouble they put other people to. You had it right when you told
Ordway that, though it was a fool thing to do.” He snapped at the
waitress, “Coffee—oatmeal and cream—hot cakes.”

“Elliott’s looking at the job, not at us,” Hallack suggested. “You’ve
got to say for him that he never spares himself either. In a way he’s
paying us a compliment by assuming we’re not giving him an eight-hour
day.”

“Hmp!” snapped the other. “If he wants to pay me a compliment I’d rather
he would raise my salary.”

“Jarvis Elliott is the kind of man I like to work for,” the younger
engineer went on. “He thinks big and plans big. Take this road. It gets
a grip of you. When you’re working on it you feel some of his great
vision. To throw a railroad across the Rockies where the best engineers
of the country say it can’t be done, to cut two hundred miles from the
transcontinental route, to open up a vast virgin region to settlement
and make it tributary to this city—that’s a marvellous dream.”

“You’ve said it—a dream,” grumbled Randall. “Can’t be done.”

“It can. I’ll put my faith in Jarvis Elliott. He dreams, and translates
his dreams into reality. That’s the difference between him and a fellow
like Ordway, say. Ordway keeps his cold fishy eyes on the dollar. He’s
thinking all the time about himself. Not Elliott, though. He could make
far more money if he didn’t take chances. But he’s gambling—gambling
big for the state and city he loves.”

“That’s the way you interpret him.” Randall smiled with cynical
amusement. There were not many visions left in life for him.

“That’s the way I interpret him,” Hallack agreed. “He’s not the richest
man in the state, but he’s by all odds its first citizen. If he were
playing his own hand he’d divert his money into the usual financial
channels—play safe. But that wouldn’t be Elliott. He’s an empire
builder.”

“He’s got you buffaloed, anyhow, Bob. I’m not knocking him, you
understand. He’s all right, and I’m not telling everyone I think he’s
bit off more than he can chew,” Randall explained with returning good
nature. “Why should I worry, anyhow, so long as he pays my salary?”

“I know you, Fred,” his subordinate grinned. “You like to kick a bit,
but you’re sold on Elliott just as much as I am. You know he’s a sane
strong fighting leader, and you’ll follow him to a fighting finish just
as I shall.”

“Not so sure about that,” Randall grunted. He looked at his watch. “Say,
we’ll have to hustle.”

The clock was striking nine when they reached the offices of the Mile
High Investment Company. This was one of Elliott’s subsidiary concerns,
the one with which he had started business thirty-five years ago. It
dealt in the production of coal. For most of his financial life he had
been in this building and in these rooms. Though his interests had
developed and ramified he still clung to his old quarters as he did to
old friends.

Four or five men, evidently miners, were waiting in the room. They
talked together in undertones, but with a note of excitement in their
voices.

Smithers drew Randall and Hallack to one side. “Mr. Elliott wants you to
come back at two o’clock. There’s trouble at one of his mines. He’s got
to settle that now.”

Hallack put in the intervening hours attending to some affairs of his
own in town. From an early afternoon paper he gathered that the trouble
at the Invincible mine was a local one. It had to do with conditions of
labour, an unpopular superintendent, his rules, and the manner in which
he enforced them.

Promptly at two the engineers were back at the offices of their chief.

Elliott sat in frowning thought at his desk when they entered. He seemed
visibly to push out of his mind the matter that was troubling him.
“What’s the news from the front?” he asked.

“Hallack has been out in the hills all week,” Randall reported. “He
thinks he’s found a feasible route to the summit of the Pass.”

Elliott turned upon the younger engineer eyes that drilled into him.
“How?”

“You know the hogback above Virgin Creek Park?”

“Yes.”

“We can run the grade along the south slope, creeping up the flank as we
go.”

“You think so?” challenged the empire builder.

“I know it,” answered Hallack quietly, meeting him eye to eye.

“Good. But how do you reach the hogback?”

“A spur runs out from the park through the timber. I’ll show you on the
map.”

The map was brought and unrolled. Elliott had been over the ground
several times. His eyes followed intelligently the point of the pencil
as it indicated the proposed line for the grade.

“It’ll take a bit of engineering to get over the rim, but we can do it,”
Hallack explained; “once out we swing to the left here across the hills
and make a sharp horseshoe curve.”

His chief asked a crisp question or two, then, chin in hand, gazed in a
long silence at the map.

Again his hawk eyes focussed on the young man. “Sure of this? No
guessing?”

“I’m sure we can make the hogback when we reach it, and I’m certain we
can get out of the park by the spur. I haven’t had time to make the
surveys to determine the best way over the hills from the park to the
hogback, but I’ll stake my reputation it can be done. I’ve ridden across
a dozen times.”

Into the heart of the grim railroad builder there came a glow of
gratification. He was putting this line through against tremendous
natural barriers, every foot of the way in opposition to the
transcontinental system which dominated the transportation of the city
and state. The burden was being carried on his own shoulders. In
different capacities he had tried a dozen men and found them wanting. On
the fingers of one hand he could count those to be depended upon to take
large responsibilities and meet them. For months he had been watching
this youngster. He believed he had discovered the man to take Randall’s
place.

For Randall would not do. He had technical knowledge, could work out
details accurately, and had a comprehensive experience that should have
given him initiative to cope with emergencies. In an ordinary job he
would have succeeded. But this required faith, audacity, a fighting
edge, and grim determination. Randall was not cast in that mould.

He showed this now. “I haven’t been over the ground carefully myself.
It’s possible Bob may be mistaken.”

“Yes,” assented Elliott. Then, like a flash, “Why haven’t you been over
it yourself?” he demanded.

“I’ve been over it of course. I mean I haven’t checked up the
surveys—haven’t satisfied myself the route is a workable one.”

“Don’t quibble, Randall,” his chief ordered. “Why haven’t you satisfied
yourself? What have you been doing that’s more important than this?”

The face of the older engineer flushed. “I had blue-prints to get out
and the camp to move. I had to verify the surveys along Thunder
Mountain.”

Elliott made no comment. He plunged into some details of organization he
had planned. Clearly, concisely, in the simplest and most direct
fashion, he made plain what was in his mind. The vital force of the man
broke through verbiage, so that he expressed himself without the waste
of a word.

His firm fingers rolled the map up swiftly. The engineers understood
that the conference was at an end. They rose to go.

“Randall, I’ll see you here at five this afternoon,” the railroad
builder said. “Hallack, wait a minute.”

The younger man remained.

Keen eyes, steady as the rock of Gibraltar, gleamed from under grizzled
brows at the engineer. They searched him through and through. Like a
shot out of a gun came Elliott’s first words.

“Ever meet Winthrop Ordway?”

Hallack stiffened. Into his eyes came an expression harsh and steely, a
flash of feral savagery. “Yes.”

“Know him well?”

“No and yes. I’ve met him only a few times, but—I know him.”

“You’re going to know him better. Ordway is in charge of the Midwestern
& Pacific campaign against us.”

“I’d heard so,” the engineer replied.

“He’s the best man in the country for the job—daring, resourceful,
wholly unscrupulous. He’ll go the limit—stick at nothing.”

“That’s how I size him up,” the younger man agreed.

“If I build the Gateway Pass cut-off the M. & P. becomes a bad second in
the race to the coast instead of a good first. Ordway means to see I
don’t build it. Back of him are financial interests and influence far
stronger than mine. There’s only one way to beat him. We’ve got to
outgeneral him and outfight him.”

Hallack nodded appreciation of the point. He wondered why the chief was
telling him this. It was not Elliott’s custom to confide in
subordinates, rather to listen to opinions and give decisive orders.

“Outfight him, outgame him, outguess him,” the old railroad builder
continued, and in his grim voice was a sound like the far challenging
roar of a lion. “The cut-off is going through—if I live.”

“Yes,” said the field man, and he had not the least doubt in the world.

“What about you? Will you stand the gaff? Can you fight on after you’re
beaten? Can you do things other men say are impossible?”

Bob Hallack declined this chance of telling how good a man he was. “All
I can say is that I’ll give you the best that’s in me.”

“Not enough—unless the best that’s in you is A 1. Is it?”

“There’s only one way to find that out, Mr. Elliott. Try me.”

“That’s what I’m going to do. From to-day you’re chief engineer of
construction on the cut-off.”

Hallack showed none of the elation that swept in waves through his
blood. “What about Randall?” he asked quietly.

“Not big enough for the job.”

“He’s a good engineer, with a list of successes back of him and no
failures.”

“Too conservative, too tied to precedent, far and away too cautious.
I’ve got to have on the cut-off someone not afraid to take chances.”

“Is he leaving you?”

“Not unless he insists. You and he change places.”

“Does he know?”

“He’ll know later. I want to go over this thing with you to-day when I
have more time. Meet me here at six-thirty. We’ll go to dinner at the
club.”

The subject was for the moment closed. Hallack knew himself dismissed.

As he walked out he met a young woman going in. She was the girl he had
brought down from Box Elder Cañon a few hours earlier.


                              CHAPTER VII
                       “I’LL JUMP AT THE CHANCE”

Joyce would rather have taken it standing, but her father’s words left
no option. She sat down.

Elliott walked back of the desk, drew up the swivel chair, and rested
his forearms on the blotting pad. The steel-grey eyes fastened to those
of the girl and held them locked.

“Where were you last night?”

“We went to a kinda dinner-dance at Mountain Crest Lodge. Didn’t Mrs.
Antwerp tell you?”

“She understood you were coming home after the dance. Why didn’t you
come?”

“I got in so late I thought it better to stay with Wese.”

“How late?”

“After five. We had an accident and smashed the car.” Joyce recognized
how damaging an admission this was. Her eyes met the stern ones of her
father steadily. She was facing a judge, not an indulgent parent.

“Was it a drinking party?”

“No,” she answered.

“No liquor there?”

“A cocktail or two. That was all.”

“You drank?”

“Oh, yes. Like the others.”

“But nobody was under the influence?”

“Not that I noticed.” Then, with a flash of the truth that was
fundamentally a part of her nature: “Not very much, anyhow.”

“This accident. Was anybody hurt?”

“Mr. Ordway was cut by the glass of the wind shield—not seriously.”

“He took you to the dinner?”

“Yes.”

“And was driving you home when the accident occurred?”

“Yes, he was driving.”

“How many in the car?”

“Just he and I. It was a roadster.” A faint flush of angry colour began
to beat into the cheeks of the girl. What had she done to deserve a
manner so coldly inflexible?

“When was this?”

“About half-past two—maybe three,” she added recklessly.

“Where?”

“In Box Elder Cañon.”

“I thought you said you were on the way home from Mountain Crest Lodge.”

“We came home over the hills—on account of the moonlight.”

“All the party?”

“Just our car.” Her voice had taken on a perceptible edge of defiance.

“Let’s get this clear, Joyce. After the dance broke up you went for a
run over the hills alone with Ordway. Did you stop anywhere before the
accident?”

“At his Swiss chalet on Ramshorn Mountain. He wanted to get a gun.”

“How long did you stop?”

“Not more than a few minutes.”

“Was anybody else there?”

“No.”

“How did you get to town after the accident?”

“Two men came along in a car and picked me up. The driver was the man I
met as I came in.”

“You mean Hallack?”

“That’s what Mr. Ordway called him.”

“Ordway knew him?”

“Yes. There had been some trouble between them. He wouldn’t bring Mr.
Ordway to town. I had to come with them alone.”

Elliott mentally filed away for future reference this information as to
the relation between the two men. Just now he stuck to the subject of
the hour. In one sense he had a single-track mind. No tempting bypaths
could lead him from the issue. There was a matter to be settled with
Joyce. He meant to determine it now.

That was Jarvis Elliott’s way. He might find out that which would wound
him greatly. He might precipitate a breach that would make his heart
bleed. For this golden girl was the secret joy and pride of his life.
Always the rush of her sweet and eager enthusiasms had charmed him.
Always he had delighted in the vigorous independence that differentiated
her. He wanted the best for her, a full life culminating in love and
happiness. But he desired too that her soul should not grow fat and
slothful, that it should not compromise with Fate and accept second
bests. He craved for her that she might

                    “. . . wear with every scar
                    Honour at eventide.”

Love is usually dumb. He could not put his feeling into words. He could
not break through the barrier of age and circumstances that separated
them. All he could do was to deal with the facts, even though he knew
that facts are often lies unless correctly interpreted.

Many men, to save their own feelings, would have accepted the
explanation of the broken car, scolded the girl, and passed over the
matter. Elliott would not do this. He had to know the truth, as nearly
as he could find it out. Joyce was of those to whom life may bring utter
shipwreck. She was ready to give herself too generously to those in whom
she had faith. He must protect her if he could.

“What’s between you and Ordway?” he asked bluntly.

The girl shrank from this attack and resented it. She did not know
herself how much was between her and her father’s business foe, nor did
she want to know yet. He had become the most important figure in her
life. That was enough to know till time should tell her more.

“What do you mean—between us?” she asked.

“I mean his love-making. How far has it gone? Where do you stand with
each other?” His searching eyes were like surgeons’ probes.

Joyce flushed angrily. There was no parrying a crude direct thrust like
this. It had to be met, but she protested hotly within herself that it
was not fair. Her father had a right to call her on the carpet for
things done. He had no right to go behind them.

“There hasn’t been any love-making,” she flung back at him.

“You’ve been with him all his spare time, I understand. Every day you’ve
spent hours with him—riding, golfing, dinners, dances. I warned you to
have nothing to do with him because he’s a dangerous man. You chose to
override my advice and be with him so much that people have talked.
Finally you carry your infatuation to the point of scandal.” He checked
with a lift of his hand her flaming protest. “Do you expect people to
believe that he is not making love to you?”

“I don’t care what evil-minded people believe,” she cried.

“I do, about my daughter,” he disagreed. “I care a great deal. But I
care more about seeing her plunge into an affair which may bring her
great sorrow.”

“Can’t a girl be friends with a man without everybody talking about it?”
Joyce flared.

“No—not that kind of a man, not the way you’re going at it. You say
there’s been no love-making. Where are you headed for, then? What’s he
driving at?”

Joyce had not been entirely candid. There had been some tentative
love-making in the early days of their friendship, and she had put an
end to it peremptorily after some skirmishing experiments. Ordway’s
respect for her and his interest in her had increased. Out of the first
phase of their affair had emerged another. She was fighting the
attraction that drew them together, yet she was eagerly submitting
herself to its influence. Their meetings became, under the surface,
battlegrounds. She got flashes at him that showed her a stranger hard,
unmoral, and without principle; and again other moments of insight that
seemed to give the denial to what she had discovered. He fascinated her,
yet stirred deep within her the maiden that stretched out hands and
pushed him back.

“I don’t know. I suppose he likes me. He’s good fun.”

“It’s time you found out, then,” Elliott answered, and to her his voice
sounded harsh. “You may be sure he knows exactly what he wants of you.”

“Isn’t it conceivable he just enjoys being with me? He’s not an ogre,
even though he is your business opponent. I like him.” She said it with
a flash of challenging eyes.

“I don’t. He’s a wolf. I intend to see he doesn’t devour you.”

“I’m not Little Red Riding Hood.”

“You’re the girl that has let herself be compromised by his attentions.”

“That’s not true,” she flamed out.

“Isn’t it? Look at the facts. He takes you to a drinking party up in the
hills.”

“It wasn’t a drinking party. I told you it wasn’t,” she interrupted.

“The men had liquor with them and you were drinking. I’m not claiming it
was a wild orgy. After the dance is over he doesn’t bring you straight
home as the other men did their partners. He spends half the night with
you alone in the mountains, he takes you to his summer lodge, and
finally he smashes his car so that he can’t get you back at all. You get
in at daybreak after being out all night with him alone. He has
compromised your reputation definitely and completely.”

“Because we had an accident?” she asked stormily. “Don’t other people
have trouble with their cars?”

“Not at a time so unfortunate for them as that. If they do, they pay the
penalty, as you’ll have to pay it.”

“I won’t. People aren’t so narrow-minded any more. You’re busy all the
time with your railroad and everything. You don’t see that times have
changed.” She wanted to stamp her foot at his clear-sighted recognition
of her dilemma.

His eyes flashed out under the shaggy brows. “Have they changed so that
a girl of nineteen can spend a night alone with a man—and such a man as
Ordway?”

“If you think that of me——”

He cut into her angry wail. “I believe exactly what you’ve told me. But
the crowd you go with won’t believe it. . . . If I’ve been too busy to
look after you—well, we’ll change that. You can make your plans to go
with Mrs. Antwerp on a trip to Japan next week.”

She flew out at him. “You’re treating me like a child.”

“I treat you like a child when you act like one. If you don’t know how
to behave properly, if you cheapen yourself as you did last night, even
in the eyes of the man you were with, then it’s time for me to take
charge of you.”

The golden head lifted proudly. “I didn’t cheapen myself with him. He’s
big enough to understand.” Then, under swift impulse, she fired a
broadside full at him. “He intends to ask me to marry him.”

They looked at each other, steadily, in a full-charged silence. He did
not question the fact. He did not ask her how she knew. His mind and
soul leaped to the essence of the situation.

“And you—what will you tell him?”

The irresistible impulse pressed upon her to tear his heart in return
for the shame he had driven home to her, to salve her wounded pride by
hurting him.

“Why, of course, I’ll jump at the chance, as any woman would.”

Man of iron though he was, he flinched at the shock of it. His face
hardened to a grey expressionless mask.

“I’d rather see you marry a man with a pick and shovel in a sewer. I’d
rather see you live and die unmarried.”

Deliberately, she misinterpreted his feeling. “Of course you don’t like
him because he’s against you in business. Mr. Ordway doesn’t feel that
way. He admires you tremendously. He says business ought not to be
carried into personal relationships. And he’s willing to be friendly if
you are.”

“I’m not.”

“He thinks one ought to be large-minded about such things——”

“Joyce, if you marry him he’ll ruin your life.”

“I don’t think so. You’re prejudiced, you know. Anyhow, I’m a good
sport. I’ll take a chance,” she said airily, quite conscious that she
was acting like a minx.

“He’s a destructive force, like a submarine—no morals, no conscience,
no principles to hold him on a straight course. The man’s entirely
selfish. That genial friendly way of his is all camouflage. As sure as
you marry him your life is shipwrecked.”

He spoke with finality, without the least doubt, and his words had
weight with her, the more because he was so quiet, so self-contained and
free from bluster. But the instinct was still strong in her to punish
him for interfering. She had an advantage, one with which she could stab
him to the heart, and the perverse desire to use it.

“Isn’t that what stern parents always tell wilful girls when they don’t
choose a man they like?” she asked saucily. “That they are older and
more experienced and know best and little girls should do as they’re
told?” She finished on a high note of forced laughter.

He felt more than a sense of baffled impotence. Within him was the cold
of despair creeping toward his heart. In opposition to the girl’s folly
his strength might break itself in vain. He might argue, but arguments
would be futile. Vanity or caprice or self-will might wreck her life in
spite of him. Against her own desire it would be impossible to save her.
It came to him sadly that he was out of touch with her. His deep
brooding love was of no avail. She must go her own way, to her own
destiny.

“Am I a stern parent, Joyce?” he asked, and deep in his eyes was
something that called to her.

She steeled herself not to respond to the message that was so much
tenderer than his words. Her pride had been wounded, the glory of her
young wings clipped. The very fact that she was in the wrong held her
from him.

“Thought you mentioned a trip to Japan,” she flung out flippantly. “As
if that would do any good while telegraph lines and cables are open.”

“No,” he admitted, and his hand lifted in the least little gesture of
despair, “it wouldn’t do any good if you’re determined to ruin your
life. I withdraw Japan.”

“It’s my life,” the girl cried wildly. “I’ve a right to live it as I
please.”

“You’ve a right to live it as you ought,” he corrected. “It isn’t yours
to throw away.”

“I’m not talking about throwing it away, but about marrying a great
man—or, anyhow, one who’s going to be.”

“No man is great unless he’s good.”

“He’s good enough for me.”

“No, Joyce. None but the best is good enough for you.” He yearned to
express the flood of feeling in his heart, but the habit of restraint
was too strong for him. “You’re on the wrong track, girl. I’ve been to
blame. I’ve seen where you were drifting, but I thought your eyes would
be opened presently. You’ve been living for yourself only—for
excitement and sensation and pleasure. Nobody can find happiness in
that.”

“I live the way the other girls do,” she retorted, still clinging to her
thought of a grievance. “I’m not ninety, I’m nineteen. I’ve a right to a
good time.”

“Yes, as a diversion, not as an end to live for. I didn’t know how much
this fever had grown on you. It’s hard for me to believe that you’re my
little Joyce, the healthy-souled girl who went fishing with me at
Trappers Lake two years ago.” He pulled himself up abruptly. “Will you
promise me one thing—to do nothing secretly, to be open and aboveboard
with me in any move you make?”

He did not know that she had to summon her pride to crush back an
imperative impulse to fly round the desk and fling herself into his
arms.

“Yes,” she said, and to the word added the pledge of frank honest eyes.

“That’s a bargain, Joyce.”

She left him, her heart heavy with woe for him. She knew she had hurt
him cruelly. A hard icy lump in her bosom had driven her to it.

Joyce drove home, went to her room, threw herself on the bed, and broke
down.


                              CHAPTER VIII
                         AN INVITATION DECLINED

When he thought about it afterward Hallack was glad he had not yielded
to the temptation to set forth his merits to Elliott. The railroad
builder guessed at them or he would never have promoted him. He was
glad, too, that he had not mumbled any embarrassed thanks. He was not
being chosen for personal reasons, but because his work stood up and he
was the best man for the place.

Of that last Hallack had no doubt whatever. His confidence was scarcely
egotism. It was more impersonal, was born of technical skill, of energy,
of knowledge of the job, of the enthusiasm he was giving to it. If any
one could put the cut-off through he felt he was the man. He had ridden
and tramped over every hill and hollow up in the deep-snow country the
road must traverse. In the dead of winter he had shuffled across the
pass on webs and spent weeks making observations as to watersheds, depth
of drifts, and periods of precipitation. Talks with old-timers, small
cattlemen in the mountain parks, who knew from shrewd observation and
long experience the hiemal meteorology of the region, confirmed the
conclusions he drew. Men in the Forest Service had given him valuable
information. Under the direction of Jarvis Elliott and the inspiration
of contact with him he was prepared to do the impossible.

Brain and nerves keyed to a high tension, he strode down the busy
street, a god from Olympus. Not since the fingers of fate had reached
out and crushed his faith and hope like an empty eggshell had the sense
of power so flooded him.

At last his big chance had come. If he put it over, if he solved the
problem of building a roadbed across the great divide in this country of
high peaks, he would be hailed as a leader in his profession. For A. C.
Truesdale, after a thorough investigation in behalf of the M. & P. a
dozen years ago, had reported that no workable grade could be found down
from Gateway Pass. Manders, too, had later turned in an adverse
decision. And both of them were top-notchers.

But he had one tremendous advantage over them. He had roosted up there
in the land of blizzards and avalanches when it was thirty below zero.
From every angle he had approached the problem. As yet he had not solved
it. But he understood the conditions, just as a careful mother does the
constitution of her child.

The cut-off was such a big thing. It meant so much more than a personal
triumph. Its success would put the city and the state in an impregnable
traffic position. He had a strong sense of kinship with Jarvis Elliott.
That rugged old pioneer was his ideal of a leader. He belonged to that
fine class of industrial captains who work for the common good as well
as for their own profit. There were many of these, he felt, though not
as many as there should be, not as many as there were going to be now
that the social consciousness of the country was better developed.

But Elliott was an especially good example of the type. He had that
combination of imagination and daring essential to the breaker of new
trails, the audacity that sent lines of shining rails tortuously into
highlands where settlers had not ventured. He reversed the law of nature
which decrees that railroads shall follow and not precede civilization,
and in doing this he flung into the scales of chance the fortune built
up by a lifetime of struggle. To Hallack’s ardent fancy, grim grey
Jarvis Elliott was a knight of the new régime, one who kept his glaive
and armour always bright.

The engineer’s footsteps had brought him fortuitously to a street of
banks and office buildings. From the entrance of one of these a young
woman stepped lightly. She was a long-lined brunette, luxuriously
furred. The dress, the delicate disdainful poise, the perfection of
detail, announced her one of those expensive orchids produced by our
modern social system.

A new tan-coloured limousine and a liveried chauffeur were waiting at
the curb. As the young woman sank into the soft cushioned seat the slant
of her oval dusky eyes picked up Hallack. Instantly her gloved hand
gestured to the chauffeur not to start the engine.

In the eye of Tessie Barnes sparked a gleam of expectant adventure. Her
blood glowed. She had been a tremendously disturbing force in the life
of Bob Hallack, and what was of much more importance he had been one in
hers. There had been a time, to use her own phrase, when she had been
crazy about him. This passionate emotion had worn itself out, as such
thrilling episodes always did with her, but he could still set her pulse
beats strumming. Months ago he had wrenched himself definitely out of
her life. Now that luck had thrown him her way she did not mean to let
him escape easily.

The dark liquid eyes that met those of Hallack were soft with a tender
wistful appeal. They asked for mercy and not justice; at the same time
offered paradoxically forgiveness because his less finely attuned soul
had failed to understand her.

“It’s been ages since I saw you, Bob, and I’ve wanted you _so_ much,”
their owner murmured reproachfully.

All the life was frozen out of the engineer’s set face. Inside of him a
knife blade twisted in a wound not yet healed.

“What for?” he asked bitterly.

“I’ve needed you. And I wanted to explain—lots of things.” The dark
long-lashed eyes were misty with vague hectic messages.

His voice fell, to exclude the chauffeur, but it held the note of chill
finality. “Quite unnecessary. Why take the trouble?”

“You never gave me a chance to tell you—how it happened.” A faint wave
of natural colour beat into the cheeks beneath the make-up. “I don’t
think you were very generous. Do you?”

“You wouldn’t,” he agreed.

She guessed he was holding himself tight-reined.

“Oh, I have wanted you, Bob.” A voice of moving cadence was included
among the weapons she had at command. “If you’ll get in and ride with me
a little way—out to one of the parks—where we can talk.” She moved
aside and drew in her skirt to make room for him.

“No,” he said flintily.

“Yes, Bob.” She made no least motion toward him, yet impalpably she
seemed to stretch out hands that drew him to her. “Don’t be horrid. I’ve
got to—tell you.”

He did not want to hear her apologia. The very presence of her—the
quick and flashing beauty, the throbbing voice with its unexpected runs,
the well-remembered expressions of the dark and vivid face—all stabbed
him like dagger thrusts. The boyish impulse was strong in him to run
away and hide his hurts.

For she had meant so much to him in those dear dead days when he had
moved in a haze of illusion created by his own imagination. He had
wanted her, longed for her till he ached. Every fibre of his being had
seemed to respond to the witchery of her charm. The memory of those
hours still had power to lash his shrinking soul even though he now knew
that the woman of his dreams was not and never had been Tessie Barnes.

All he asked of her was a chance to forget. He did not tell her so. His
refusal was more blunt and crude.

“I don’t care to hear it.”

A quiver of the small bewitching mouth that he had kissed so often
reproached his cruelty. “You’re so hard, Bob. You never make allowances.
I have to be what I am, don’t I?”

In a flash of illumination he saw that this was true. Why should he
blame her? Was it her fault that all the pretty ways, all the gift of
expression that had been so enchanting, had no soul back of them to give
enduring life? He looked at her clearly for the first time, all the
lights of his mind turned on her, and saw her for what she was. The
anger against her died down for lack of fuel to feed upon. If she had
betrayed his love, it was only because faithlessness was an intrinsic
part of her nature.

“You never understood me,” she went on, and the full-throated voice
throbbed with the pathos of the martyr. “I really truly loved you, Bob.
But it wouldn’t have done. You ought to see that. If you weren’t
selfish——”

She interrupted herself at his ironic smile, to say with a flash of
irritation: “Well, aren’t you—trying to hold me when you’re poor as a
church mouse and you know I have to have things?”

“I’m not trying to hold you.”

“No, but you were. And you won’t listen to what I have to tell you.”
Into her throat came a choke of emotion genuine even though not deep.
“You believe—horrid things about me. You won’t let me explain.”

“There’s nothing to explain—nothing that isn’t quite clear to me.”

“There is, too.” Again a faint wave of colour stained the soft cheeks.
“I want to tell you about—how Mr. Ordway——”

“I’d rather not listen.” His face was grim as that of a hanging judge.

She dropped her eyes, and the subject. “Oh, Bob, you don’t understand.
Don’t you see how it was about you and me? It was—dear. I _wanted_ it
to go on. And I didn’t care whether you had money or not. But I couldn’t
marry you. I saw that when I quit being so crazy about you. I’m not made
to be any poor man’s squaw. Why, I can’t even do my own hair. I have to
be waited on by a woman. Can’t you see it wouldn’t have done?”

“Yes, I see,” he answered.

“Well, then, what’s the use of being mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“Why do you act so hateful then—and spoil everything—setting yourself
up on a—a stupid pedestal of ice—and judging me?” she cried.

“I can’t help my judgment, Mrs. Barnes,” he said stiffly.

“You can too.” A film of angry tears made a haze of him to her. She knew
she had failed, and the sense of it hurt her vanity. “It’s just that
you’re such a prig. I suppose you couldn’t possibly be wrong—or do
wrong.”

She waited for Hallack’s apology. It did not come.

Swiftly she turned from him and gave the chauffeur the signal to start.

Hallack, bleak-eyed, watched her go. The exaltation with which he had
walked the streets had gone out like a blown candle.


                               CHAPTER IX
                          THE HOUR AND THE MAN

At six-thirty Smithers showed Hallack into the office of the president
of the Mile High Investment Company.

Elliott closed his desk and rose.

“We’ll walk,” he said when they reached the entrance to the building.

With a deep breath he fell into his stride, the easy reaching gait of
one who has been a natural athlete and is still endowed with great
energy. It seemed to his guest that he looked absorbed and harassed.

Presently he referred indirectly to this himself. “It’s been a hard day.
Thought we never would get the difficulty with the miners adjusted. I
don’t understand it yet. There’s something about it . . . A week ago
everything was all right—the best of feeling. I know because I visited
the mine and talked with the men. Then this came up out of a clear sky.
Why? Graves may be overbearing, but——Pshaw! The whole thing was cooked
up. Could Ordway be back of it?”

“It would be like him.”

“Yes. Anything just now to embarrass me, to tie my hands. Through all
the conferences I had the feeling that two of the men’s representatives
didn’t want to come to an agreement. They kept throwing up objections.
Only half an hour ago they gave way, when I threatened to go over their
heads to the men themselves.”

Elliott fell silent. The younger man did not disturb his reflections
with talk. He had a capacity for letting conversational lacunas take
care of themselves.

At the City Club Elliott arranged for a small table in a corner of the
large dining room. When they were seated he began to talk, trenchantly,
incisively, in a low voice that carried only to Hallack.

“I’ve been watching your work. You take hold with both hands. I think
you’ll do. . . . I’m going to tell you what we’re up against. Your end
you know—fighting nature in the hills, finding and building grades
where the best engineers say it can’t be done. I’ll be down here at
grips with Ordway and the M. & P. crowd working out a way to finance the
road and to hold my right of way after we’ve got it. I’ll have to play
politics and business against them all the time. It’s like a game of
chess with me on the defensive throughout. The least slip—the first
false move—and I’m gone. Understand?”

“In a general way, yes.”

From the hall outside came the sound of voices and laughter. A jovial
group trooped into the room, Winthrop Ordway at their head. His smiling
confidence, his debonair good-fellowship, the glow of his exuberant
vitality and well-being, seemed to fill the place. To one and another of
those dining he called friendly greetings.

Catching sight of Elliott, he moved toward him and flashed a gay
white-toothed smile. “How are you, Mr. Elliott?”

“Well, thank you.”

“Good. Saw by to-day’s papers that you’re having trouble at one of your
mines. Hope it’s nothing serious.”

“No.” The railroad builder’s deep-set eyes held no answering warmth.

“Then you’ll get it settled without a strike. Congratulate you. They’re
always annoying things.”

Ordway rejoined the group he had left. He had given no sign whatever of
recognizing Hallack.

Elliott went on, talking to his engineer, at the point where he had been
interrupted. “The fight between them and me goes on not only here, but
at Washington and New York. They attack my credit and my financial
standing in Wall Street. Just now the fight at Washington is centering
on Arapahoe Cañon. Strong interests are at work with the Department of
the Interior to have it reserved for reservoir purposes. The claim is
that it’s an outlet for a natural storage basin needed for a reclamation
project. The real purpose is of course to bar us from going through, to
put a cork in the neck of the bottle so that we can’t get out of the
hills.”

“Yes.” Hallack raised a point. “Are you sure about Arapahoe Cañon, even
if you win the legal fight? I’ve been working only up at the Pass, you
know. Didn’t Truesdale and Manders both say Arapahoe Cañon was
impossible?”

Elliott smiled, enigmatically. “Neither of them is infallible. I had a
partial survey made by Maclure on my own account.”

“I didn’t know that. Maclure was a good man. He said it could be done,
did he?”

“I’ll tell you what he said—some day. You’ll not mention Maclure’s name
in this connection to any one?”

“No.”

“I had him work under cover while he was doing some engineering on an
irrigation project.”

They had reached the demi-tasse when an attendant brought word to
Elliott of a man named Smithers who wanted to see him on important
business.

“Show him up.”

Smithers came in with an air of nervousness. He was never quite sure of
himself.

“There’s been an explosion at the Invincible mine, sir,” he said. “Word
from Mr. Graves just reached me over the ’phone. I came at once.”

“Anybody hurt?”

“He doesn’t know. There’s a shift imprisoned in the mine. Mr. Graves is
clearing the way for rescue work.”

“I’ll talk with Graves. Have my car brought round at once. I’ll take you
with me, Smithers. You too, Hallack.”

Elliott moved swiftly out of the room to a telephone booth.

Within ten minutes a chauffeur and the three passengers were racing for
the suburbs of the city.

There was no conversation. Each of the men was busy with his own
thoughts. An hour passed.

The road wound close to mine dumps and the small houses of workingmen.

“Coalville,” Smithers told the engineer.

The chauffeur throttled down. Near the shaft house of the Invincible he
stopped the car.

A man moved forward to meet Elliott. He was the assistant superintendent
of the mine.

“How bad is it, Dawson?” the owner asked.

“Don’t know, sir. Pretty bad, I’m afraid. There’s been an explosion. A
tunnel caved and trapped six men.”

“Fire damp?”

Dawson shook his head. “Don’t think so. The fans were going.”

“Graves below?”

“Yes, sir. He went right down with a rescue party. A cross-cut is on
fire.”

Hallack’s eyes picked up the drama of the scene—crying children
clinging to the hands of excited women, the sullen suspicious glances of
coal-blackened workmen focussed on the mine owner, the shadows of the
night pressing upon the arc-lit tragic circle of which the central and
dominant figure was Jarvis Elliott.

Watching now that strong quiet face, so sure, so interwritten with the
lines of leadership, Bob Hallack vowed fealty afresh. If Elliott read
the threats of the passion-tossed countenances surrounding him, he gave
no sign of disturbance. For no reason except that their minds had
recently been inflamed against him, they held him responsible for what
had taken place. He knew he was blameless. The accident—if it turned
out to be one—had come to pass through no fault of his. All the
safeguards recommended by the state mining inspector had been adopted by
the Invincible management. Every hazard that could be eliminated had
been removed.

The injustice of these grown children did not disturb their chief now.
He was wholly concerned with the imperative of saving their comrades
below.

“I’ll go down myself and look the ground over, Dawson,” he said
decisively. The grizzled brows moved with short swift sweeps of the
stabbing eyes. “I’ll take you, Hallack—and you—and you.”

The men indicated moved forward at once to the cage. They recognized by
instinct the man of the hour.

The mine engineer moved a lever and the bucket dropped into darkness. A
flash of light every few seconds showed that the cage was passing a
station. At the fifth level it stopped.

This tunnel was the entrance to the tomb in which six miners two hours
earlier had found living graves.


                               CHAPTER X
                      A DISENGAGEMENT IS ANNOUNCED

Joyce felt better after her tears were spent. The storm had cleared the
atmosphere. At any rate, she and her father had crossed swords and come
to an understanding of a sort. They were at least honourable enemies in
the matter of Ordway. He knew she did not intend to give him up.

She felt a very great tenderness and respect for her father. His
sternness had been that of love. When she had brought defeat to him by
the simple announcement that she would accept Ordway as soon as he
offered himself Elliott had taken the blow like a thoroughbred. He had
not stormed at her or raved or threatened. He had not wasted energy
impotently. She liked that in him. It went without saying that this did
not mean he was ready to surrender her to his foe. He would fight for
her to the last ditch.

Ordway was giving a little dinner at the Rocky Mountain Club that
evening and Joyce dressed for it with particular care. She had a feeling
that she might be going out to battle and would need all the feminine
weapons she could summon.

Louise and she were alone together for a minute in the dressing room at
the Club.

“Heard anything about last night?” she asked, lightly.

“Oh, Esther Dare was at the Stanton’s lifting her eyebrows and
_wondering_ where you and Winthrop Ordway went and _when_ you got in,
and wasn’t it _romantic_ of you to be so free and untrammelled. She’d
start something if she could.”

“Why does that girl hate me?” Joyce mused aloud.

Louise continued to dab deftly at her make-up as she answered. “That’s
easy. Because you’re in and she’s on the edges. Because you’re genuine
and she’s not. Because you don’t think much of her and haven’t taken the
trouble to hide it. She’s green-eyed, old dear, and r-r-revenge is
sweet.” In a burst of confidence she deflected to the subject uppermost
in her mind. “Say, Bubbles, I’m going to tie a can to Jimmie Stanton
to-night.”

“Poor Jimmie!”

“Poor nothing! Once it’s over he’ll be as glad as I’ll be. Enough’s
enough.” She wheeled round. “Do I look all right?”

Joyce made the proper answer and they went arm in arm to meet Ordway and
the others.

The dinner went very well. Joyce was the gayest of the party, but her
high spirits were a little forced. She thought she detected curious
glances turned her way by two or three women at another table who had
been at the Stantons’ that afternoon. It might be only fancy that the
manner of several older women was chilly when she spoke to them.

Under cover of a general burst of animated talk and laughter Ordway
lowered his voice.

“Is it all right, Joy?”

“Ye-es. Right enough. Dad and I had a round-up.”

“He heard you got in late, then?”

“Yes.”

“Was he hard on you?”

“He wanted me to cut out a few things—including Winthrop Ordway.”

“Interesting. Am I going to be cut out?”

“We’ll see how you behave,” she answered, smiling at him.

“I’m afraid if I behaved like an angel I wouldn’t satisfy your father.”

“No,” she admitted judicially. “He’s rather got a down on you. I daresay
you deserve it.”

“But if I could satisfy your father’s daughter——”

“Yes, yes,” she encouraged.

“Think I’ll finish that sentence later in the evening, Joy.”

“Oh, if it’s as serious as that I don’t think I want you to,” she
murmured with a flash of eyes that had stolen the glow of soft pansies.

After dinner the party adjourned to the home of one of the girls for an
informal dance.

Here Louise Durand carried through her program as to Jimmie Stanton.
After a fox-trot they disappeared into a small den off the library that
by some lucky chance was not occupied by a petting couple.

Jimmie sat down on the couch beside the girl, caught her hand with a
quick pressure, looked ardently into her eyes, and began his “line.”

“You wonderful girl!”

Louise laughed, with perfect good-nature. She had heard it before. “Yes,
I know. I’m different from all the others. So much _soul_ in my eyes.
And I remind you of that angel in what-d’ye-call-him’s picture. Before
you knew me you were just a wild careless boy with dark secrets in your
past. But now——”

“What’s the matter with you?” remonstrated Jimmie indignantly.

“Nothing, except that I’ve got a fierce hunger. Nell never does start
the eats soon enough.”

“Say, what’s that stuff you’re pulling to-night?” demanded the outraged
Jimmie. “You kinda make me tired, if you wantta know, kid.”

She flashed to dimples. “Jimmie, you’re a wiz. We both make each other
the teentiest wee bit tired. Isn’t it lucky we’ve found it out?”

“Ditching me, are you?” he asked, vanity in arms.

“No, Jimmie dear, we’re ditching each other.”

“Who’s the fellow?” asked young Mr. Stanton, with the bitter laugh of
the strong man disillusioned for life. Jimmie was going-on-twenty.

Louise removed a long golden hair from his sleeve. “I haven’t picked him
yet,” she explained calmly and cheerfully. “Whom would you suggest? I
want a nice live one, you know, so you won’t be ashamed of him as your
successor.”

“Of course, if you’re heartless——”

“Oh, don’t be tragic, Jimmie,” she breezed on. “You know well enough
we’ve worn each other out. You’ll have lots more fun with another girl.
There’s Margaret Van Loan, for instance, you always liked her and——”

“Thank you very much,” interrupted Mr. Stanton with dignity. “I’m quite
capable of choosing my own friends.”

“’S all right. I’m not buttin’ in.” Her smile coaxed him to good humour.
“But, say, Jimmie, wouldn’t it be a _good line_ if we just quit, without
quarrelling or anything—said nothing but nice things about each other?
I’d like that. It’d be _scrumptious_—and anyhow I _do_ want to stay
friends with you.”

She was sitting very close to him, playing with one of his coat buttons.
Now she lifted a glance designed to melt the hardest heart.

He grinned, with no great zest. The situation was, however, piquant. He
rather liked that line Louise had proposed. Jimmie was, technically
speaking, a nice kid, and he knew very well that it was time he and
Louise ended their little affair.

“What’s the use of vamping me now?” he wanted to know. “Save that for
the other fellow. And about knocking you, Wese. Well, you know I’ve
moments when I like to think I’m a pretty decent chap.”

“Oh, you are, Jimmie. The best _ever_,” she burst out.

“If you’d like me to write you a letter of recommendation for my
successor——”

“What could you say for me?” Louise asked, eyes bubbling with fun.

“Heaps. I could say you’re a square little sport and the best pal ever a
chap had. I could tell him he’d never be dull a minute with you and when
you chucked him after you were through you’d make him like it.”

“Now, Jimmie, that’s no fair. I’m not chucking you. We’re chucking each
other. No, we’re not doing that either, ’cause we’re always going to be
pals. But I’m _for_ that letter, _strong_. Will you honest to goodness
write it?”

“Surest thing you know.” He hesitated, before adding with friendly
malice: “You gotta give me my cue, Wese. How do we put over this
good-bye-but-Heaven-bless-you stunt? Do we stage it before a select
circle of admiring friends? With a referee to tell us when to break away
from the farewell clinch? Or do I merely wear crape and look mournful?”

“There’s a _vulgar_ streak in you, Jimmie.”

“Yes, thank you,” he agreed.

“But all the samey you’re a nice boy.”

She rose and held out a hand.

Jimmie put both of his in his pockets. “Come off. You can’t pull _that_
on me. We haven’t just been introduced at a pink tea.”

“Oh, well!” The dimples flashed again. Louise turned up to him
poinsettia-blossom lips.

He kissed them.

Both swung simultaneously to the threshold of the den. A man and a girl
were coming in.

“Caught!” announced Ordway with a smile.

“Glad it’s you, Bubbles,” Louise sighed.

“Is this your way of announcing that you’re re-engaged to Jimmie?” asked
Joyce.

“It’s our way of announcing that we’re _disengaged_. It’s Jimmie’s
birthday, and he’s putting away childish things,” explained Louise.

“Including debs?” Ordway inquired.

“Including this deb,” the girl replied with a curtsey. “Let’s go,
Jimmie. There’s a fox-trot starting.”

She caught him by the hand and they ran out of the room.


                               CHAPTER XI
                              JOYCE JUMPS

“Exit the flapper,” Ordway said, leading the way to the lounge.

He was riding the high wave, had been on the crest of it all evening. It
showed in his colour, his animation, the confidence of his stride.
To-night he could move mountains. He was ready to rewrite a certain
Biblical prophecy to make it read, The strong shall inherit the earth.

Joyce did not care to sit down. She was restless and excited, her eyes
brilliant, her pulses throbbing. Deflecting, she stopped at a small
table, picked up a book incuriously to look at the title, and dropped
it.

“What _is_ a flapper?” she asked, not for information but to escape if
possible an atmosphere that was becoming electric.

Ever since Winthrop Ordway had begun to monopolize her earlier in the
evening she had been on a rising tide. Partly it was the reaction from
the strain of the day, partly the fillip given her by his great physical
vitality, and partly too the knowledge that he had brought her here to
finish the sentence he had interrupted at dinner. It would not do to be
carried from her feet.

“A flapper is an infant a thousand years old, a sweet and charming
little devil without manners, modesty, or reverence,” he told her.

“Thank you,” she replied meekly, imps of mischief flinging up their
heels in her eyes. “Tell me more nice things about myself—after you’ve
given me a cigarette.”

“No cigarettes now. I want to talk. You’re no flapper—never were and
never could be—but I’m ready to tell you about yourself. That’s why
we’re here.”

“Oh, is it?” Her laugh was less nonchalant than she could have wished.
She wondered if he could see the pulse throbbing in her throat. “Thought
maybe you brought me in to tell me about _your_self. Isn’t that why men
usually sit out dances?”

It was a fair hit, so far as Ordway was concerned. He was shot through
with egoism. The discussion of his past, present, and future always
interested him.

“Partly about myself too,” he admitted, no whit disturbed. “I hope it’s
going to be the same thing, and that when I think about myself after
this I’ll be thinking about you too.”

A slick-haired youth and a bob-haired maiden appeared in the offing of
the library, showed visible disappointment at discovering this choice
petting spot preëmpted, and vanished without a word.

“Better go slow, Win,” Joyce suggested in a carefully careless voice.
“You’re on thin ice. Count twenty before you speak again. You never can
tell what a woman will do, you know. That perfectly harmless remark of
yours now——”

“I know what I hope she’ll do,” he answered gravely.

Their eyes met. She felt the lift of the crashing waves within her, the
tumult of surging emotions. This was not in the least what she wanted,
to be swept from the open seas of freedom to the harbour of matrimony.
It had not at all been in her mind when she had yielded to the
fascination of a desperate flirtation with him. Vanity had moved her,
for he was one who bulked large; and the driving desire for excitement,
increased by his reputation among women and his relation to her father;
perhaps too the wish to win over a formidable adversary to the side of
her father in the railroad fight impending. But she had been unable to
control the mercurial currents that had galvanized her and lit fires in
her she did not before know were a part of her nature.

In her other affairs with men and boys—and she had passed through her
share of them—it had been a secret pride that she had remained mistress
of the situation and herself. Now she was abashed at her helplessness to
hold an even pulse.

Her eyes fell. The point of a small slipper picked at the rug upon which
they stood. Automatically she noted that it was a Sarouk.

His strong hands closed on hers.

She spoke, tremulously. “Wait, Win. I’ve got to think.”

“Yes,” he agreed, willing to prolong the pleasant suspense that scarcely
reached doubt. “It’s a surprise, of course.”

“Not exactly.” She laughed, trying to escape lightly to a plane of
reason undisturbed by fluttering nerves. “You’ve been telegraphing it,
you know.”

“Have I? Oh, you women! What don’t you know!” he said, laughing softly,
triumphantly.

“I don’t know what I’m going to answer you,” she went on hurriedly,
observing in him incipient signs that he was about to overwhelm her
hesitation man-fashion. “Listen, Win. I want to talk—to tell you how I
feel, well as I can.”

“Fifty years to do that—after we’ve settled the important fact.
Joy—Joy!”

“No—now. Let go my hands. We’ll sit down.”

They moved to the lounge. Joyce did not look at him but she was
intensely aware of him. He was vitally masculine, a masterful man born
for leadership. Six feet to a hair, straight and strong, he carried just
enough bulk to temper his restless energy without impairing its power.
The girl felt a vague but powerful tug drawing her toward him.

“Talk, my dear,” he told her with smiling confidence. “Tell me what you
want to say—then make me the happiest man alive.”

“Would it make you that—if I said yes?”

“Don’t you know that, Joyce?” His hands went out to her again.

She shook her head, both to the invitation and the question. “No. That’s
just it. I don’t. When I get to thinking about it I find I don’t know
you at all—the _real_ you. I don’t know what you’re like. You’re big,
of course. So’s Dad. I can understand him because he’s simple. But
you’re not. I’m never sure of what you think or feel.”

“Do you want to be too sure?” he asked. “I’m willing to have you stay a
mystery to me for a while. If you weren’t that—if I knew all you were
going to say and think and do—if you were quite obvious to me—no
delightful little surprises and inconsistencies—I’m afraid I wouldn’t
be so keen for you.”

“Ye-es,” she admitted. “But that isn’t quite it.” She crossed her slim
silk-clad ankles and looked down at them. “Of course I’d want my husband
not to be an old story to me, but I’d want to be sure of him too—to
know that we felt the same about some things.”

“What things, dear girl?” He took a flier at answering his own question
with another. “Books and plays and bridge and sports?”

“No. And it isn’t just that I’d want him to agree with me. He’d have to
be right, even when I was wrong, about the things I mean.”

Her air of perplexed earnestness amused him. He had not the slightest
idea what she was talking about. It probably was of no importance, but
he was willing to humour her fancy.

“I’ll promise always to be right about those vexing problems, whatever
they are,” he said lightly.

Joyce did not accept the offered lead as an escape from her doubt. She
wanted him to understand the difficulty, but she had a reluctance almost
boyish about putting it into words. A code of honour was individual and
personal, not to be talked over and dragged out for inspection. Yet it
involved one’s whole attitude and reaction toward life.

Winthrop Ordway’s strength, his dynamic personality, the ease and
certainty with which he became the dominating figure in every group,
were aspects of the man that fascinated Joyce. Comparisons with her
father were inevitable. Both had the controlled and intelligent energy
that compelled success. But in the case of the younger what was the
animating principle of that force?

The daughter of Jarvis Elliott recognized in him a hidden idealism that
had by inheritance become her own. The brusquerie of his manner never
deceived her, though secretly she stood in awe of his judgments. To her
he was Chaucer’s “verray parfit gentil knight.”

But Ordway—— What was the spur to his power? Was her father right when
he called him a destructive force? Was his creed of success divorced
from ethical and moral considerations? Someone had sent her recently a
marked newspaper editorial that described him as a Goth and a Vandal, a
modern buccaneer of business who destroyed more often than he built. The
figures were mixed, but the meaning was plain. It might be true. In
spite of his surface geniality he might at bottom be wholly selfish and
unscrupulous.

“I’m still on the anxious seat, Bubbles,” he reminded her.

Her little worried frown, fixed on him, still persisted. He was awfully
likable when he pleased, she admitted. It was a subtle flattery to her
that he always took the trouble to put his best foot forward in her
company.

Then there was that queer something that at times drew her to him so
strongly, that just now was welling up in her again. Was it love?

“I don’t want to marry you. It would hurt Dad awf’ly, and I’m not going
to do it if I can help it. Besides, I don’t know you well enough. And I
won’t be rushed into it. Of course, I like you lots, or I wouldn’t be
thinking of it.”

“You’re going to like me more,” he prophesied. “I improve on
acquaintance.”

“Oh, you’re Winthrop Ordway.” She flung a little smile at him, as though
the mere statement covered a good deal of ground. “Not many women could
help liking you—if you wanted them to care. I make your vanity a
present of that. And there aren’t any who wouldn’t be flattered at being
chosen by you. I’m all puffed up about it. You’re a great man, you
know.”

“Not as great as I mean to be.”

“No. That’s a consideration too. Besides, you’re such a magnificent
specimen to parade as the captive of my bow and spear. I ought to jump
at you. It’s the chance of a lifetime.”

His smile met hers. He knew she was not half as cool and calculating as
she pretended. If she married him—or rather when she married him—it
would not be because of any adventitious aid of wealth or fame. It would
be because she found in him something strong and vital that called to
her irresistibly. The soul in Joyce Elliott’s flamelike personality was
a fine and sensitive flower. He wanted her because she was the best. It
was to be noted of him that he always got what he wanted.

He rose and looked down at her, flashing a message that set going again
in her the clamorous beat of many tiny drums. She was ardent of nature,
quick of response. In her was youth blest with superabundant vitality
and health.

“Jump!” he urged, almost in a whisper, and his hands gripped hers
tightly.

She rose, unconsenting eyes held fast. “No—no!” she cried softly.

He swept her unresistant into his arms. It was characteristic of Joyce
that even while he held her close and kissed her lips and eyes and the
little depression at the base of the bare throat she did not deceive
herself with a lie. She wanted to be kissed by him. If she had not she
would have found a way to sidestep the crisis she had seen coming.

With both hands Joyce pushed him from her. “You—barbarian!” she gasped,
with a little laugh tremulously doubtful of itself.

Her glance swept him shyly, curiously. To Joyce this was an unusual
experience. For though she was modern to the fingertips she held to
individual reservations. Her fastidious sense found “petting” repugnant
and she possessed dignity enough to protect herself. It was in its way
something of an achievement that she had travelled at the pace of her
set and generation, passed through the various phases of flapper and
débutante, and yet had not allowed the slick-haired youth of her
acquaintance to hold cheap the charm of her sweet and vigorous person.

A magazine writer had once described Ordway’s eyes as fishy and very,
very cold, like deep water just before it freezes. He would have used
different phrasing if he could have seen them now. They were lit up, as
though from inner fires, from the glow of a volcanic crater boiling to
the rim.

“The man you are going to marry,” he amended.

“Don’t be too sure of that.”

“I never quit, Bubbles. It’s in my horoscope to win.”

“You’re boasting of it—already,” she challenged.

He laughed, in a jubilant glow of satisfaction with himself and life.
“No, I’m telling you.”

“You always take what you want, I suppose? You never by any chance ask
for it.”

“In this world, dear girl, you never get by asking. You have to seize
good things with both hands and hang on.”

Her answer flashed at him. “I’ll tell you this, Winthrop Ordway. You
can’t take me by the throat and carry me away. I’m no cave girl.”

His desirous eyes absorbed her, so straight and slender, exquisite as a
bit of choice porcelain, vivid in her momentary resentment as a crimson
poppy. The filmy lingerie she wore and the little old-rose georgette he
could have crushed into one hand. The up-to-date maiden of to-day has
reverted to the scantiness of attire that characterized her
cave-dwelling ancestress, but Ordway could find nothing else in this
little aristocrat to remind him of the childhood of the race. She was
the product of ten thousand remote streams of influence that had poured
both before and after birth into the channel of her being. In a sea of
environment and heredity she was tugged at by innumerable cross currents
of which she never dreamed. The sum of them made her what she was, that
unknown quantity, the American girl.

Louise and Jimmie Stanton swept into the small room in a gale of
animation.

“It’s a camel walk, Bubbles. My dance, you know. Let’s toddle,” the boy
cried.

“Ours too, Mr. Ordway,” Louise shrieked, above the music. “If you didn’t
ask me, you _meant_ to. Now didn’t you?”

“Of course he did, Wese. I heard him mean to.” Joyce turned to young
Stanton, twitting him gaily. “Old remorse on the job, eh? You know this
isn’t ours. You shamefully deserted me. I’ve been sitting here a
wallflower while you did the trot you promised me with a prettier girl.
Oh, Jimmie, I didn’t think it of you.”

He snatched her hand, swept her into the dance step, and out of the
room. The barbaric jazz took them through the library into the great
open hall.

A middle-aged man in an overcoat with a turned-up collar was being
admitted at the front door. Joyce heard her name. Her swift eye took in
and recognized the man as her father’s secretary Smithers. He looked
pale and harassed.

The girl’s arms dropped from her dancing partner and she ran to the
door. “What is it, Mr. Smithers? Is Father—— Does he want me?”

“He’s been hurt Miss Elliott—out at the Invincible mine. I came to get
you. There’s a car at the door.”

All the lights jazzed before her eyes. She fought down the dizziness by
sheer will power.

“Get my coat, Jimmie,” she said in a low tense voice.


                              CHAPTER XII
                           THE FIRE FIGHTERS

Wisps of smoke, drawn by the suction of the shaft, drifted through the
upper air strata in the tunnel. As they moved forward a wave of heat
rolled out to the party Elliott was leading.

A man emerged from the darkness. He was naked from the waist up,
blackened and grimy and sweat-stained.

“How goes it, Nick?” someone asked.

“We’re gettin’ closer. It’s that damned stope burnin’ above us that’s
gonna beat us.”

“Do you know whether the men back of the cave-in are alive?” asked
Elliott.

“Some of them, anyhow. We can hear them tapping.”

“Then we’ll get them out.” The mine owner spoke quietly, confidently. He
was taking off coat and waistcoat. Already all of the party were
perspiring from the heat.

Graves had divided his group of rescuers. Some of the men were working
with picks and shovels at the mass of fallen rock and coal which filled
the drift while others kept a stream of water playing on the fire above
from the nozzle of a hose that had been dragged in.

The air was foul from steam and marsh-gas released by the explosion and
the breaking of the coal. So hot were the walls of the drift that the
hand could not touch them. Swirls of smoke swept down and drove the
workmen back or forced them to crouch and breathe the purer air near the
floor.

A man pushing away a tram-car of excavated rock stumbled and went down.
Hallack dragged him back to the shaft and left him there to recover.
When he reached the battleground again Elliott was organizing the
rescuers into relays.

“Take your men out and send down fresh ones,” he ordered Graves. “We’ll
take this turn and turn about. Let Dawson come down with the new gang.”

The superintendent and his force staggered out from the tunnel. They
were ready to drop with exhaustion on account of the fierce and grilling
heat they had endured.

Elliott took charge of the water nozzle, Hallack of those working at the
cave-in. They timbered as they went, wedging their sets against the rock
walls and the roof.

It was a horrible nerve-torturing task. Smoke rolled at them and
inflamed their eyes and throats. The terrific heat was scarcely
endurable. It drove one and another of them back to get a breath of
cooler air for a few seconds before they plunged anew into the inferno.
Eyebrows crisped and lips cracked. The cloth of their trousers and
shirts charred.

From the other side of the wall they were removing came the sound of
picks. The imprisoned miners were working for their own freedom.

Steadily, hour after hour, the sappers stuck to the job. Every man there
knew the danger. The fire above might cut them off from the shaft. It
might release gases any moment that would produce a fearful explosion.
There might be a second cave-in behind them. But the rescue work went on
without a moment’s relaxation. At intervals of thirty minutes the men
relieved each other, dogged, grim, haggard. Their indomitable
grey-haired leader held them to it as he held himself. It was almost
more than human nature could endure. Every few minutes someone
collapsed.

“How much farther?” asked Elliott hoarsely, speaking into Hallack’s ear.

The engineer, with the skin peeling from his body, had borne the burden
of the work at the face of the excavation. “Not far—a few feet now.
Hope we get a hole picked in the sustaining wall without another
cave-in,” he answered.

“Let me know when you’re ready to break through. I’ll get the men back
out of danger.”

“Yes,” agreed Hallack in the small parched voice that was left him.

A quarter of an hour later he gave the signal. Elliott ordered the
rescuers out of the drift. He did not go himself, but stuck to the hose
nozzle to keep back the roaring fire a few moments longer. The brass was
so hot that he could not hold it in his hands without a cloth to protect
the flesh.

Hallack swung the pick lightly and carefully as he dislodged a great
lump of coal. From the first there had been rumblings of small slides in
the tunnel, an irregular increasing trickle of dust and gravel from the
burning stope. It was possible that the least disturbance would release
a hundred tons of shale and slack upon them.

“Careful. Don’t hurry. Better let me make the opening,” the engineer
called to the imprisoned men.

With his bare hands he scooped out rock and coal dust. A gleam of light
showed through the wall. Someone within, unable to restrain his
impatience, was tearing at the barrier with the edge of a shovel.

“Let be,” Hallack ordered. “You’ll bring the whole thing down on us.”

A small slide filled the opening. Again Hallack patiently removed the
rubbish. This time a large flat piece of slate had wedged itself above
and held the rubble from sliding.

The air of the cave-in which the miners had been caught was cool
compared with that outside. The hot furnace blasts had been shut off
from the trapped men by the mass of waste that held them prisoners. Bob
Hallack, clawing at the enlarging hole, knew that he was close to the
limit of endurance. He knew too that the grizzled old fighter at the
hose nozzle, standing up to his job while the leaping flames shrivelled
him, held on only by sheer nerve.

A man crawled through the gap.

“Any of you hurt?” Elliott’s dry throaty voice croaked.

“No.”

Five others followed the first.

A small avalanche poured into the drift and half filled the passageway
between them and the shaft.

“Hurry! Hurry!” urged Elliott, the hose still in his hands. The deep-set
eyes were red and swollen, his shirt in crisp and blackened shreds.

The men crept over the new-fallen mass of debris.

The mine owner dropped the useless hose. With a gesture he ordered the
engineer to precede him. Hallack obeyed.

Another roar of falling refuse, a thick cloud of dust, filled the
chamber.

Hallack turned. His chief lay pinned beneath the attle. The engineer
called to the men. Two of them came running back. One snatched up a
crowbar and with the end of it pried away a large rock jammed against
Elliott’s thigh. At the same time Hallack dragged out the body.

The engineer picked up the unconscious man and half carried, half
dragged him to the shaft. Here he collapsed.

When the cage reached the surface two of its occupants had to be lifted
out. In the fresh air Hallack came to almost at once.

He tried to speak. From his parched throat the words came after two or
three efforts in a whisper. Graves had to bend down to catch them.

“Better build a bulkhead in the drift and starve the fire,” he
suggested.

“I’ll do that,” the superintendent promised.


                              CHAPTER XIII
                     AN INFANT CRYING IN THE NIGHT

The bright lights of the car bisected the night as it roared into the
darkness. Joyce sat between Jimmie Stanton and Smithers. She asked
questions that crowded to her brain.

How badly was her father hurt? Where had they taken him? How had it
happened? Was Smithers sure Doctor Albert and Doctor Van de Vanter had
started? Had a local doctor been called at once? What had he said? Was
her father conscious? Had he asked for her?

Satisfied that aid was being rushed to him as fast as possible words
died from the lips of Jarvis Elliott’s daughter. She was intensely,
dreadfully anxious. Apprehension had stricken the vivid life from her.
To Jimmie she seemed to shrink into herself, a pathetic and childish
little figure of woe. Wrapped in furs, with only the profile of the
white harrowed face showing, she looked small and forlorn.

His hand went out, found hers, and gripped it. She smiled, wanly, and
let her fingers lie in his. If it helped Jimmie to think that his
sympathy comforted her, she would not withdraw from him.

The boy’s friendliness could not lift her fears, but it melted the hard
lump in her throat. Presently her face began to work. She cried, softly,
noiselessly as she could. What Jimmie did not know about women would
fill a library shelf, but some instinct told him that his friend would
find relief in tears. He let the overflow of distress spend itself.

The car swept into the country through the suburbs of the city. It
passed into a section of irrigated vegetable truck farms and out of this
to one of larger ranches. Fields of oats, wheat, and alfalfa bordered
the road. Shadowy cattle grazed inside of barb-wire fences. Out of the
darkness twinkled lights of farmhouses, suggesting peace and cozy warmth
within. The stars showed, an innumerable array of them. Across the
heavens a broad milky ribbon slashed.

Through villages the car plunged. It gathered speed whenever it struck
again the open road. An easy grade was leading to the edge of the plains
where the foothills were rooted.

Joyce was feverishly impatient. Would this journey never end? Her mind
was filled with her father and his condition to the exclusion of all the
interests that had seemed so important until half an hour ago. From her
soul welled up a cry of despair. She loved him so—and she had been such
a selfish daughter, so negligent of his wishes, so indifferent to his
anxieties about her. Only a few hours before she had deliberately struck
at his heart because he had wounded her pride and self-love. Motherless
from childhood, she had gone her own wilful way even when she knew it
worried him. The gentle lady whom her father had selected as her duenna
had not the firmness, even in the days of her bobbed-haired and
slim-legged early teens, to resist her imperious will.

Joyce wished now, as all of us have done when death has struck at
someone dearly loved, that she could live over again the years and show
her father how she cared for him. She prayed, with a child’s
self-centred directness, for another chance; flung the appeal up from a
tortured heart, and offered terms to the Almighty if He would grant her
supplication.

“O God don’t let him die . . . don’t let him die. I’ll be good. I’ll
show him how I love him. And if You give him back to me I’ll not go on
as I have. I’ll be different. O, I can’t lose him. . . . I can’t. . . .
He’s all I’ve got. I can’t live without Dad. If You’ll give him back to
me, if You’ll grant my prayer just this once . . .”

She stared up into the millions of miles of space in which the earth
whirls, a frightened tremulous child just awakened to her helplessness.
She could only repeat her heart-wrung formula over and over again to
that half-malign, half-beneficent force her imagination conceived as
God. No infant’s cry could have been more naïve. She wanted, with
passionate earnestness, to placate any resentment He might feel toward
that sinner Joyce Elliott and to win the boon she craved.

For the second time that night the chauffeur slackened speed as he
passed down the main street of the coal camp. He drew up at a frame
bungalow which had a lawn in front and what in the moonlight seemed to
be a rose garden in the rear.

A woman came down the porch steps to meet Joyce, a buxom matron with a
kind and winning face.

“I’m Mrs. Graves,” she explained.

“My father!” Joyce cried.

“The doctors have finished setting his leg. It was broken and crushed.
We don’t know yet, my dear——”

“Take me to him, please.”

A man was sitting on the top step. He rose to make way for Joyce.
Absorbed though the girl was in her father, filled with dread of what
the next few moments might reveal to her, the automatic action of her
mind registered recognition. This haggard sunken-eyed man, in whose
peeled and swollen face she read a story of agony endured, was the one
who had brought her down in his machine from Box Elder Cañon this
morning so long, long ago.

She passed into the house and into the room where her father lay. He was
coming out from under the anesthetic painfully, the reaction of what he
had endured expressing itself subconsciously in moans and sighs. The
battle underground, the operation, the hurts he had suffered, had
written on the indomitable face ten years of age. All her life he had
stood to her for Greatheart puissant and invincible. To see him now,
stricken and broken and helpless, was a thing to clutch the heart.

From Joyce’s throat there came a little wailing sob. She moved forward,
dropped on her knees beside the bed, and with an ineffably tender caress
encircled the maimed body, her arm above the coverlet.

A hand touched her shoulder. Joyce looked up. She had known there were
others in the room but she had not seen them. Straight as a plummet her
whole being had concentrated on the one she loved.

At her side was Doctor Van de Vanter, a surgeon known all over the
state. “Careful, young woman,” he said, and his smile was warm.

“Is he . . . will he . . . ?”

Van de Vanter was a broad-shouldered raw-boned man with the uncultured
face of one who has risen from the ranks. One might have guessed him a
contractor if it had not been for the long delicate fingers that did
wonders daily in the operating room.

“His leg is broken in two places and his nervous system has been greatly
shocked. There may be internal injuries. We don’t know yet.” The words
were not reassuring, but in the rugged face was something that
comforted. It was that look of abiding strength which comes to doctors
who make their profession mean to them what it should.

“You won’t let him . . . will you?” she pleaded.

He understood the hiatus. There are thoughts one dare not put into
words.

“We’re going to do our best—Doctor Albert and I and the nurse and you.
Don’t despair, my dear. Your father’s a fighter. I would judge he has a
strong constitution.”

“What can I do?” the wan, big-eyed girl begged.

“Just this. You can be cheerful and happy when you’re near him. If
you’re going to have nerves I can’t let you stay here.”

“Oh, I’m not. I won’t,” she promised. “I’ll do whatever you say. Please
let me stay. I’ve got to be with Dad.”

“That’ll depend on you.”

The spirit of Jarvis Elliott came back into the world, smiled on his
daughter faintly, and wandered into space again. As she listened to his
delirious snatches, Joyce’s mind went back to a hundred memories that
revealed the strength, the tenderness, the poise that flowed deep and
strong in him like the current of an unhurried river. He was a great
man—the only really great one she had known intimately—and he was
simple as a child. There had been in his love for her a quality of
understanding that was fine and noble. He had trusted her, even while he
guarded and watched over her.

Why had she been so intractible and self-willed? Why had she been so
perversely eager for pleasure and excitement? In the bottom of her heart
she had always wanted to know him better, to be the kind of daughter who
is a comfort and an aid. But he had been so strong, so absorbed in big
things. The sand stings of life did not disturb him. He did not have to
be protected from them. There was so little she could do for him. So she
had made her own interests, gone her own way; and a barrier had grown
between them over which their love had not been able to leap without
frustration.

She blamed herself for it, as the generous soul always does. For back of
that impasse which always stands between youth and age she had warmly
felt her father’s brooding tenderness. To the limited perspective of her
short life this was immutable and eternal, just as was the granitic
fineness of his rugged character. What she did not realize—what indeed
the new generation often fails to fathom—was that her own emotion and
deep feeling, repressed and often belied by the selfishness of her ego,
jumped the chasm of years and “got across” to him whose blood flowed in
her veins. Her soul ached for a chance to show him her devotion. If he
could only understand once—once before the waters of the deep river
closed over him—how much she cared, how wholly she admired——

And he had always known it.

It touched her dearly now that his snatches of delirious talk referred
so largely to her. His wandering mind had cast back to the days of her
childhood, to the years that followed the death of her mother. She could
read in what he said his pride in her pluck, her tart tongue, the
essential honesty of her.

Why was it, then, she wondered, with that strong tug of love and kinship
always drawing them, that they had drifted into habits of life so
totally at variance? There had been weeks when they scarcely had seen
each other, when she had known only vaguely where he was. It had been a
joke once between her and Louise that she had thought her father up in
the hills and he was in New York on financial business. She had
discovered this when the local papers mentioned his name as a guest at
the Commodore Hotel.

A queer thing, life, she reflected, and never guessed that a million
other perplexed souls had been over the same ground many times. It took
hold of you, and warped you, and deflected you, and tossed you about
like a chip on a swollen current. All the time you thought yourself—how
was it Henley put it?—Captain of your Soul?—until Fate malignantly put
its foot on your plans and crushed them like an empty eggshell. She had
been used to having her own way. A part of the pride of her youth had
been in the knowledge that she _could_ get what she wanted if she played
her hand astutely and wilfully, or with the gay charm of sex in case
that line was indicated. What could a woman not do, given good looks and
buoyant health and the proper background? It was this sense of growing
power that had made life so intriguing.

And there before her on the bed lay the answer Fate had given—her
father broken and crushed, struck down at the height of his activities.
Her strength had become weakness. She was an infant crying in the night.


                              CHAPTER XIV
                              STORM-TOSSED

All through the night the note of young despair persisted. Joyce’s
sublime confidence in her power to get what she wanted was rudely
shattered. She knew very little of sickness. To her inexperienced eyes
the change in her father was appalling. The shadow of death was creeping
over him, she believed. It might be a few hours, a few days, but . . .

When the first grey streaks of dawn were lightening the sky Doctor Van
de Vanter came into the room, talked in a low voice with the nurse, and
examined the patient. He gave directions about treatment after
consulting with his colleague.

Joyce followed them out and closed the door. “What do you think?” she
asked, imploring eyes clinging to the surgeon’s as though in them lay
life and death.

Van de Vanter said it was too soon to know anything decisively, that the
expected reactions were taking place. “One patient at a time is enough.
Mrs. Graves is making you some breakfast, Miss Elliott. You’re to eat
it. Then you’re to lie down and sleep for a few hours.”

“Oh, I couldn’t sleep,” she protested.

“Doctor’s orders, young woman,” he told her with assumed gruffness.

“Will you wake me if . . . ?”

“If there’s any change, yes. But we don’t expect any at present.”

The breakfast that Mrs. Graves had prepared was a tempting one. The
superintendent’s wife sat opposite her guest and talked while Joyce ate.
Hers was a cheerful and sympathetic soul. The flow of talk she kept up
was more nourishing than the food, and that the girl found unexpectedly
appetizing.

“The men have been coming here all night to find out how your father is.
You know there was some trouble—outsiders came in and stirred the men
up. Well, it had just been fixed up, but the word hadn’t reached all the
miners. Mr. Graves thinks one of them, an ignorant foreigner likely,
must have set off a big charge of dynamite and started the fire and the
cave-in. Anyway, they were angry at Mr. Elliott, the men were, some of
them at least. But that’s all gone. You should hear them talk of him, my
dear, because he went down into the mine and risked his life to save
them. He was the last man to leave the tunnel—wouldn’t go till all of
them were out. That’s how he got hurt, at the very last. You’ve a grand
man for a father.”

“Oh, don’t I know it?” Joyce cried, and bit her lower lip to keep back a
breakdown.

“I said to my Jim an hour ago that Mr. Elliott was going to get well.
He’s a big strong man—and what’s a broken leg and some body bruises. I
don’t believe he has any internal injuries at all. The men all say,
‘Tell the docs not to let him die,’ and I tell ’em he’s not that kind of
a man. We need him, all of us, and, please God, he’ll be with us many a
year yet.”

“You really think so, Mrs. Graves?” begged the girl, the eager longing
of her soul pouring through the soft wistful eyes.

“I do that. I’ve seen many a poor fellow hurt in my time. You will if
you live around the mines, you know. Your father has a good strong
pulse. His heart’ll stand up and carry him through. . . . You look like
a rag, with that tired white face of yours. So I’ll just tuck you up in
bed and you’ll have a nice little sleep. It’ll do you a world of good.”

Joyce wanted to lie down in her clothes, but her hostess would not have
it. She found the girl a nightgown and made her undress, after which she
arranged windows and blinds, patted the soft white cheek, gave it a
motherly kiss, and vanished from the room.

Though sure that she would not sleep, Joyce was lost to the world within
a few minutes. Completely exhausted, she fell into the sound deep
recuperative sleep of youth.

When she awoke the wrist watch on the table beside the bed told her it
was past noon. She dressed. Mrs. Graves must have heard her moving about
the room, for presently she tapped at the door.

Joyce was doing up her hair. She turned in the chair swiftly. “How’s
Dad?”

“He’s asleep, and that’s the best thing for him. The doctor doesn’t want
him disturbed. Soon as he wakes the nurse’ll let you know.”

“The doctors don’t think he’s worse, do they?”

“I’m sure they don’t,” the older woman assured her cheerfully. “Doctor
Van de Vanter has gone to the city—an operation at one of the hospitals
there. He wouldn’t have left your father if he had thought there was any
immediate danger. There have been a lot of ’phone calls for you. I took
the numbers. And here are two telegrams. And there’s a gentleman waiting
to see you. He said not to wake you—as if I’d a-done that anyway.”

Joyce ripped open the yellow envelopes. They contained inquiries from
friends about her father. “Did he mention his name?” she asked.

“The man waiting? Yes. Mr. Ordway.”

The girl finished doing up her hair. Her hostess chatted volubly, so
that it was only necessary to murmur an occasional “Yes” or “No.” Joyce
did not want to see Ordway yet. She had given him scarcely a thought
since the news of the accident to her father had come. The reactions of
her mind now were born rather of instinct than of ordered reason, but it
was quite clear to her that she did not intend to divide herself at
present. Nobody had any claims on her but the man lying on the bed in
the next room. She was not going to spend any time or any emotion upon
anybody else. The matter of her relation to Winthrop Ordway would have
to wait.

She considered sending him a note asking him to go away for the present.
Her father regarded him almost as a personal enemy. It had been through
him that she had wounded the man now lying mangled and broken in the
next room. She felt that it would be akin to disloyalty to see him.

But Ordway had not been to blame. He was the same man with whom she had
passed through an emotional scene only a few hours since. Of course she
must see him. It would be both weak and unkind to refuse.

She respected, however, an obscure feeling that led her to meet him
outside rather than under the roof where her father lay. From the porch
Joyce saw him forty or fifty yards down the road. He was amusing himself
by tossing nickels to a scrambling group of miners’ children.

Ordway caught sight of her, flung up a hand-greeting easily and
negligently, and strode swiftly toward her. She watched him coming, a
man strong and dominant, born for conquest. It was written in his
salient chin, in his confident stride, that he was of those who claim
and take the spoils of the victor.

For the first time in her life she resented this certainty. Wasn’t he a
little too well-groomed, too successful, too overflushed with health and
well-being? The careless, almost arrogant, gesture of his
personality—the intimation that he rode of right life’s topmost
wave—had been her own until a few hours ago. What right had he to be so
smug and so complacent while her father lay in the valley of the shadow?

This was not fair to him. She knew that. It was not his fault that
Jarvis Elliott had been hurt. He had come at once to offer his services
to help her. Why should she blame him?

It was perhaps in recoil from her instinctive criticism that she let him
bury both her hands in his while his eyes fastened on her.

“You poor child! You’ve been worrying yourself sick,” he accused.

There was a quiver at the corners of her mouth. “It’s been—rather
awful,” she confessed.

“How is he?”

“He’s—asleep,” Joyce gulped. She dodged facing the facts of her
father’s condition in spoken words, for this brought a lump into her
throat and a break into her voice.

“That’s fine.” He took up another phase of the subject almost irritably.
“He shouldn’t have gone down into the mine. They ought not to have let
him. There are plenty of men to do that sort of thing. It was the
superintendent’s job.”

“Was it? Father must have thought it was his too.” She spoke quietly,
but there was a flash in her eyes. She resented what he had said, none
the less because there was a measure of truth in it. This quixotic
capacity for self-forgetfulness was precisely the quality in her
father’s strength that made it winning. In a flash it came to her that
Ordway had none of it. All he could find in its expression was foolish
waste. “Mr. Graves told his wife that nobody but Father could have held
the men at the rescue work.”

“Even so, he had no business there. His life is worth more than that of
a hundred labourers. . . . Let’s take a little walk. You need it.”

“I want to be here when Dad awakes.”

“Of course. We’ll not go far—up that hill, say. It’s your duty to him
to keep in trim, you know.”

“Ye-es.” She hesitated. “I’ll run in and see what the doctor says. I’d
only go a very little way anyhow.”

Doctor Albert told her that her father was resting comfortably. No
unfavourable symptoms had developed. The signs were distinctly hopeful.
Probably the patient would sleep for some time. He urged her by all
means to take a walk.

Joyce rejoined Ordway.

They passed down the narrow crooked little road flanked by small frame
cottages. It was a squalid enough place in spite of the attempts Jarvis
Elliott had made to render it habitable. There were a community hall and
a clubhouse for the men on a hill at the bend of the street. Joyce
pointed them out to her companion.

“That’s the right idea,” he agreed. “Keeps ’em more contented. Cheaper
than strikes.”

“That’s not why Dad does it,” she answered with a flash of indignation.

“No? Why does he do it?”

“Because it makes them happier. A coal camp is a horrible place at best.
Those who live and work here are entitled to some pleasure after the
risks they take.”

“It’s good business, no matter why he does it.”

A man passed them on the road, a lean clean-built fellow of the outdoor
engineer type. Joyce recognized him at once, though the tanned face was
peeled and swollen from the effects of the fire fight underground. He
and Ordway passed without sign of recognition.

“Who is he?” Joyce asked.

“Name’s Hallack. An engineer. Expect he works for your father.”

She remembered having seen him at her father’s office. “I believe he
does.” She added, after a moment: “Why does he hate you?”

He shrugged broad well-packed shoulders. “Why do fifty men hate me?” he
asked indifferently. “I suppose I pushed him out of my way some time.”

Joyce repressed an impulse of curiosity to drive home an inquiry for
more definite information. The engineer interested her.

“Perhaps he’s connected with the mine,” she suggested. “That’s probably
it. You noticed his face? How it’s burnt from the fire?”

“Yes.” Ordway knew of more interesting topics of conversation and he
steered for one of them. “Have you thought about what I said last night,
Bubbles?”

“No.” Her eyes carried swift attack. “And I’m not going to as long as
Dad’s so ill.”

He smiled, not at all disturbed by the sharpness of her answer. “Then
I’ve a double reason to pull for him to get well in a hurry.”

The girl’s resentment disappeared in a whirl of anxiety. “Oh, Win, do
you think he will?”

“Of course he will,” he said with a reassuring pressure of his fingers
upon the muscles of her forearm just above the wrist. “And meantime
perhaps there’s something I can do for him—business that I can carry on
for him—about the cut-off, say—or anything else. I want you to feel
that I’m entirely at his service.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think there is. Thanks, just the same. He
talked about Arapahoe Cañon two or three times last night. It seemed to
be on his mind.”

Joyce did not see the quick leap of his eyes at her when she mentioned
the cañon.

“Well, if there’s anything I can do you’ll let me know.”

“Yes,” she told him. Then, with a sigh, added: “I’d be the happiest girl
alive if he’d hurry up and get well. Oh, I do hope—I do think he will.
Don’t you?”

Again he told her he had no doubt of it, and from his assurance she
gathered hope.


                               CHAPTER XV
                         THE PHILOSOPHY OF “IF”

Hallack consulted with Brokaw, the lawyer who represented the Gateway
Pass Cut-off. They decided there was nothing to do but go ahead with the
work in spite of the condition of their chief. Both of them felt
hampered on account of lack of definite knowledge of his plans.

“Elliott has a way of playing his own hand,” Brokaw said. “Even when he
trusts a man he does not tell him more than necessary. It’s annoying at
times. For instance, take the Arapahoe Cañon business. I went to
Washington and saw the Secretary of the Interior personally, after
filing all our papers in the case. When I came home Elliott heard my
report, made a comment or two, and passed the matter as though it were
of slight importance. I had a feeling that he was holding in reserve
something about which I was not informed.”

The engineer nodded agreement. He too had met this same reticence in
Elliott, and, oddly enough, when he had asked a question about Arapahoe
Cañon. What was this mystery connected with the cañon? Hallack would
have given a good deal to see Maclure’s report on it.

He went to Smithers, who rather reluctantly overhauled the chiefs desk
to see if the report was there. It was not.

“It’s probably in his private safe-deposit box. I haven’t access to
that,” the secretary explained.

Before Hallack returned to the hills he met Brokaw again.

“We’ll play it out because we can’t let go now,” the lawyer said. “But
if Elliott dies the cut-off is doomed. It doesn’t matter a jackstraw
whether you work out a feasible grade. Ordway and those back of him will
see that the bonds don’t move. Without Elliott’s genius for finance and
his tremendous energy the project is lost. I’ll be frank. He never
convinced me that it could be put through, but I was willing to take a
gambler’s chance because I knew him and because the road would be such a
big thing for the city and state.”

Hallack carried into the hills with him a sense of increased
responsibility. Brokaw might be and probably was a good lawyer, but he
would never do to lead an enterprise like this. The illness of Elliott
was a heavy blow. He had told the engineer that a single false move on
the chessboard at which he and the M. & P. made their moves might prove
fatal. How would it be possible to avoid mistakes while the directing
head lay delirious? Ordway would not chivalrously hold his hand until
the recovery of his opponent. Big business campaigns of rival
corporations against each other are war. They are fought out ruthlessly.
If the situation had been reversed Elliott would have taken instant
advantage of it.

The work of Hallack hitherto had been up near the divide, in the country
of deep snows, among the steep and narrow gorges that cut like titanic
sword-clefts into the backbone of the continent. But now his mind
focussed on Arapahoe Cañon. He decided to have a survey of it made at
once.

He sent for his first assistant, vice Randall resigned, an engineer
named Thomas Hill with whom he had been at college. Hill had just
returned from the Andes where he had been building a short spur of a
railroad to tap a newly discovered ore field.

“I’m putting McSweeney on the work near the summit,” Hallack explained.
“I want your help down at Arapahoe. You know what Truesdale and Manders
said about it. If they’re right—if there’s no workable grade through
the gorge for us—well, we can’t know it too soon. Take a party down
there and get the preliminary work done. I’ll join you Monday and we’ll
satisfy ourselves once for all.”

Hill was a big ruddy man with a voice that came out of his chest like
the booming of a bass drum. “Aye, aye, Captain,” he said, saluting.

Twenty-four hours later Hallack, far up in the Rockies, was poring over
some blue-prints in his tent by the light of a lantern when Hill lifted
the flap and stepped in.

Hallack’s surprise showed in the first questioning look. His assistant
should have been sixty miles away.

“Too late,” Hill told him. “Ordway has a gang at both ends of the cañon
and I couldn’t get in. He’s got it corked tight.”

“You mean they wouldn’t let you in?”

“Just that. The man in charge was very sorry and all that, but they were
doing blasting for a power site and it wouldn’t be safe. He had orders
not to let anybody in.”

“He has. We’ll see about that.” Hallack’s jaw muscles tightened. “Were
the men armed?”

“I didn’t see any arms, but they’ve got guns. You may depend on that.
They’re a nice bunch of plug-uglies.”

“Gunmen, of course,” Hallack commented.

“I told the fellow he had no right to stop me, that the Department of
the Interior hasn’t given a decision against us. He said again he was
obeying orders, but he wouldn’t tell me whose.”

“We know whose. I’ll show Ordway he can’t pull his strong-arm methods on
me and get away with it. That irrigation reservoir and power site
application is a camouflage. It’s a move to stop us, but it won’t work.
If Arapahoe offers a satisfactory grade we’re going through.”

“I don’t quite see how we’re going to find out whether it does or not,
Bob, unless we dynamite one of Ordway’s camps out. You don’t want to go
that far, do you?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Hallack unrolled a map and
pinned down the corners with bits of quartz. A pencil-point in his
fingers traced the course of a stream shown on it. “This is a copy of
Manders’s map of the cañon survey. The difficulty is at this point where
the gulch swings to the left with a sharp drop.”

“Yes.” Hill nodded understanding.

Hallack looked up, his narrowed eyes hard and shining. “I picked you
because you’re a fighter, Tom. I can get plenty of fellows who know
their business as well as you do, but when I heard you could be got I
jumped at you because of your football record. You never would quit.”

“Oh, well, you were some sticker yourself, my captain,” boomed Hill.
“Wherefore the flowers?”

“I don’t care anything about the mouth of the cañon. Here’s the storm
centre.” The pencil-point rested on the blue-print at the bend of the
stream. “If you and I can get down there for forty-eight hours we’ll
know whether we can put a line through or not.”

“I’m told there are no side gulches leading in. How do we get down?”

“From above. At night.”

“Down a fifteen-hundred-foot rock wall?”

“Exactly that.”

The audacity of the adventure gripped Hill’s imagination. It was certain
that no living man had ever gone down either of those sheer walls, and
Bob was proposing to do it in the darkness. He gave a deep bass boyish
whoop.

“When do we pull off this Matterhorn stunt?”

“There’s plenty of moonlight now. We’ll have to haul supplies there. How
would Monday night suit you?”

“I always had a fancy for breaking my neck on a Monday night. Lead me to
this yawning chasm.”

“I don’t say we can get down,” warned Hallack. “But we can try. I’ll
scout around the top and look the situation over. It stands to reason
there must be a way down.”

“There’s a way down,” admitted Hill, grinning.

“A safe way, then, since you’re so particular.”

“You’re right I’m particular. Except three others I’m the only boy my
mother has.” Tom’s eyes were sparkling. He was pleasantly exalted with
the adventure of life. Quite without envy, he knew that he would never
have thought of acquiring technical information in this mad way. Bob
Hallack had imagination, and with it the quality that had made him so
superb a leader on the football field, an instinct for the weak points
of the opponents’ line against which to hurl the attack.

“I’ll saddle at once and start to-night,” Hallack announced. “Load up
the flivver with rope, tackle, and provisions to-morrow evening and
drive at night. Better bring your revolver. I’m taking mine. Don’t let
any one know where you’re going. Ordway probably has a spy among us.
You’ll need a couple of men. Think I’d bring Anderson and Chapin.”

“It’s a long ride on horseback,” Hill suggested.

“Yes, but safer. If they heard a car they might start looking for it.
I’ll reach the cañon by morning or soon after.”

“Well, if you find that safe way down—and if we reach the bottom all
right—and if Ordway’s plug-uglies don’t pot us while we’re down
there—and if we get back to the rim with whole skins—here’s hoping
Arapahoe Cañon appreciates all the trouble we’re taking to pay it a
visit and reciprocates by giving us the grade we want.”

“The way you put it there’s a good deal of _if_ in the proposition,
Tom,” his friend said, smiling. He too was warming up to the adventure.

“It’s a great little word. If a girl hadn’t chucked me in the Eocene
period and blasted my young existence I’d probably still be wrapping up
candy in a drug store,” Tom affirmed cheerfully. “It’s the _ifs_ that
give life zip. When there aren’t any left a fellow fossilizes.”

“I’ll guarantee you won’t do that as long as we’re working on the
Gateway Pass proposition.”

“Not a chance,” agreed the big man promptly.

They arranged details, after which Hallack saddled and rode into the
night. Not four men in the camp knew he had gone.

It was a star-splashed night. The mountains rose black and sheer to the
sky, a jagged saw-toothed line without perspective. For hours he rode
steadily, sometimes with the faint soughing of the pines murmuring in
his ears, now far down in draws and gulches, again among the tops of the
high hills.

The early morning light began to sift into the skies. He looked down
into smoke-coloured lakes of mist that filled the hollows. He saw the
sun come up out of a saddle in the ridge. The peaks took on the definite
detail that comes when light floods them. It was midday before he
reached the cañon.

A mile or more back from the rim he unsaddled and picketed his horse. On
foot he undertook a reconnaissance. As he drew nearer he used the cover
of a grove of pines. He did not regard this preliminary survey as at all
dangerous, but he did not want to apprise the Ordway forces of his
presence and make them more alert. The chances were that the leader of
the parties which held the mouths of the gorge was paying no attention
to the high line fifteen hundred feet above. He was not expecting madmen
to drop down from the skies to the river bed. In that narrow winding
ravine it was not possible for an airplane to find room to operate.

All day he crouched close to the rim of the great earth fissure,
studying the contour of the walls as he moved slowly back and forth. The
sheer descent was appalling. A pebble dropped from the hand would first
strike six or seven hundred feet below.

The character of the chasm drove him closer to the upper entrance of the
crevasse. Here the distance down was not so great and there was some
slope to the walls. For hours he lay on a flat rock, examining the
terrain through high-power field glasses. Without making the attempt it
was impossible to be sure, but he found a place that seemed to offer a
chance of a descent. Far below was a fault in the strata that formed a
ledge angling down toward the river. How far the ledge went, what was
below it, he could not see from where he lay. Tom and he would have to
take a chance that the surface of the rocks nearer the bottom of the
gorge was broken enough for foot and hand holds.

Voices drifted to him occasionally from far below. Once there were
sounds of shots. He could see three men practising at a target. Smoke
from an unseen camp fire, thin and wispy, floated up. He even sniffed,
or imagined that he did, the faint odour of the resinous pitch pine.

The sun was again sliding into a crotch of the range when he rose and
walked back to the draw where he had left his horse. The western sky
became a glory of crimson and gold, the hill crotch a cauldron of melted
jewels, opal and topaz and amethyst and ruby. With the coming of dusk
the more vivid tints faded. Below the upper reaches of the snow-ribbed
mountains a violet haze blurred the sharp outline, and as the stars came
out this deepened to purple and at last to a soft blue-black.

If he had been a tenderfoot Hallack would have found the camp in the
draw a lonely spot, even beside his roaring fire. The wind in the pines
made mournful soughing sounds. Once a mountain lion screamed and sent an
involuntary shiver down his spine. But he was used to camping alone in
the hills. Almost as soon as his head had found a comfortable spot on
the saddle he was asleep.

When he wakened gulfs of blue stretched above in which floated islands
of white clouds—shifting islands that changed shape as he watched them,
growing tenuous and drifting into each other and parting again as though
unseen hands pulled at them.

He dressed and prepared breakfast.

A voice from the upper edge of the draw startled him.

“Is my name in the coffee pot, Bob?”

Big Tom Hill was grinning down at him.


                              CHAPTER XVI
                            FLIES ON A WALL

As Bob Hallack looked down into the black void of Arapahoe Cañon from
the rim he felt an extreme reluctance to start the descent. It was one
thing to plan the adventure with the cheerful sunshine warming the slope
upon which he sat; it was quite another to attempt the hazard by the
uncertain light of a moon which served to show the dangers without
simplifying them by making each problem a definite one.

Hill slipped the loop over his friend’s head and tightened it under the
armpits. “We’ll pay it out slowly,” he said.

Hallack, on hands and knees, worked backward to the edge. There was a
queer sinking of the stomach when the solid ground fell away from his
feet. He clung, face down, to the mossy rock, and pushed himself inch by
inch from its support. A moment more, and he dangled like a gasping fish
in mid-air. Far above was the Milky Way of powdered stars. As far below,
it seemed to him, was the bottom of this murky pit to which he was
consigning life and limb.

“All right?” called Hill.

“All right,” his chief answered cheerfully, and from the bottom of a
doubtful heart meant all wrong.

The men above began to let down the rope. Hallack spun round like a fowl
on a roasting-jack. He skinned his face against the wall. His knees
rasped against sharp projections. In his efforts to keep from being
flayed he forgot about the perilous enterprise upon which he was
engaged.

The face of the precipice sloped inward. He swung dizzily in space, not
even a reaching toe touching anything solid. To his exaggerated fancy it
seemed that he had been lowered hundreds of feet. Soon those above would
come to the end of the rope, and he had not yet reached the outcropping
of rock that was to mark the real starting point of the journey.

Even as this thought flashed through his mind his foot struck something
solid. He was at rest on a sloping ledge of cliff wide enough to give
standing room.

He freed himself from the loop and gave the signal to Hill. The rope
jerked upward. To Hallack, crouched on that narrow incline with a gulf
of space at his feet, hours seemed to drag past before he caught sight
of Hill slowly descending. In reality the time could not have been more
than ten or fifteen minutes.

He caught at Tom’s leg and guided it to a foot-hold.

“That’s that, anyhow,” the big man said as he shook the loop from his
body and stepped out of it.

Again Hallack jerked the rope three times as a signal to those on the
edge of the precipice above. He and his companion hung on to it. A long
twisting snake dived past them into the chasm. It was the rope, released
by Anderson and Chapin.

The two on the ledge drew it up. Each of them looped himself to an end
of the coil.

Hallack was the lighter of the two. He was also the leader. He went
first, creeping for a few yards along the narrowing shelf.

“A kind of trough runs down from here, Tom,” he called back. “Looks as
though we could make it.”

Hill joined him. They peered down into the shadows which swallowed the
precipitous trench.

“Looks chancy,” the big man suggested. “Wish we could see where we were
going.”

“You first, Tom,” his friend told him.

Tom understood why he was to lead the way. It was the less dangerous
position. The one in the rear could support him with a taut rope but
would have to come down unassisted.

The big fellow manœuvred himself, face to the wall, into the trough.
Except for the grade, which was close to ninety per cent., the going was
not bad. Rough projections of feldspar gave hand and foot holds. He
lowered himself carefully, testing every place upon which he put his
weight, while Hallack, braced against the possibility of a fall, kept
the rope tight.

“Near the end of your tether, Tom. Find a place where you can sit tight
a while,” Bob called down.

The climber came to a place where a boulder was jammed into the trough.
“This’ll do fine,” he answered, and slipped the loop from his waist.

Hallack lowered to him both packs. They were awkward as well as heavy.
In them were surveying instruments, blankets, and food. From the floor
on which he stood Bob slid down into the wedge-shaped trough-fault,
found a toe hold, and began to descend. A moment of squeamishness ran
through him as he clung to a knob of quartz and groped with his foot for
an outcropping rib on which to rest it. If he should make any mistake in
the choice of a prop, if a muscle failed him at a pinch or his nerves
went panicky, he would plunge to the rocks a thousand feet below. The
dizziness passed almost instantly. He moved hands and feet from one
anchor to another with the sureness of the expert mountaineer.

Presently he stood beside his companion on the boulder, cramped between
the angling sides of the conduit.

Hill swung over the edge of the smooth stone and disappeared from view.
Bob leaned back, bracing himself with toe and knee. He paid out the line
foot by foot.

A cry of alarm rang out. The rope tore like red-hot steel through his
fingers. There came a jerk that almost dragged him from his moorings.
His hands tightened and the muscles of his arms stood out hard as iron
bands. The strain was tremendous, but it could not have lasted more than
a few seconds before it eased.

“You all right, Tom?” called Hallack anxiously.

“No bones broken. Shaken up a bit. That’s all. Foot slipped while I was
trying for a grip. I’m wedged in safe enough here. Better come on down
now. Look out for the last twenty feet.”

Bob Hallack knew it had been a near thing. A few pounds more weight
would have dragged him from the boulder and they would both have gone
plunging into space. He drew a deep breath of relief.

After he had lowered the packs he eased himself into the crevice made by
the angling strata of the faults. A few yards brought him to a surface
worn smooth except for small loose rubble that gave no foot-hold.

“You’ll have to let go and slide down. I’ll catch you as you come,” Hill
said.

His partner in the adventure looked down over his shoulder. “How firm is
that rock you’re standing on?”

“Don’t know. A bit wobbly. But it stopped me.”

“It might not hold my weight too if I came with a rush.” Like most men
of initiative Hallack made quick decisions. “Let’s have your end of the
rope, Tom.”

He fastened the loop to a crag just above him and went down carefully
hand over hand. An upward fling of the line released the upper end.

A sheer wall fell away from their feet. Hallack had made a map of their
route on the back of an envelope and committed it to memory. At this
point a rock traverse of sixty or seventy feet was indicated.

They strapped the packs on their backs and began to work across it.
Stunted shrubs, crevices, and rough contours helped them. In the
uncertain light they could not see far in front of them and came to an
impasse.

“Have to back track,” announced Bob, who was in the lead again.

Hill worked back for half-a-dozen yards, followed by his companion. An
ascending crack in the wall zigzagged to the right.

“Looks possible,” Bob said, and went at it.

A thin drizzle of sleety rain had begun to fall. It coated the rocks
with a veneer of ice smooth as glass. Every hand grip, every foot-hold
had to be tested carefully, for each jutting inch of quartz was glazed
with danger. Loaded with packs as they were, the climbing was very
difficult. It called for muscle and nerve, for a steady head and a sure
foot.

They had to take chances. A rounded slab protruded and cut them off.
Peering around this convex barrier, Hallack could see that the crevice
continued. It was scarcely four feet from him, but quite out of reach.
The tantalizing feature was that it led straight to an incline of broken
rock by which an easy descent might be made for some distance.

Bob threw the loop of the rope over the smooth surface of the
promontory. It slid down when he put weight on it. He tried again. It
held. But would it hold at the crucial moment with one hundred and
fifty-five pounds dependent on it? There was only one way to tell.

The moment while he summoned courage to let his feet swing off from
solid ground over the abyss was a dreadful one. He filled his lungs as a
diver does and an instant later hung above a five-hundred-foot chasm.
The impetus of the plunge carried his body to the right. The loop
slipped, caught again and held fast. One of his toes found a bit of moss
on the edge of the crevice. He pulled himself gingerly to the ledge.

Once there, it was possible to adjust the rope securely to the granite
slab so that Hill swung round in comparative safety.

Five minutes later they were jubilantly descending the rock slide. They
were clambering toward more danger, but at least they had met without
disaster some very ugly bits of climbing.

“Talk about the Andes,” boomed Hill. “I’ll say your little old Rockies
have got ’em flattened out on the map. Next time I want to play I’m a
fly crawling along a window pane I’ll do it in the daytime.”

“Can’t say I fancy this night work myself—not for scaling cliffs. But
it was rather up to us, wasn’t it?”

“Trouble is I’m not up to it,” Tom pretended to grumble. “Too old, too
fleshy, too timid. I’ll have heart failure if I bump into many more
hair-raising stunts like that business up there on the crack. It’s all
right for you, because you’re such a devil-may-care go-getter. But I’ll
tell you straight, I wanted to quit a dozen times.”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” Hallack asked cheerfully.

“Some of me—all but about ten pounds I’ve sweated off. What I want to
know is, where do I go from here?”

“Heaven knows.”

They came, by way of another precipitous wall, to the ledge Hallack had
seen through his glasses from the rim. Along this they moved cautiously,
looking for a chance to get down. From their feet the precipice fell
sheer. They could hear the sound of Arapahoe Creek as the water tumbled
over rocks in its eagerness to reach the plain, and they guessed that
they were now not more than about three hundred feet from the bottom.

The ledge pinched out. They moved back along it.

“Might make it from here,” Hill said. “Trouble is, even if we got down
we’d have to leave the rope.”

There was no alternative. The end of the rope reached an escarpment from
which it might be possible to descend.

“I’ll go down and have a look at it,” Hallack decided.

They fastened the rope to a rock. Hallack went down, bumping against the
wall and whirling like a dancing dervish. After reaching the platform he
took in swiftly the cliff leading to the bottom.

“It’s easy, Tom,” he called up.

“Glad something’s easy, Cap. Look out. Here come the packs.”

He lowered them, swung off the ledge himself, and came down jerkily.

After he had landed on terra firma Tom looked up the wall down which he
had just come. One thing was sure. They would not go back that way.

“Souvenirs of the exploits of two bally goats,” he said, showing the
blisters on his hands. “Well, Cap, we’re here. We’ve burned our bridges
behind us. I’d be happy if I wasn’t worrying for fear we may have to
spend the rest of our lives in this large-sized vault.”

“I know two ways out. One at each end of the cañon. When we’re ready to
go, we’ll go.”

“I wonder,” murmured Tom mournfully. He was enjoying himself immensely.
Who was it that had said engineering had become a profession without any
romance?

They shouldered their packs and lowered themselves to the bottom of the
cañon by means of scrub trees and the broken surfaces of the sloping
cliff.

Hill shivered. “Someone’s walking on my grave,” he said.

“This sleet is cold. We’ll build a fire,” Hallack replied.

“To tell our friends the enemy that we’re here?”

“Oh, we’ll put it out before morning.”

A quarter of an hour later they lay on their blankets before a roaring
camp fire.


                              CHAPTER XVII
                          JOYCE TAKES COMMAND

From the city Smithers came to Coalville with several knotty problems he
wanted to submit to his employer. “Secretary to the President” was
printed on his card and would remain on it because he had no initiative
and obeyed orders meticulously. Without Elliott to tell him what to do
he was lost when he passed beyond routine matters.

A slim golden girl met him on the porch. She listened to his tale of
perplexity and shook her decisively. “You can’t see Dad, Mr. Smithers.
The doctors don’t want him troubled by business. If he got to
worrying—well, it wouldn’t be good for him.”

“He’s getting better?”

“Yes, we think so—very slowly. It was a great shock to his system. He
isn’t wholly out of danger yet, but he does seem a lot better. The
fever’s down, though he’s weak.”

Smithers hung in the wind. “I suppose I ought to consult with Mr.
Brokaw, but there are some things—well, that Maclure map of Arapahoe
Cañon for instance!”

“What about it?”

The secretary told her.

Joyce considered, made an instant decision. “I’ll come in to-morrow if
Dad’s all right. Get Mr. Brokaw to go with us to the vault. The manager
will let us look over the papers in Dad’s box. If he objects to me
taking away the survey map you’ll have to copy it as well as you can.”

She drove to town next day in her roadster and found Brokaw and Smithers
waiting for her at the bank in the vault of which her father kept a
private safety-deposit box. The manager of the vault department made no
objection to the removal of the map after Joyce and Brokaw had signed a
paper prepared by the latter absolving the bank from responsibility.

The three adjourned to the office of Brokaw and examined the map and
report.

“We ought to let Mr. Hallack know about this at once, oughtn’t we?”
Joyce suggested.

“Yes. I’ll get word to him,” the lawyer promised.

His stenographer walked into the room. She was a pert competent young
person of the latest season model, with a graceful streamlike body and
fully equipped as to accessories. Just now she was very much ruffled.

“There’s a guy—a person—who says he’s got to see you right away, Mr.
Brokaw. I told him you were busy and he said he didn’t care how busy you
were. Name’s Anderson, he claims.”

“What’s he want?”

“Wouldn’t say. He doesn’t look like anybody particular to me. Shall I
tell him you won’t see him?” The young woman patted an ear pad to make
sure that no part of the external organ of hearing immodestly showed.
“He was very rude—quite impudent, in fact.”

“There’s a man named Anderson working on the survey with Hallack,”
Smithers suggested.

“Let’s hear what he has to say,” Joyce proposed in her swift impetuous
way.

“Show him in, Miss Pierce,” the lawyer said.

Miss Pierce sniffed, eloquently. That sniff expressed entire disapproval
of the decision. If any roughneck could bolt into the office and demand
to see a member of the firm at once without any appointment—well,
things were coming to a pretty pass. She went out of the room abruptly.
Technically speaking, she flounced out.

Anderson appeared at once. He was of the Nordic race, high-coloured and
fair. At a glance it was apparent he was an outdoor engineer.

“Can I see you alone, Mr. Brokaw?” he asked.

“If it’s about the Gateway Pass project you may speak before us all.
This is Miss Elliott.”

“We’re in trouble at Arapahoe Cañon,” the man blurted. “Hallack and Hill
went down and haven’t come back. They’re firing at them.”

“What do you mean? Who’s firing at who?”

“Ordway’s men are firing at Hallack and Hill. They must have them
trapped down there. We can see some of the men from the rim—and the
jets of smoke when they fire.”

Joyce broke in. “Do you mean that Mr. Ordway’s men are shooting at Mr.
Hallack and Mr. Hill?”

“Yes. That’s just what I mean. They must be in the rocks somewhere near
the wall—our men, I mean. We can’t see them but they’re firing back.”

“Just a moment. Let’s get this straight,” Brokaw broke in quickly. “How
did this clash come about? Tell your story from the beginning.”

“Hallack sent us with Hill to make a survey of the cañon. He was coming
himself in a day or two. We found both entrances guarded by gangs of
plug-uglies. They claimed to be working on a power plant site—doing the
preliminary blasting. They wouldn’t let us in. Hallack’s no quitter. He
decided to get in anyhow. We lowered him and Hill Monday night from the
rim.”

“From the rim? Why, it must be a thousand feet high!” exclaimed Joyce,
thrilling to this vicarious adventure.

Anderson looked at the girl. Soft eyes, quick with life, flashed at him
from a vivid personality.

“Nearer fifteen hundred. We lowered them only a little way. They had to
work down. Looked like a crazy thing to me, but Hallack had spent a day
on the rim looking the ground over with field glasses. He’d figured it
could be done, and I guess he was right. They must have got down.”

“Monday night. And this is Friday. When did the firing begin?”

“Last night—farther up the cañon—near the mouth. This morning it had
moved down. Looks like Hallack and Hill slipped away in the night and
got into the big rocks at the upper end. We’d begun to worry about ’em
before. The plan was that they’d be down there two days and climb back
up Wednesday night or Thursday morning.”

“But, good Lord!” cried Smithers, aghast. “They daren’t kill them. It
would be murder.”

“Have you ever read the history of any of these fights to get possession
of cañon right of ways, Mr. Smithers?” asked Brokaw dryly. “The side
that wins is always justified. Uncle Sam’s a pretty big figure, isn’t
he? But when he served notice on the M. & P. not to go through Crooked
Creek Gorge it did not make a bit of difference. The road went right
through and fought the legal question out afterward. It’s doing business
through that cañon to-day.”

“But, Mr. Ordway—he wouldn’t let his men shoot Mr. Hallack,” Joyce
broke out.

Brokaw smiled grimly. “They’re doing it, aren’t they? At least they’re
trying to. Probably Mr. Ordway doesn’t know anything about it. Through
some agency he has hired a gang of toughs to hold the cañon. He is not
looking for trouble. He doesn’t expect it. His idea is to forestall
trouble by showing that he is prepared to meet it. But the unexpected
happens. Someone touches a match to the gunpowder, and it explodes.”

“I’ll call up Mr. Ordway, right away, and stop it,” the girl cried,
tense with excitement.

“The best thing you can do,” agreed the lawyer. He was a member of the
Rocky Mountain Club and knew that Joyce and Ordway were close friends.

Instantly Joyce was at the telephone. “Main 4433. . . . Mr. Ordway,
please. . . . It’s very important. I must talk with him. Miss Elliott on
the line. . . . Can you tell me where he is . . . ?”

She hung up and turned to Brokaw. “He’s gone to Arapahoe Cañon—just
left. I’m going too, if Father’s all right.”

“Is that necessary?” Brokaw asked. “Mr. Smithers and I will go at once.
We’ll see Mr. Ordway and arrange the matter.”

“No. I’m going,” she said decisively. “Will you have your stenographer
call Coalville, please? I want to talk with Doctor Albert. Ask for a
quick connection, Mr. Brokaw.” The girl’s wistful smile apologized for
the abruptness of her speech.

From Doctor Albert she learned that her father was doing very well
indeed and that just now he was asleep.

“Will you tell him that I’m detained on business and can’t get back till
evening? When he wakes, I mean. And please give him oodles and oodles of
love from me,” she entreated.

It was the first time since the accident to her father that she had been
so long away from him. To wait upon him, to heap upon him the full
devotion of her penitence, had been a poignant joy. In these days, while
he had lain in the Valley of the Shadow, so weak and stricken, father
and daughter had come very close to each other. The stark reality of
life had broken down the barrier between them. She was no longer a
wilful young thing, eager for experiments in sensation. The essential
woman in her, the brooding mother that had always lain below the
surface, had lapped him in tenderness. She had found it possible to
break through the crust of habit and croon over him with bubbling little
words of endearment.

He understood. Joyce knew that he appreciated and rejoiced in the
concord that had driven away their differences, though he told her with
smiles and little pressures of the hand rather than in words.

But as she drove the roadster toward the hills, Brokaw by her side, her
thoughts were not of her father but of Ordway. She was wondering when he
had decided to occupy the cañon with a force to prevent Hallack from
entering it. The recollection came to her that she had spoken of
Arapahoe to Ordway the day after the accident to her father. It had been
while she and Winthrop had been walking up the crooked little street of
Coalville. She had told him that the subject seemed to be on her
father’s mind, since he had spoken of it in his delirium two or three
times. And immediately—the very next day—he had moved his men up
there.

Had he taken advantage of what she said, of the unwary words of a
fear-filled girl he claimed to love, and used the information they gave
him to beat her crushed and broken father? It was not possible. The
thing was too base to believe.

The thought carried the girl back a step farther. During the past week
she had done more thinking than ever before in her nineteen years. She
was trying to find the right answer to the problem of her relation to
Ordway. More than once, while she had sat beside the bed of her sleeping
father, she had gone over that half hour at the dance when he had asked
her to marry him. Did he even claim to love her? At the time it had not
struck her at all; there had been no significance to her in the omission
of it. But it was a curious and disturbing fact that he had not once
mentioned love as a motive for his declaration.

The omission filled her now with a sense of deep humiliation. Asking her
to marry him, he had left out what should have been the most important
reason for him—and she had not even noticed it. A sentence or two flung
out by Jarvis Elliott renewed themselves in her mind. “You’ve been
living for yourself alone—for excitement and sensation and pleasure.
Nobody can find happiness in that.” At the time she had resented them,
but she knew now that they were profoundly true. That was why she had
built up false and tawdry standards of judgment.

She had gone her wilful feverish way because she had never disciplined
herself to service. There had been in her no social consciousness, no
sense of obligation to others. She began to see that the self-indulgent
lose touch with the saner impulses of our common humanity, that they are
a discord instead of a harmony in that unity of life for which all
constructive forces are working.

Joyce saw this only dimly, vaguely. It came to her by individual
observation rather than philosophic reasoning. She felt, without being
able to give expression to it, that her father was building up the
continuity and solidarity of life that made for social order and it was
being borne in on her that Winthrop Ordway was a destructive element
because he played his own hand with no regard to the community interest.

She was beginning to find a social consciousness.


                             CHAPTER XVIII
                            BIG ROCKS POINT

Before the light of dawn had fully banished the lingering grey of night
the engineers stamped out their fire and scattered the ashes in the
creek. They hid their packs and moved down the cañon to the falls where
the gulch swung to the left.

Hill glanced up the painted wall down which they had come in the
darkness. The precipice was so sheer that the thought of having climbed
down it took his breath.

“I don’t believe it, Bob. We didn’t do that fool thing. It’s a dream,”
he said.

“Just as well we didn’t try it in the daytime. We might have lost our
nerve,” Hallack replied.

“Hmp! I lost mine a dozen times. I’ve had all the adventure I want for a
year. Hope none of Ordway’s crowd find us. I’d hate to be massacred to
make an M. & P. holiday,” he grumbled in high spirits.

They fell to work on their survey. Some of the old stakes set by Manders
and Truesdale were still in place. From these as a basis they ran lines
to the falls with the transit. The walls at this point were
perpendicular and came so close together that there was only room for
the bed of the stream. All day they worked, taking and jotting down
measurements, covering as thoroughly as they could every inch of the
approach below and above. Night found them with their task still
unfinished. They returned to their camp of the previous night.

Two or three times during the day men had strolled through the gorge,
evidently passing from one camp to the other. But the surveyors had seen
them in time to conceal themselves before they were observed.

It was cold, but Hallack did not dare to light a fire until close to
midnight. Somebody might be stumbling down in the darkness from the camp
at the upper entrance to the one at the lower. They were pretty well
chilled before Hill put a match to the resinous fir limbs they had
gathered.

Before daybreak they had again broken camp and were ready for work. They
were continually interrupted by men passing back and forth, so that they
got very little done. The distance below the falls to the mouth of the
cañon was short, and at any time somebody might come upon them while
they were running their lines.

They had brought with them food for only two days, but neither of them
had any thought of leaving till they had solved conclusively the problem
before them. Without breakfast or lunch they stayed on the job Thursday
and had the satisfaction of finishing it late in the afternoon.

Hallack was folding the tripod when he looked up to see a pair of amazed
eyes staring at him stupidly. They belonged to a squat heavy-set man who
suggested the savage cave man of prehistoric days. He had the long arms,
the broad rounded stooping shoulders, the hairy hands of the _homo
neanderthal_. He was, unless his cunning big-jowled face libelled him, a
specimen to be classed sub-civilized.

From his throat came a rumble like the growl of a bear. “Thousand
devils! What you doin’ here?” he demanded hoarsely.

The fellow was puzzled. It had not yet penetrated his slow brain that
the enemy had stolen a march on his employers. His small piggy eyes
wandered to the approaching figure of Hill. They lit with recognition.
He had seen him when the surveyor had brought his outfit to the mouth of
the gorge and been refused admission.

“We’re camping. Any objections?” asked Hallack, smiling. He had the
information he had come to get and he did not care how soon the
fireworks began.

“Where you come from? How’d you get in?”

“From Ohio, originally. My friend’s from Pennsylvania. Not working on
the census, are you?”

“You laugh at me, hey—at Brad Reed? You don’t know who you mock maybe,
the best two-fisted he-man that ever came from Powder River. I make you
grin on the other side of your mouth, Mr. Funny Man, if you don’t look
out.”

Hallack’s trained eye took in the man’s huge bulk, his bulging muscles,
the flat-footed gorilla-like crouch. There was immense strength here, he
saw. To anger the fellow uselessly would be folly.

“We came down the wall,” he explained.

“That’s a lie,” the other said flatly.

“Have it your own way, then,” the engineer answered. “Why ask, if you
know better than we do?”

Reed’s slow brain was functioning. “I take you to the boss. See?”

“Delighted to meet him. Let’s go.”

The cave man made a mistake. He reached out, caught the engineer by the
collar, and dragged him to him. “Sure. Right now.”

Hallack tried to wrench free, but the grip on the coat was vice-like.

“Hands off,” he warned quietly.

The other showed a row of broken tobacco-stained teeth in a malicious
grin. “Oh, I guess not.”

The engineer’s doubled fist went up in a swift short-arm jolt to the
prominent chin. The hand fell away from the coat and its owner staggered
back a step or two.

Reed stood with his mouth open, stunned less by the blow than by the
audacity of this slender stranger who had challenged him so roughly.
Why, he weighed eighty fighting pounds more than this young cockerel. He
could make a mouthful of him—chew him up and spit him out.

The fighting man from Powder River let out a bellow compounded of
exultant laughter and rage. He loved to fight, and he did not get many
chances.

“Thousand devils!” he roared, shook his head to clear it from a slight
dizziness, and let it sink between the gnarled shoulders.

“Look out, Bob,” shouted Hill.

The huge ruffian rushed him, head down, like a mad bull, his great arms
flailing wildly with the drive of a mule kick behind them. If any one of
these blows had landed full and fair Hallack would have gone down and
out.

But they did not find their mark. Hallack stepped back, side-stepped,
ducked, danced out of range. His body and mind were in perfect
co-ordination. Steely muscles, hard and elastic, responded instantly to
the command of the brain. Action synchronized with the impulsive
thought. Every sense was wary and alert, every nerve under perfect
control. The focussed eyes never shifted from the red bristly face of
this throwback from civilized man.

It would be impossible to check directly the avalanche of furious
energy. Hallack evaded it. He let the sledge-hammer swings pass over his
shoulders or deflected them by adroit arm work. It seemed impossible for
him to stand up against that mass of brute force.

But he did, and when for a moment the Powder River champion had spent
himself Bob flung at him the counter-attack of one hundred and
fifty-five pounds of trained bone and muscle. Hallack’s arm lashed out
like a battering-ram. Blows swift as light-flashes crashed against the
face of the dazed bully. Reed staggered back awkwardly, trying to cover
up from the stinging punishment. To do this his arms were drawn up and
stomach exposed. Straight for the solar plexus shot Bob’s left, the
whole force of his plunging body back of it.

The big fellow grunted, swayed for an instant on the balls of his feet,
then crashed down like a forest oak.

So short had been the fight that Hill, running to the rescue, reached
the spot only when his friend started the victory drive.

“Bully for you, Bob,” he boomed.

Hallack had not been champion middleweight boxer of his college for
nothing. He knew his foe was out. Reed half turned, writhing with pain,
then rolled over and lay still.

“He would have it,” explained Bob, breathing fast.

“Prettiest finish I ever saw. He dropped like a steer that’s been
pole-axed,” Hill cried with enthusiasm.

Hallack did not answer. His gaze was fixed on a group of approaching
men. They were running. Two or three of them carried stout sticks.

“More company,” the chief engineer said.

“Kill ’em,” one of the runners shouted hoarsely. He had seen the finish
of the fight.

“Friendly, ain’t they?” Hill’s hand slipped into the pocket where he had
his revolver.

“I don’t half like this.” Hallack’s jaw set. He waited till the foremost
was a dozen yards from him. “You’re near enough,” he said curtly. A
blue-nosed .38 had jumped to the light in his hand.

The man stopped, abruptly. His mouth fell open. This was an unpleasant
and unexpected contingency. Those behind him also came to a stop. Their
firearms were at the camp, a few hundred yards away. As far as the
present emergency went they might as well have been in China.

“What’s eatin’ you fellows?” the man in the lead demanded sulkily. “What
you doin’ here? How’d you get in anyhow?”

“An’ what you been doin’ to Brad?” another asked, a threat in his voice.

“One question at a time please.” Hallack’s tone was low and cool, but it
had the sting of a whip lash. “We’re here because that’s where we choose
to be. We came down that wall. Your friend attacked me, and I defended
myself.”

“Two of you to one.”

“No. One to one. A fair fight,” Hill cut in.

“Like blazes. You can’t tell me any little chap like him could put out
Brad. Who are you fellows anyhow?”

“My name’s Hallack. My compliments to Mr. Ordway and tell him I know now
all I want to about Arapahoe Cañon.”

In the distance other men were hovering. One was scudding back to the
gateway for reinforcements. It occurred to Hill that it was time to be
going. Soon the whole hornet’s nest would be stinging at them.

He said as much to his chief in a low voice.

“My opinion, too,” nodded Hallack, speaking for his friend’s ear alone.
“We can’t get out the lower entrance now. They’ll be ready for us.”

“Yes. Have to try the upper mouth.”

Hallack spoke to those whom his revolver covered. “I’ll not detain you
longer, gentlemen. The party’s over. On your way, and take Mr. Reed of
Powder River with you.”

The hired thugs looked at each other uncertainly. The leader of the
party had gone to the city a few hours earlier. They did not know what
to do, but the weapon in Hallack’s hand was a mighty persuader. They
fell back, grumbling. With them they dragged the prostrate champion, who
was beginning to show signs of life.

The engineers packed hurriedly, and took the trail that led up the
cañon. For an hour they followed it. Dusk was falling when they reached
the upper entrance.

“We might slip by without being noticed,” Hill suggested.

“Hardly. The gate’s pretty narrow. But we’ll have a try at it. If we’re
seen we’ll put a bold face on it. Maybe they won’t stop us. If they do,
we’ll cover them with our guns and make a bolt.”

This plan was not a workable one. As they moved forward a gun barked and
a bullet struck the sand in front of them.

Out of the gathering gloom a voice called. “Throw up your hands,
Hallack.”

Before the engineer had time to answer a second gun sounded, this one
from a point farther to the left.

The surveyors lost no time. They turned and ran as fast as their legs
could carry them, now and then stumbling as their feet struck
obstructions on the rough trail. The gathering darkness favoured them.
The scattered shots that followed went wild.

The pursuit was hard on their heels. To discourage this they fired into
the air several times. For a time excited shouts and the echoes of stray
shots reached them. With the coming of night these ceased.

“Fine business!” Hill complained to his chief. “You’d think we were
train robbers.”

They were for the time safely hidden behind three large boulders.

“Somebody blundered,” Hallack answered. “That first shot was to stop us.
The second was not planned, probably, but that’s the trouble with
bringing in gunmen. They’re always too ready to kill. Ordway will have a
few words to say to the fellow in charge. It’s no part of his campaign
to get in wrong by killing someone to start with. Of course he’d always
have a valid alibi that I drew a revolver and started things.”

“Valid, huh? If you call that valid——”

“When it reached the courts Ordway’s case would be buttressed by lots of
evidence. ‘Very regrettable, of course, but Mr. Hallack got buck fever
and drew a gun.’”

“How did they know we were coming? Nobody passed us in the gulch as we
came up.”

Hallack tapped on a telephone pole beside him. “The Magruder ranch is at
the lower entrance to the cañon. There’s another ranch house not a
quarter of a mile from this end. Someone ’phoned up, of course.”

“That must be it. Well, what are we going to do now, Cap?”

“Stay in the gorge till morning, then surrender if they’ll let us.”

“And if they won’t?”

Hill could not see the grim lines around the mouth of his friend, but he
recognized a note in the voice familiar in old football days. “Stand ’em
off.”

A boyish faith in his leader still persisted in Tom Hill’s mind, but he
ventured a suggestion. “With revolvers, against rifles.”

“We’ll find a place in the rocks where they can’t get at us. Of course
we’ll offer to capitulate if we get a chance. Another point: when
Anderson hears the firing he’ll get in touch with Brokaw and something
will be doing at once.”

They followed the trail down in the darkness to a place known to
picnickers from the city as Big Rocks Point. During the centuries great
masses of rock had crashed down from the precipice above. They filled
one side of the gulch, which here was wider than at any other spot,
rising to a height of forty or fifty feet.

The trapped men clambered over the large and jagged bits of painted
sandstone to a summit where two twisted and stunted pines grew. From
dead branches they made a small fire in a crevice big enough to hold
them.

“I could do with a large porterhouse steak and some French fried
potatoes,” Hill admitted ruefully. “What was it Napoleon said about his
soldiers marching on their stomachs?”

“You’ll have to take a reef in your belt, Tom, and become a follower of
the theory in dietetics that it’s a good thing for a fellow to miss a
meal once in a while.”

“Does it say anything about missing three meals in a row, and more to
follow?” Hill wanted to know.

They slept, brokenly, waking when the chill of the hard rocks and the
pressure of their bodies interfered too greatly with the circulation of
the blood. The fire died down. Morning found them cold and hungry. There
was nothing to do but wait for the campaign of the enemy to develop.
Time, Hallack was persuaded, worked in their favour. Anderson had very
likely heard the shots last night. In any event it could not be long
until he went to Brokaw, who would at once get into communication with
Ordway.

From their place of concealment the engineers watched men moving up and
down the bed of the creek. They were searching for skulkers hidden in
the shrubbery. A stream of sunlight flooded the upper part of the
opposite wall before the search reached Big Rocks Point.

Three men, armed with rifles, began exploring the boulder bed. The one
in advance was the Neanderthal throwback.

Hallack stood out on a flat rock and waved a white handkerchief tied to
a stick. The rifle of Reed jumped to his shoulder. He fired, just as
Hill dragged his friend down to cover.

“No prisoners wanted, eh!” the big engineer growled. “All right, you
treacherous devil, come and dig us out.”

His friend began to unlace one of his boots. “He got me in the leg—just
below the knee.” So matter-of-fact was his voice that Hill for an
instant thought he was joking.

It was a flesh wound. The bullet had ploughed through so nearly that the
pressure of two fingers forced it out.

Hill tore up the white flag. “We’re not going to use this, I reckon,” he
said grimly.

With the strips he bandaged the wound to stop the bleeding.

At Hallack’s suggestion he stopped once to reconnoitre. “They’re
spreading out. Let’s see. There are four, five—there are six of ’em
now. Looks like they’re going to take a whirl at rushing us.”

“They’ll change their minds when they get closer,” Hallack prophesied,
tying the ends of the bandage into a knot.

The plan was evidently to stalk the two hidden among the rocks. Those
below were climbing Big Rocks Point, taking advantage of all the cover
they could while they advanced. Occasionally a rifle shot echoed from
cliff to cliff, but the defenders judged that this was for moral effect.

Not till the attackers were fairly close did Hallack decide to answer
the fire. He was peering through a narrow loop-hole formed by two great
boulders flung together.

The effect of his first shot was obvious. Two men turned and began to
scurry back toward the creek. Another dropped into a hollow and became
henceforth a non-active member of the offence. Brad Reed leaped to his
feet and plunged forward.

Hill and Hallack concentrated their fire on him. He stopped with a howl
of anguish, then turned and ran limping away.

“I guess he’ll let us alone,” Hill growled savagely.

“It’ll be long-range warfare now,” Hallack answered.

“How’s the leg?”

“Mine or Powder River’s?” asked Bob.

“I judge it’s not so awful bad or you’d know whose, old chap,” his
companion grinned.

Hallack’s prediction was a true one. The gunmen drew back out of range.
They kept up an intermittent fire, but the engineers did not take it
seriously. They were well protected. It would presently occur to some of
Ordway’s thugs to leave the gorge and climb to the rim, from which point
they could shoot down at their prey. But this would take hours. Odds
were even that before that time orders from headquarters would put an
end to the affray.

The thing to do was to sit tight and stick it out.


                              CHAPTER XIX
                           JOYCE AT THE WHEEL

Brokaw’s eye involuntarily reverted to the speedometer. He was not
alarmed, but he did not see that any good end was served by hurling the
car forward at such a pace. A fine rain, almost a mist, was falling. It
filmed the wind shield so that Joyce could not see quite clearly and it
made the surface of the asphalt slippery.

The girl attended strictly to business. Her whole being was keyed to
concentration. She saw nothing but the road, a shining strip of ribbon
weaving in front of her. The slight figure was braced to meet an
emergency of skidding wheels in case of need. If she drove with the
headstrong confidence of America in its teens, she had back of it the
almost uncanny skill of efficiency that comes from experience to the
young.

The rear wheels slid as she took a curve.

“I’ve a wife and three children,” Brokaw said, smiling at her.

“Yes, I know Mrs. Brokaw. If there’s any message you want sent——”

“I was thinking I’d rather carry it myself if you don’t mind.”

Joyce throttled down a notch or two. Presently she swung off to a dirt
road and headed straight for the west. The brown cow-backed hills rose
close. Into them the road wound, rising steadily as it followed the line
of least resistance. After half an hour of climbing they looked down
upon the plains, a checkerboard of irrigated fields and dry pasture,
with the dwarfed city showing in the distance.

In the mountain park just beyond they rolled over a smooth roadbed of
disintegrated granite. Joyce speeded up. They flashed past a motorist
having engine trouble.

“Ordway,” the lawyer said.

It was in the driver’s mind to stop and pick him up, but the car was
already so far away that she kept going. If her father’s engineers were
being attacked in Arapahoe Cañon she ought to lose no time in getting
there. She had no doubt whatever that she could stop the battle if she
were not too late. That was in keeping with the unconscious arrogance of
her confident youth. Men always did what she asked them to do.

A group of tents had been set up across the entrance to the cañon. A man
came forward to meet the runabout. He was a hard-faced citizen with a
close-clamped mouth.

“Where are Mr. Hallack and Mr. Hill?” Joyce demanded instantly.

He stared coolly at her while he took his time to answer. “I don’t know
as I’m their keeper, miss,” he said when at last he spoke.

“They’re in this cañon somewhere. You’ve been fighting with them.”

“Have I?” His insolent eyes appraised the girl. “You seem to know all
about it.”

Brokaw spoke. “This won’t do, you know. It’s this sort of thing that
lands men in the penitentiary.”

The faint far sound of a shot reached them.

“I’m going in,” Joyce said quickly.

“Oh, no, you’re not. That’s dynamiting. We’re building a power
site—excavating for the plant. It wouldn’t be safe for you.” The fellow
grinned impudently.

He and two camp stools occupied the only space left for a car to enter.

Joyce touched the starter and threw in the clutch. The runabout leaped
forward. With ludicrous haste the man in the road scrambled out of the
way.

Brokaw looked back at the wreckage of two stools and at an amazed guard
dragging a revolver from his belt.

“Look out!” the lawyer cautioned.

A bullet whistled past and struck the sand ahead. Involuntarily Joyce
ducked her head. She speeded up, intent on getting out of range.

“He fired in the air,” Brokaw explained.

“Oh, don’t spoil my adventure,” she begged. The eyes she flashed for an
instant upon her companion were very bright and shining. “I want to tell
all the girls I’ve been under fire—like a Red Cross nurse I know who
was in France.”

“You may have a chance yet, if you’re not careful. Stop at once, in case
you get an order from someone posted on the road.”

“Yes,” the girl promised.

Brokaw took in, not without admiration, this young woman’s flushed
excitement. The danger into which she was flying did not appear to
frighten her. It interested him to find in this slip of a girl some of
Jarvis Elliott’s bold instinct for solving a difficulty by slashing
through it. She had high courage. That was clear.

Even as a child she had been a wild lawless little creature. The
reputation still clung to her. She had once on a bet ridden her horse up
the stone steps of the State House and called on the governor, who
happened to be her uncle. There was a story going the rounds now—his
wife had told it to him only that morning—of some escapade at night in
the hills with Ordway. Disgraceful, Mrs. Brokaw had called it, not
mincing words; if she went on as she had been doing she would not have a
shred of respectability left. But Brokaw, looking at her in profile as
she drove, found it hard to credit ugly rumour. The clean courage of her
seemed spirit-born. A line from Paradise Lost jumped to his mind:

             “Godlike erect, with native honour clad.”

Wild she surely was, but not one who would give her memory dark chambers
of defilement into which to peer.

Joyce took in low speed the very stiff grade that led to the hanging
bridge over the falls, but as soon as she was on an easier incline her
foot pressed the accelerator.

The road crossed the creek half-a-dozen times, running now close to one
wall and now along the base of the other. They heard no more shots, but
that might be because the noise of the automobile swallowed up the
echoes of the explosions. In Joyce’s imagination the battle was waging
constantly.

To come upon the small valley below Big Rocks Point and to find it
apparently peaceful as old age was a surprise to her. For she knew at
once this was the scene of action. The sun lit the bowl of the
flower-sprinkled meadow with the mellow warmth of spring. A meadow-lark
on a telephone wire flung out a joyous full-throated chant of love.

A man with a rifle rose from behind a rock and came toward the car.

“You can’t go any farther. The road’s blocked,” he said.

“Who blocked it?” Brokaw asked.

“You got no business here at all. Why didn’t Rouse turn you back at the
entrance?”

“Where are Mr. Hallack and Mr. Hill?” Joyce demanded. Then, with
mounting vehemence: “What have you done with them? Have you hurt them?”

The answer to her question came instantly, more dramatic than words. The
sound of a rifle shot, echoing from wall to wall, boomed like a cannon.
From somewhere up in the crater of Big Rocks Point a lesser explosion
threw back defiance.

Spellbound, Joyce stood looking up at the pyramid of rocks from which
her father’s engineers had flung their war cry. A sense of unreality
stirred in her. It was the sort of thing she had seen in moving
pictures. These men could not actually be firing at each other with
intent to kill. That would be absurd, ridiculous. This wasn’t a war
zone, nor were these frontier days. The little smoke puffs could not
possibly have back of them potentialities of destruction.

From the rim far above another shot sounded. The man with the rifle who
had come to meet them looked up quickly to the top of the great wall.

“Now we’ll smoke ’em out,” he cried jubilantly. “The boys’ll pepper ’em
from the cliff.”

The girl’s eyes followed his. No sign of the marksman could be seen, but
she knew at once that the position of the besieged had become untenable.
They were exposed to a fire from which they could find no cover.

“Are you in charge here?” she flashed.

The man took his time to drawl an answer. “Well, Miss, I am an’ I ain’t,
as you might say. The boss went to town an’ ain’t got back yet.”

“Stop it. Stop it right away,” she cried.

“You’d better,” Brokaw said. “I’m a lawyer. If either of the engineers
are killed it will be murder—and you’ll be responsible.”

“I reckon not. They attacked us.”

“Two of them attacked a dozen of you? That would never stick in court.”

“Are we going to stand here and _argue_ about it while they murder our
friends?” Joyce broke in sharply.

“All they got to do’s surrender,” the gunman said doggedly. “It’s up to
them, not us.”

Again from the rock rim a thousand feet above came the menacing crack of
a rifle.

The girl stood a moment, rigid, tense, the colour ebbing from her face.
What could she do? How could she prevent the impending tragedy?

Across her brain the answer flashed. “I’ll get them to surrender,” she
said.

“Suit us fine,” the rifleman replied with obvious sarcasm. “We been
tryin’ that same quite a spell, an’ I’ll say they’re stubborn guys. But
if you’ve got a way, miss, why, go to it. We ain’t set on collectin’ no
scalps to-day.”

“How?” Brokaw asked Joyce. He was a practical man, one whose mind
naturally moved to methods of procedure. “They can’t hear you from
here.”

“I’ll go to them and explain,” she eagerly urged.

“No,” he vetoed promptly. “Some idiot might take a shot at you.”

“With a white flag—your handkerchief.”

“That’s not a bad idea—if you can call your men off a while,” the
lawyer said to the other man. “Except of course that I’ll go.”

He drew his handkerchief out by way of getting things going.

With a little jerk Joyce plucked it from his hand. She turned and ran,
straight for Big Rocks Point.

To Brokaw her action was wholly unexpected. The ways of impatient and
imperious youth were not his. He trod a safe and sane path hedged by
precedent and convention. It took an instant to adjust his mind to her
purpose. Then he started in pursuit.

“Come back,” he shouted.

She paid not the least attention.

The feelings of the lawyer exploded in a burst of exasperated annoyance.
“Damned tommyrot!”

None the less, he followed in the footsteps of her feather-footed
madness.


                               CHAPTER XX
                   HALLACK GUESSES, BUT NOT OUT LOUD

Joyce took the hill with swift lightness, the white handkerchief
streaming in the air. A queer commotion of excitement that was not fear
churned in her bosom. It was a kind of exaltation. She had known the
lift of it before when caught in the tide of adventure; once when on a
dare she had dived from a twenty-five-foot platform into a swimming
pool, and again when she had ridden down the main corridor at the State
House, three or four protesting attendants at her heels, and knocked
with the crop of her whip on the door of the governor’s office.

The eyes of a dozen men focussed on her, a young flame of vivid life
moving across the battle-field with the ardour of a modern Joan of Arc.
Instinctively she had done the wisest thing. There was no more firing.
By a common impulse the combatants suspended operations to watch her.
What did she mean to do? Where had she come from? Who was she? And what
rash folly was carrying her straight to the titanic rock pile where the
two trapped men were making their stand?

If Joyce was slender, she was silken-strong. She took the rough rocks
lithely, sure-footed as a mountain goat. Well behind her puffed Brokaw.
Usually he did his climbing in an automobile.

From the hollow at the summit of the boulder bed two men emerged. They
descended toward her. One of them limped. At difficult places he used
his companion as a crutch.

A voice clear as a silver bell called up to him. “Are you hurt?”

With a gesture of sharp command he motioned her back. “Not safe here.
Don’t you know they’re firing at us?”

“I’m here to stop that foolishness.” She swung across a little crevasse
from one rock to another, still moving upward.

“Don’t come any nearer. Some crazy fool might fire.”

“Not if I’m with you. Did you fall? Or did they hit you?”

“They hit me, and they might hit you. Keep back, I tell you.”

“Oh, I’ve a flag of truce.” Joyce waved the handkerchief toward the
sharpshooters, and somehow the gesture implied that an armistice had
been declared.

From the rim of the cañon far above a flutter of white signalled back to
her.

“See,” she went on confidently. “It’s all over now. Why didn’t you put
up a white flag and then talk it over? I never heard of anything so
silly as lying there and letting them shoot at you.”

Hill ventured a suggestion. “That’s how Bob was hit. He stood up and
waved his flag.”

“He did? And they shot at him?” Her voice held the rising inflection.

“One of them did. We’d had trouble with him before.”

Joyce clambered up a rough stairway of rocks and joined them. Hallack,
to favour his leg, had sat down.

“Is it pretty bad?” the girl asked.

“No. A flesh wound.”

“We’d better go on down, then,” she said in a matter-of-fact manner,
quite as though men wounded in battle were an everyday occurrence with
her. “That is, if it doesn’t hurt too much. I can send some men up to
carry you down.”

“Afraid they’d drop me accidentally in a crevasse,” Hallack replied.
“I’ll peg on down somehow.”

“We’ll help you.” The girl turned to the assistant engineer. “I’m Mr.
Elliott’s daughter.”

Hill lifted his hat and mentioned his name. “You know Mr. Hallack, I
think.”

Joyce barely glanced at the wounded man. “Yes, I know Mr. Hallack. He
was very kind to me once. Let’s go.”

At the touch of careless scorn in her words the engineer flushed beneath
the tan. He said nothing till she stepped forward to lend a hand when he
hesitated at a long step across from one boulder to another.

“I can make out nicely, Miss Elliott. Thanks, just the same.”

“Oh, very well.” She moved springily across the small gulf. If he did
not want her help she was not going to insist on it.

“You had no business coming up here,” Hallack said stiffly, when they
had reached an easier place where conversation was more feasible. “It
was a crazy thing to do.”

“I’m in the habit of doing what I please, Mr. Hallack,” Joyce answered,
her chin up.

“So I notice,” he answered. “And of course that makes it right if you do
it.” His leg was paining a good deal and he resented her manner. Yet he
was irritated at himself. The thing she had done held his admiration. It
had taken courage to climb the rocks under the menace of a possible
fire; and she had accepted the chance to save their lives. Why couldn’t
he show his gratitude instead of acting like a sore bear?

They moved slowly down the rock incline, accommodating their speed to
that of Hallack. Hill supported him once or twice.

Below them, halfway up, Brokaw waited. He mopped a perspiring face. When
they were close enough he voiced reproaches. “You shouldn’t have done
that, Miss Elliott. It turned out all right, but it wasn’t safe. If
those fellows up there hadn’t noticed right away that you were a
woman—if they had shot at you——”

“Are you going to scold me too, Mr. Brokaw?” she interrupted. “Don’t
mind me. Go right on. Mr. Hallack has had his say. He thinks I ought to
have let them shoot him. It wasn’t nice of me to interfere. I don’t know
what Mr. Hill thinks. It’ll be his turn presently.”

The big engineer smiled at her acidity. “I’m strong for what you did,
Miss Elliott. It was bully of you. Thanks, awf’ly. I don’t know whether
those fellows were trying to hit us or not, but I wouldn’t put it past
some of ’em. They’re hired killers, and it’s hard for that kind of
cattle to resist when there’s a chance. Anyhow, it wasn’t any fun lying
there while they plugged at us.”

“Of course, I’m grateful, too,” Hallack added awkwardly. “It was rather
splendid of you to—to——”

Joyce gave a little lift to her shoulders. “All right. Enough said. I’ll
let you off the rest, Mr. Hallack. Hello, there’s Mr. Ordway.”

She waved gaily at him the flag of truce. The excitement of the
adventure was still quickening the blood in her veins. For the moment
she had forgotten that she intended to give him a piece of her indignant
mind.

“Seems to be giving his thugs Hail Columbia,” Hill grinned.

This reminded Joyce of something. She turned swiftly to Hallack. “Did
you lower yourselves into the cañon to find out if a railroad can be run
over or round the falls?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we’ve seen the Maclure survey. It can’t be done.”

“I don’t have to depend on the Maclure survey now. I’ve been over the
ground myself,” he said.

To Joyce there seemed something significant in his grim smile, some
hidden meaning the words failed to express.

“Well? You can’t run a railroad through.” She modified her flat
statement by the added anticlimax of a question. “Can you?”

He answered Yankee fashion. “If Mr. Elliott thinks that, why is he
fighting for the cañon? Why did Mr. Brokaw go to Washington to see the
Secretary of the Interior personally?”

“I don’t know why. Do you?”

His smile still suggested some source of amusement from which she was
excluded. “I don’t know, but I can guess.”

“Yes?” Her manner implied that his guessing was not of much importance
one way or another. “And what’s your guess?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. Sorry.”

“Why not?”

“It’s Mr. Elliott’s privilege to tell it when he wants it told, not
mine.”

“But Dad’s ill—unable to attend to business. You know that. Mr. Brokaw
is in charge, and I want to help him. It’s not necessary to keep secrets
from us.” She faced him with the direct bluntness of which her father’s
daughter was capable.

“No, but I think I’ll wait a while. It’s a thing that does not have to
be decided to-day.”

“Aren’t you rather exceeding your authority, Mr. Hallack?” she asked
with a flash of anger.

“Not at all. This isn’t a matter of authority. It’s merely a personal
opinion of my own—a guess at something that Mr. Elliott has chosen not
to confide to anybody. Possibly I’m wrong. Anyhow, I’ll keep it to
myself.” He spoke coolly and with decision—insolently, Joyce chose to
think.

“Very well.”

The girl turned disdainfully away and started down to meet Ordway, who
had reached the foot of Big Rocks Point.


                              CHAPTER XXI
                       ELLIOTT WHISPERS A SECRET

Ordway breasted the slope to meet her, strong and masterful in every
line of his well-set body.

“Bubbles, you oughtn’t to have done that,” he said. “If you’d been
hurt——”

“Oh, sing another song,” she cried impatiently. “I’ve heard that one
twice in the last five minutes. What would you expect me to do—sit
still and let your men kill Dad’s engineers?”

He waved that aside. “Not as bad as that, Bubbles. It was comic-opera
stuff.”

“Was it?” Joyce asked tartly. She nodded toward the limping man. “What
about that?”

“Oh, Hallack’s a stormy petrel. He’s always starting trouble. It seems
he beat up one of my men and then shot him. He brought it on himself.
That’s not the point. I don’t want any hard feelings between my men and
your father’s. I’m greatly annoyed. When I’ve run this down some of my
fellows are going to get a wigging. My orders were to start blasting for
a power plant site, not to pull off a Wild West moving picture.”

The girl flashed stormy challenging eyes at him. “Do you usually have
them do their blasting with rifles?”

He laughed, but the gambler’s eyes that met hers were cold and vigilant.
“Not usually, but you see I know that man Hallack.”

“When was it you gave orders to occupy the cañon?”

“About a week or ten days ago. Why?”

“Nothing. Only you didn’t mention it when I told you Father was worrying
about Arapahoe in his delirium. Your gang came up next morning, I’m
told.”

“Not sporting of you, Bubbles. You know I didn’t use any information you
gave me. We had already made arrangements to move a camp up here and
begin work.”

“Mr. Brokaw says you haven’t any right to hold the cañon. He says the
Government hasn’t passed on the application yet,” she charged.

“True, technically. But in business we anticipate the future. I notice
Mr. Hallack didn’t wait for the Government to give your father a
right-of-way before he began his survey. If Mr. Elliott had been well,
of course we would have come to a gentleman’s agreement, but with
Hallack in charge——” He shrugged his broad shoulders.

The three descending the hill reached them. It was to Brokaw that Ordway
spoke.

“Sorry my men had to wound one of your surveyors. From what they say I
gather that he was hell-bent on trouble—wouldn’t have it any other
way.”

“If they told you that they lied,” Hill denied flatly. “We came down
that wall at night to avoid trouble. One of your hired thugs attacked us
and Mr. Hallack had to thrash him.”

“Drew a gun on unarmed men, didn’t he?”

“Afterward. When they started to rush us with axes and pick handles. But
he only held them off. We tried to get out of the cañon and they fired
at us. That was last night. They attacked again this morning and wounded
Mr. Hallack when he waved a white flag. The thing’s a high-handed
outrage, Mr. Ordway. It’s a pretty dirty business, no matter how they
camouflage it.” The big engineer spoke with heat. He did not intend that
Ordway should get away with any such explanation of the affair.

“You put your heart in it,” the M. & P. field general said, a little
contemptuously. “Of course you would. Your methods will stand some
explaining. My men refused you permission to enter the gorge on my
orders. I didn’t want anybody hurt by the blasting. Why didn’t you come
to me for a permit to make your survey?”

“Are you issuing permits for American citizens to enter on the public
domain, Mr. Ordway?” asked Hallack.

The two measured each other with steady eyes in a long silence.

“I’m protecting them from getting hurt by falling rocks,” answered the
other coldly.

“Pure altruism,” jeered the engineer. “You’re not trying to prevent us
from running a railroad through here, I suppose?”

“Nature has taken care of that, Mr. Hallack.”

“Has she? That’s what we came here to find out.”

“And you’ve found out?”

“We have.”

“That you can’t get down?”

Their words snapped like the crack of whip lashes.

“I didn’t say what we had found out.” Hallack turned to Joyce. “Will you
arrange an interview for me with your father as soon as the doctors feel
it will be safe, Miss Elliott? I’ve something important to talk over
with him.”

Joyce nodded assent. “I’ll let you know when,” she said.

Her personal feelings toward Hallack had no bearing on this. She might
not like him. In point of fact she did not. But he was her father’s
representative, and she wanted Ordway to understand that in this fight
she was on the side of Jarvis Elliott from start to finish.

As the party walked down toward the cars Ordway paired with the girl.

“I want you to know that all Hallack had to do was to ask me to get into
the gorge for a survey and I would have ordered my men to give him all
the help he needed. If he hasn’t finished I want him to go on and
satisfy himself. I don’t intend to be put in a false position, Bubbles.
Your father and I are on opposite sides, but I mean to be sporting about
it. You know that, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” she admitted. “I suppose you do, Win.”

But she carried back to the bedside of her father something less than
conviction on that point.

Elliott’s tired eyes lit at sight of her. He had missed her, but he did
not say so. It was only right that she should have days of relief from
the tedium of a sick bed.

“Did you have a good time? Where were you?” he asked, stroking the soft
hand that lay in his.

“You’d never guess,” she answered, smiling warmly.

He was better than he had been at any time since the accident. The
doctor had told her it would be safe to talk over with him matters of
business if she took care not to tire or worry him.

“Golfing? Playing bridge?” he hazarded.

“No. Up Arapahoe Cañon saving the lives of two of your railroad
builders.”

He saw that she meant it. “Tell me, Joy.”

“If you’ll remember that it’s all past and won’t get excited or
anything.”

“I’ll promise,” he smiled.

“Time for your medicine, sir.” She gave it to him, straightened the bed
covers, and drew a chair close.

He listened to her story, eyes gleaming. All of it interested him, but
he made no comment till she came to Hallack’s refusal to tell what he
had guessed.

“You urged him to tell?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“And he wouldn’t?”

“No. I don’t like him a bit. He acts as though he had a poker down his
back.”

“Good boy. Thought I was picking the right man for the job.” He smiled a
little. “Know it now.”

“But why, Dad? What harm would it have done to tell us?”

“He gave you a reason. It’s my secret, not his. He was right and you
were wrong.”

“Umph!” She nodded. “I see now he was. If I learn this great secret
it’ll have to be from you, then, won’t it?”

“Do you want to know it, Joy?”

“If you want me to know,” she cried softly, and her eyes were eager.

He did not speak at once, but lay there watching her, a new content in
his heart. His little girl had been lost and was found. The barrier
between them was down. No matter what life did to either of them it
could not separate the kinship of their souls. Deep spoke to deep now.
She had been reading to him yesterday Le Gallienne’s “Soul of the
World.” Smiling at her, he quoted some verses.

              “‘With you beside me in the desert sand,
              Your smile upon me, and on mine your hand,
                Oases green arise, and camel-bells.’”

“I believe you’re making love to me, Daddy,” the girl whispered,
laughing dimples in her cheeks. “You’re on the very edge of it, anyhow.
The next two verses are breach-of-promise stuff.” She declaimed them,
with mock derision.

              “‘For in the long adventure of your eyes
              Are all the wandering ways to paradise.’”

“That’s what I used to think when I looked at your mother, my dear. ‘All
the wandering ways to paradise.’ The words weren’t written then, of
course, but I suppose emotions don’t need words.”

“Was it like that between you and Mother, Dad? Oh, I’m so glad.” After a
moment she went on, tremulously: “I never knew, but—I always hoped so.”

“The one woman in the world for me—and I lost her so soon. I was much
older than she.” He was looking at her, but she knew it was another
woman his mind visioned, the slender gentle mother her memory could just
bring back out of the mists of the past.

“If Mother had lived maybe I would have been different.”

Jarvis Elliott came back to the present. “But I don’t want you
different—not just now at least.” The flash of humour in his eyes
mitigated the sentimentality. “Now for the secret. Ordway is right. We
can’t get down through Arapahoe.”

“Then what’s the use of fighting for it if you can’t use it—sending Mr.
Brokaw to Washington and everything?”

“Ordway wants a fight. He’s bound to have one. I’d rather fight him for
what I don’t want than for what I do.”

Joyce was puzzled. “But—I don’t quite see the point yet, Dad.”

“No? His plan is to bottle us in the hills—drive a cork into the neck
so that we can’t get out. I don’t want him to hammer that cork into the
cañon we’re really coming down.”

The little mischief devils kicked up their heels in her eyes. “You mean
you’re keeping his mind fixed on Arapahoe so that he won’t get to
thinking about the right way out of the hills?”

“Exactly. Time enough for him to find out that when he sees me spiking
my rails down through Box Elder Cañon.”

She clapped her hands softly. “Oh, Dad, isn’t that scrumptious? And all
his hired thugs sitting there at Arapahoe with guns in their hands
waiting for you?”

“I get a smile out of it myself sometimes,” he admitted. “You see now
why I haven’t told anybody. If a breath of suspicion reached him before
I was ready to move I’d have my hands full of trouble.”

“And that’s what Mr. Hallack guessed?”

“Part of it. He couldn’t guess what way we are coming down. Maclure made
the survey for me quietly while he was working on an irrigation
project.”

“I rather owe Mr. Hallack an apology, don’t I?” she mused aloud.

“An explanation at least. He did right. I picked well when I chose him.
He’s one out of ten thousand. You should have seen him in that
underground furnace of hell. Pluck clear through. What other engineer
would have gone down the wall at Arapahoe to find out what he felt he
had to know? How many would have had sense enough to keep their mouths
shut about what he found out, not only to Ordway but to you and Brokaw?
He’s the man for the job.”

“Well, I don’t like him a bit,” Joyce announced flatly.

Elliott laughed at the hop, skip, and jump of her mind. “I do.”

“That’s more important,” she admitted.

“Yes, I’m not picking a son-in-law, but a man to build the Gateway Pass
project. I believe he can do it.”

“Maybe he can. He’s got that kind of a jaw.”

“Yes.”

Mirth bubbled up into her face. “It’s not the kind I want your
son-in-law to have if he’s to be a friend of mine, but it’ll do very
well to build a railroad with. Now, Dad, you’ve talked enough. It’s time
you took a nap.”

He obediently did as he was told.


                              CHAPTER XXII
                               PUNISHMENT

As soon as it was safe to move him Jarvis Elliott was taken to his home
in town. His improvement was steady but slow. He had skirted death by a
hairbreadth. Only a strong constitution and an inflexible will to live
had pulled him through.

The time came when Smithers could bring to him from the office questions
of policy to decide. Frail and weak he still was, but he announced that
his motto was “Business as usual.”

With Joyce he talked over plans for the cut-off. Together they studied
the maps and read the brief but frequent letters of Hallack. These told
details of progress, but they were carefully guarded as to information
that might be of value to the enemy. Intercepted letters have been the
means of deciding more than one big business campaign.

But though Joyce was interested in the Gateway Pass project it did not
wholly absorb her mind. Now that her father was out of danger the youth
in her began to seek expression. Elliott saw to it that she renewed
interrupted social activities. He did not want an old head on young
shoulders.

“I won’t have you cooped up here all day, Joy. Get out and meet your
young people. Ride, golf, play tennis, dance. Anyhow, I have to dictate
letters to my stenographer and can’t have you around all the time.” His
smile robbed this last of its brusqueness. It told her that his concern
was for her and not for his business.

Joyce was eager to go out again. She wanted to sit in the stand and
watch a polo game, to see Winthrop Ordway striding toward her across the
lawn after his playing had brought victory to the team he captained. She
longed to dance, to feel the music of it quickening her blood. It had
been a long time since she had drunk tea at the Rocky Mountain Club and
gossiped with friends.

She found an impalpable difference in the atmosphere, one difficult to
put into words. In the manner of the older women, the more important
matrons, was a shade of reserve toward her. They were the mothers of the
girls of her set, and their attitude found a reflection in the young
people. There was no change in the boys. They hailed her reappearance
cheerfully and warmly. But their sisters were a little less exuberant.
She had been a leader by virtue of personality and position. It seemed
to Joyce that they held back now from acknowledgment of this.

Perhaps it was her fancy. She was not sure. The change might be in
herself rather than in them. After having been brought face to face with
a near-tragedy it might be that the marks of her anguish remained with
her so that she could not quite enter wholly into their carefree fun.
And it was this these young people used as a standard of judgment. A
thing was fun, or else there was no fun in it. They embraced or
condemned it entirely by this criterion.

Joyce was dressing in a sport suit to go out to the Country Club one
afternoon when the telephone in her room buzzed. Louise was on the line,
bubbling exclamatory slang and chortles of young incoherence. Her friend
sat down, for Miss Durand was of that legion of women who use the ’phone
as a medium of lengthy entertainment. She could talk for twenty minutes
and protest indignantly that she had not had the line more than a few
moments.

“’Lo, Bubbles,” the cheerful young voice came over the wire, “how is you
is this morning? I’m down at D. & K’s—just bought the dearest love of
an old-rose sweater. Honeybug, it’s a _dream_. I’m daffy over it. ’N I
got a pair of those scrumptious sport shoes—like yours, you know. . . .
Yes . . . Yes . . . ’N say, kid, who d’you think I met at the glove
counter a minute ago? That _marve_ man of yours, W. O. Know who I mean?
He was so busy at first he didn’t see me. He was talking to that Miss
Fellows, the one that nursed your father when he was so bad. She isn’t a
bit pretty either, so I ’spect he was just asking how Mr. Elliott had
got along.”

The girl’s voice, with its hopping notes of emphasis, breezed on gaily.
She talked of what she had been doing since she had seen her friend,
which included attendance at a dinner at the Rocky Mountain Club given
by the young wife of the head of a bond house to a selected group of
intimates. Louise told in detail what _he_ had said and what _she_ said,
the antecedents of the personal pronouns being her latest devotee, Bert
Randolph, and Miss Durand herself.

“I’m _crazy_ to tell you all about it, Bubbles. Why weren’t you there?
We missed you awf’ly, all of us. You oughtn’t to poke off in a sick-room
_all the time_ now Mr. Elliott’s better,” Louise remonstrated.

“Did Geraldine miss me?” Joyce asked dryly, naming the hostess.

There was an instant of surprised silence at the other end of the wire.
“I s’posed you couldn’t come ’count of your father. Didn’t Jerry _ask_
you?”

“Not unless her invitation was lost on the way.”

“That’s funny. Have you and she——?”

“No, we haven’t.”

“It’s so _queer_. Do you think——?”

Joyce did not care to say what she thought, not over the telephone at
least. It was the first time in her young and active life that she had
ever been snubbed socially and she was furiously angry. Geraldine
Westover was a climber. It had been a long step up when she had married
Ralph Westover, whose mother was social dictator of the city’s most
exclusive set. Into this circle Joyce had been born. She considered it
hers by right of inheritance, though she poked fun at it and stepped
outside of its beaten track whenever she pleased.

Mrs. Westover, Senior, was punishing her, of course, because she had
been independent enough to ignore the fences that lady had set up.
Geraldine was what Louise called a ’fraid-cat. Of her own volition she
would never have dared to cut out from her dinner one of the small group
of young people who played together as intimates and called each other
by their first names. Her mother-in-law was back of this. She was
whipping Joyce into line. The excuse probably was the Box Elder Cañon
ride with Ordway, but the real reason was that the girl had been playing
her own hand without deference to the grim but smiling lady who expected
her word to be law.

Her clear brain guessed shrewdly at the motives hidden in the mind of
Mrs. Clay B. Westover. To be the social arbiter of the city was the very
breath of her being. For twenty-seven years she had held this position.
Often she had used her power ruthlessly and a good many were restive
under it. They were waiting for a leader. If Joyce were to marry
Winthrop Ordway the disaffected would naturally turn to her. In case of
a clash of forces she would be a very potent factor. Hence the need to
discredit Joyce, to clip her wings, to humble her, and to receive her
back repentant into the fold.

The girl had come of fighting stock. The intimation that her position
was in jeopardy did not frighten her at all. She did not believe it. The
pride and strength of youth in her were far too strong for such an
admission. All the Westovers in the world could not keep her from being
Jarvis Elliott’s daughter, the heritor of his name and place and power.
Every instinct in her moved toward rebellion.

There was one way in which she could spike her foe’s guns instantly. The
news that she was engaged to Winthrop Ordway would send a flutter over
the Country Club district. They would be deluged with invitations, she
and her fiancé. Nobody would dare hang back, for it would be apparent at
once what an irresistible combination they made.

Joyce toyed with the thought, neither accepting nor rejecting it.
Nevertheless she dressed with particular care, for Ordway was going to
play over the course with her. She had not been alone with him since the
morning when she had seen him in Arapahoe Cañon. Would she still be so
greatly interested in him and that future he had asked her to share?
That was one of the things she had to find out. Her pulses beat fast
with pleasurable anticipation. There was a throb of triumphant malice in
her expectation. She would not marry Winthrop unless she was sure. But
if she did—well, Mrs. Clay B. Westover would find her power challenged
very promptly and would discover that the tyranny of her rule was
broken.

At the Country Club Joyce’s resentment received a fillip. She and Louise
were in a small dressing room arranging their wind-blown hair when they
heard voices outside and almost at once the name of Joyce.

“Funny she wasn’t there. Thought she and Jerry were such friends,” one
said.

“Joyce isn’t going out much nowadays.”

The answer came from Esther Dare. Both of the girls recognized the lisp
she affected. The significance of the thing said was less in the words
than in the manner. Without seeing her they could visualize the lifted
eyebrows and the satiric smile.

“Do you mean—on account of her father?” the first speaker asked.

Esther laughed softly, with malice. “Of course—on account of her
father.”

The sound of the footsteps outside died away.

“Aren’t she a spite-cat?” Louise said to her friend. “To hear her you’d
think she’d been at the dinner instead of frettin’ her heart out because
she didn’t get an’ never could get a bid there. All the samey, somebody
ought to _smack_ Jerry Westover for leaving you out, Bubbles.”

“It wasn’t Jerry left me out.”

“Who then?”

“Mrs. Clay B. Westover.”

Louise pursed her crimson lips to a whistle. “Think so?”

“That’s just what I think, Wese. I’m to be left out of things for a
while—till I learn to eat humble pie.”

“_Good_ night! She can’t leave _you_ out, can she?”

“We’ll see if she can.” The eyes of the girl were hard and shining. In
them was the gleam of battle.

Joyce was filled with scorn and anger. Esther Dare’s implication was
that she was in disgrace and had taken advantage of the accident to her
father to go into retirement until the scandal about her and Winthrop
Ordway blew over. It was absurd, of course. Ridiculous. There was no
scandal. There could be none about the name of Joyce Elliott. To hint at
what she was afraid to say openly was like Esther. The worst of it was
that if Mrs. Westover had decided to punish her a lot of people would
believe whatever they were told—unless she refused to accept that
august lady’s verdict and fought back successfully.

There was no question of ostracism. A lot of her friends would stick by
her. Plenty of good houses would be open to her. But there would be some
unpleasant experiences to endure, some omitted invitations she could
construe as snubs; and even those who stood her friends would think
there was a certain measure of justice in the discipline she was
undergoing.

In a fight of this kind an unmarried woman would be at a great
disadvantage. Joyce recognized this instantly. But if she accepted
Ordway they could have a big house and entertain lavishly. She had a
social flair. Mrs. Westover was stiff and formal. _Her_ line would be
informality, lightness of touch. Real men and women would come to her
affairs and they would be themselves. She saw a salon growing beneath
her skilful promotion.

Decidedly Mrs. Clay B. Westover would regret her ill-advised attempt at
suppression.


                             CHAPTER XXIII
                           WITH A STIPULATION

Halfway down the fairway leading to the ninth green Ordway asked Joyce
if her father was worse. His was not the most finely attuned soul in the
world to shades of atmosphere, but it occurred to him that she was
rather silent and distrait.

“No. He’s getting along fine. Why?”

“You’re worried about something, aren’t you?”

“No-o. Not worried.” She smiled, ruefully. “I’m being stood up in the
corner.”

“By Mr. Elliott?”

“By Madam Grundy.”

He gave that a moment’s reflection before asking, “What for?”

“Oh, for being alive without Mrs. Westover’s permission,” she answered
sharply.

“What have you been doing now, Miss Madcap?” he wanted to know, with an
indulgent smile.

“Nothing _now_. I s’pose it’s that fool Box Elder Cañon ride.”

“Oh, if that’s all!”

“Enough, isn’t it?” She spoke impatiently. “It’s a good peg to hang her
disapproval of me on. I ought never to have given her the chance. Dad
was right about that.”

“She can’t do you any harm—not permanently.”

“If you think it’s fun to have people whispering lies about you.”

They had deflected from the fairway to the shade of a large maple. “You
can stop that whispering any day you like,” he told her.

“Yes?”

“Let me give it out that I have the honour to be engaged to you.”

The thought had been in her own mind scarcely an hour before, but she
did not at all like its being in his. Her dauntless soul was not beaten,
and she had no intention of flying to him as a refuge in distress. So
far as she understood her own feeling it had been that if she were going
to marry him anyhow she might as well get what fighting advantage there
was in the publicity of the fact. But Win Ordway need not think that she
would come to him with wings clipped. She could hold her own well enough
without him.

“You are suggesting that I get engaged to you to—to reëstablish myself
socially. Is that it, Win?” she asked with dangerous sweetness.

The flash of her eyes warned him. “Nothing of the kind. Miss Joyce
Elliott does not need any social rehabilitation. You know that well as I
do. But if it will save you any unpleasantness—since we’re going to be
engaged anyhow——”

“Are we? When did you decide that?”

“I’ve been hoping it for months, Bubbles.”

His capitulation took the edge from her challenge. The smile she met was
disarming, not so much because of what it said as because of what it
left unsaid. He stood there strong and dominant to the last well-groomed
inch. By the sheer power of him he was shaking success from a world that
would have liked to trample him down. But with her the strength of his
position was in its acknowledged weakness. He could not take her by the
throat, cave-man fashion, and drag her into his life. Her courage had
the temper of a Toledo blade. Back of it was a pride and a dignity that
would not permit her to be won by sovereignty. He must come as a suitor,
not as a conqueror. And it was so that he came to-day.

He could afford to come in seeming humility. For he brought with him
advantages the blind could see. Joyce wished the light of them might not
have been quite so dazzling. It was not necessary for her father’s
daughter to marry a prince of the realm.

The thought of her father stabbed her. It would be a blow to him if she
married the man who led the attack on his railroad. But of course that
could be adjusted. Win would not continue to oppose the father of his
wife. She did not realize that big business, like war, is a matter of
policies and not personalities. If Ordway and her father patched up a
peace the campaign of the M. & P. against the Gateway Pass cut-off would
continue as before. The transcontinental line could not afford to have a
road slashed across the Rockies that would tap its territory and reduce
the running time from coast to coast.

These brain reactions flashed like cinema pictures chaotically across
her mind. Mixed with them inextricably was a rising emotional
excitement. When Ordway’s eyes grew sultry as they looked at her there
always rose in her bosom something tumultuous. She was generally a cool
young person, mistress of her emotions. But there was a quality in this
man’s personality very disturbing to her calm, a magnetic masculinity
that demanded response. She felt the blood hot in her veins, knew a
pulse was fluttering in her throat.

“I don’t know,” she said, her brows knitted in a frown. “Am I different
from other girls? Do they know when—when——?” With a little lift of
the shoulders she let the sentence die away.

“It’s fate—kismet,” he told her. “Why struggle against it?”

“But is it?” She looked at him in the frank fashion of the maiden of
to-day. “I don’t know what you’re really like at all. Marriage is such
a—such a deadly intimate thing. Wese counted up once and found she’d
have to sit across the table from one man about twenty-five thousand
times if she stayed married to him till they grew old. It’s rather awful
to think about.”

“Then don’t,” he suggested. “Think of all the good times, all the jolly
larks we’ll have together.”

“We do have good times, don’t we?”

“The best ever. We’d make a go of it, Bubbles.”

Her eyes wandered to the caddies, who had drifted together one hundred
and fifty yards away, then came back to Ordway reluctantly.

“You _say_ so. But how can I be sure?”

“You can’t. You’ll have to take a sporting chance. Everybody does.”

“Don’t you believe in love?” she asked him bluntly.

“Good gracious! Of course I do. Isn’t that what I’m trying to tell the
dearest girl in the world—that I’m in love with her?”

“Are you? I hadn’t heard you mention it before.”

“I could tell you glibly enough—if I didn’t mean it so much.”

“I see. Still waters.”

“Exactly. Joyce, I’m going to chase those two young devils off the
landscape and kiss you.”

“You’re such an ecstatic, urgent lover, aren’t you?” she mocked, with a
flash of sparkling eyes toward him. “No, let’s finish the course, Win.
We’ve got forty years to decide this.”

“Forty minutes, say,” he demurred, moving beside her back to the
fairway. “You’ve got to make the plunge some time, Joyce. Make it
now—before we’ve finished the eighteenth hole.”

“You’re so anxious, aren’t you?” she derided softly.

“I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve, but I’m a good deal more anxious
than I show.”

Their eyes met. She felt again that racing of the blood which so
disturbed her cool hard young poise. Was it love? Did it mean that she
had met her mate?

“If I say ‘Yes’ I’ll take it back if I find I don’t—care that way,” she
told him flatly.

“Content,” he cried.

“And you, if you don’t want me, you’ll let me know, Win. We don’t want
to make any mistake.”

“I’ll jilt you without remorse,” he promised.

In sight of the caddies they shook hands on their bargain.

The girl’s game for the last nine holes was badly off. A sense of unrest
penetrated her. What she had to tell her father would be very
distressing to him, and on her own account she was far from sure that
this strange man striding beside her was the one she ought to marry. She
sliced a drive. Her approaches were either topped or poorly judged. On
the green her putting was not steady.

Ordway played with the precision of a machine. If anything, his game
improved. It took on the confidence of the victor.

Did he have to win always? Was it written in his horoscope that he must
succeed in everything he attempted? Joyce accused herself of
ungenerosity at the slight flare of irritation that stirred in her. Why
should she want him to foozle shots because he had just become engaged
to her? Would it prove him a more devoted lover to lose his nerve and
act like a moonstruck dolt?


                              CHAPTER XXIV
                           ON SPECIAL SERVICE

Jarvis Elliott listened to his daughter’s story silently. Not for some
moments after she had finished did he speak.

“When do you expect to get married?” he asked.

“Not for a long time, Dad. I want to be sure first.”

“Aren’t you sure?”

“I like him awf’ly well.”

“Don’t let him hurry you, Joy. Take your time. You’re right about that.
Be very sure before you go further.”

“Yes, I told him it’d be a sort of trial engagement.” She leaned forward
and put her hand with a swift impulsive pressure in that of her father.
“Do you mind, Dad—so terribly much?”

He chose his words. “I want you to be happy, dear.”

“I know that.”

“And not to get hard and selfish and worldly.”

She tried to visualize Winthrop Ordway as a companion in idealism and
for an instant her heart grew empty. It would be so easy to waste
herself on second bests. All she would need to do was to follow the line
of least resistance. Her flash of clairvoyance passed. It left her
defending herself and the man she had chosen. To get anywhere in this
world—to be potent for good or evil—one must have power. This was what
Ordway offered her. They would work together to use it well.

“I wish you knew Winthrop better, Dad. You haven’t seen the best side of
him. I’m going to make him drop this fight on your railroad.”

He smiled, grimly. “Even if he wanted to he couldn’t stop it. You
needn’t have any illusions about that, child. All he can do is to drop
out of it himself—and he won’t do that.”

“How do you know he won’t?” she asked quickly.

“He’s not that kind of a man.”

“That’s just it, Dad. Are you sure you know what kind of a man he is?”

“Are you sure _you_ do?” He added, a moment later: “It wouldn’t be a
fair test, anyhow. Why should he give up a legitimate enterprise to
please you, to satisfy your whim or to salve your feelings? The thing
cuts deeper. What he’s doing in fighting the Gateway Pass project is
either right or wrong. If our railroad is in the interest of the people,
if it will develop the state and help solve its transportation problem,
then the M. & P. controlling crowd are wreckers and buccaneers, moved by
wholly selfish motives to stand in the way of the common good. If I am
an unscrupulous adventurer, playing a confidence game to get the money
of investors with no chance of building the road I promise, then Ordway
is doing a public service. There’s no middle ground. One or the other
must be true.”

“You’re so—uncompromising, Dad.”

“I face the facts, if that’s what you mean.”

“Maybe he sees the facts differently from you.”

“Probably he does. You’ll have to think it out for yourself, Joy, and
decide who is right.”

“Oh, I know who’s right. My Dad is.” She nodded a smiling allegiance at
her father. “But I’m hoping there are two rights. There must be if I’m
going to have any peace of mind.”

She carried away with her from the talk a conviction that it was not
going to be easy to reconcile Jarvis Elliott to the thought of the
son-in-law she proposed for him. He would not oppose her actively. But
he could not change his opinion that Ordway was an unscrupulous vandal
preying upon the welfare of the community.

In the morning neither of them referred to the subject of their talk.
They would come back to it, of course, both in allusion and discussion,
but neither wanted to wear out the other’s patience with argument that
could not convince.

Smithers, colourless and deferential as usual, was at the house before
breakfast to see his chief on important business. Elliott talked with
him for a few minutes and the secretary left for the office.

As soon as they had finished eating the railroad builder called his
daughter into the room he used as a library and study.

“How about your engagements, Joy? Anything important on?” he asked at
once.

“No-o. Nothing much. Do anything for you?”

“I’ve got to get a message to Hallack. It’s very important. I can’t
trust the telephone. Can you take it up for me?”

“I’d love to, Dad. Where is he?”

“Camped this side of the divide—above Crown Hill—on the French Gulch
road.”

“I’ll have to stay all night.”

“Two or three nights. I want you to keep me in touch by ’phone.”

“Shall I stop at the camp?”

“Or at a ranch near—the X C V. I’d have Hallack come down, but this is
a hurry-up job. Smithers has just got word, through a spy in the camp of
the enemy, that Ordway is equipping a large gang to send into the hills.
Why? What for?”

The shaggy brows above the keen deep-set eyes of the man met in a frown
of concentration. Joyce, watching him, felt a throb of pride in her
kinship to this big man with the leonine head. For all Ordway’s driving
power he would never be such a force as her father. He might beat him.
The money interests back of him had fifty times the financial resources
of Elliott. But man to man she knew which one was the greater of the
two.

“You think——” she said incompletely, eyes gleaming.

“I think it’s a move to block me. But where? At what point? Ordway is
uncannily shrewd. He strikes at his foe’s weakness. I’ve studied his
history. It’s full of bold dramatic climaxes that led to victory. No
chain is stronger than its weakest link, you know. Does he know the weak
link in our chain?”

She looked down upon the dreamer at the desk who was giving his life to
make a great dream come true. She caught again, as often of late, a
gleam of the vision that animated him. The fire of its reflection began
to glow in her heart. Surely this was what life was for—to do great
things greatly without counting the cost.

“What do you mean—our weak link?” she asked.

“He knows we can’t go through Arapahoe Cañon. It must have dawned on him
that I have other plans. Of course he’s had scouts out looking the
ground over. He may know more about my intentions than I’ve given him
credit for.”

“That we’re going through Box Elder?” she said, startled.

“There’s a bare chance he’s guessed that, but it’s not likely. All the
talk has been of coming down the south fork of the Rio Blanco. We can’t
run our line down the north fork without tunnelling Thunder Mountain. It
would be an impossible grade. And if we take the south fork Box Elder
Cañon is fifty miles out of our way. No, I don’t see how he can figure
on Box Elder as even a possibility for us. But I’ve learned not to
underestimate my opponent. We can’t run a risk of losing the Cañon.
You’ve been all over these maps with me. You understand them. Take them
to Hallack. Trace the route we’re going to follow. Tell him from me to
throw a gang into Box Elder and begin work at once, following the creek
bed. I want him to rush the grading—to put into the Cañon every man he
can find room for. He’s to play Ordway’s own game—hold the gulch by
force till we get our right-of-way permit. Brokaw left for Washington
yesterday to push our case before the department. Meanwhile it’s up to
Hallack to run his line, build his track, and spike down his rails.
Understand?”

She nodded, eyes gleaming. “I’ll tell him, Dad.”

“Another thing. I’ll have guns and ammunition waiting for him at the
mouth of Box Elder—in a truck, with an X painted on it.”

“Will he need guns?” Joyce asked, startled.

“I hope not—to use. But if he didn’t have them he couldn’t hold the
ground.”

“I wish we didn’t have to do that, Dad.”

“So do I,” he answered, his lips a straight grim line. “But that’s the
way Ordway has chosen to play the game. He’s not the kind of a man you
can hit over the head with the Decalogue and get results. My men are not
armed to attack, but to hold the just rights of the public against a
pack of wolves trying to destroy. Hallack is cool-headed. He won’t start
any promiscuous fighting any more than I would. Chances are that when
Ordway finds we’re prepared for him he’ll accept the fact that we beat
him to the cañon.”

“If we do beat him.”

“Hallack must see we do. I’ll keep an eye on this outfit Ordway is
getting ready. If they start to move I’ll throw a dozen gunmen into Box
Elder with orders to hold it till Hallack comes. Will you tell him
that?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“I have to send you, Joy, because I can’t trust anybody else. If Ordway
got word of this—if he forestalled me—we’d be pretty nearly smashed.
Be careful what you say when you talk to me over the ’phone. Better
speak as though you’re on a fishing trip.”

“Yes,” she said, and then impulsively: “I’m glad you’re sending me, Dad.
I want to help—’deed I do. We’ll show Winthrop Ordway whether he can
stop us from building the cut-off.”

Her father smiled. “You’re for me, then, not for him?”

“I’m for you all the time, Dad. I’m for him when he’s not against you.”

“That ought to satisfy me, for it means that you’re on my side all the
time and not at all on his,” Elliott said.

“I see I’m not going to be able to convince you that he’s not your
enemy. I’ve brought you up awf’ly obstinate, Dad.”

“He’s not my enemy, but he’s the enemy of the cut-off,” he corrected.
“Well, good luck, Joy. Who’ll you take with you on your trip?”

“Nobody. Then I won’t be afraid of someone telling Winthrop that there’s
a deep dark secret. And don’t you forget to take those white powders,
Dad.”

He promised to be a good nurse to himself.


                              CHAPTER XXV
                             INTO THE HILLS

Joyce found snow in the hills, more of it than she had expected. For the
winter was young and the heavy falls usually come late. As she wound
farther into the mountains it grew deeper. She could see that it lay
heavy in the draws that ran into the gulches. In places the road was
covered with it almost to the hub, but traffic had kept the ruts well
packed.

She made good time in the roadster till she deflected from the main
highway and followed tracks that led over the hilltops toward French
Gulch. Here the snow was looser and her chains had to bite deep to get a
grip.

Heavy clouds hung close to the peaks. There was, she judged, a lot more
snow in the sky. If it began to fall and blocked the roads, moving camp
would not be a very pleasant task, but Hallack would have to get his
wagons through somehow. Jarvis Elliott was the kind of leader who asks
for results and not for explanations.

The engine of the car boiled as it bucked its way up Crown Hill. A good
deal of drift snow had gathered on the shoulder of the hill and she
found it necessary to back and plunge forward at the packed banks. There
was a time when she thought she was not going to make it to the top, but
after an hour of steady work she reached the summit.

Two trails joined here, and from that point the going was easier. There
were signs that many wagons and trucks had passed back and forth. She
began to meet them and at one of the cut-outs asked a driver how far it
was to Hallack’s camp.

“About three miles,” he answered, watching her with furtive curiosity.
He wondered what a young woman of her type was doing alone in these
mountain-tops far from any habitation except the X C V ranch. Manifestly
she did not belong at the ranch or she would have known where the camp
was.

Dusk was falling when she drove into the small valley where scores of
tents dotted the level ground close to the creek.

She asked a teamster where Hallack was to be found. He pointed out the
engineer’s tent and she stopped in front of it.

The flap was flung back and a man emerged. He was a big young fellow in
laced boots, corduroy trousers, mackinaw, and a broad-rimmed grey
pinched-in hat.

“Great guns, Miss Elliott! Where did you come from?” he asked.

“From Denver, Colorado,” she answered, her face crinkling to laughter.
“Did you think I flew down from heaven, Mr. Hill?”

“You didn’t come alone?”

“Alone, unchaperoned.”

The engineer strode forward and shook hands. “I was thinking about the
roads. They bad?”

“Only up Crown Hill. A good deal of drifted snow there. Think I must
have taken the wrong turn below.”

The tent flap lifted again. Hallack stood in the opening, too surprised
for words.

Joyce descended from the car and beat together her gauntleted hands. It
had been getting cold and her fingers were stiff and numb from lack of
circulation. In her high-laced boots and sport skirt, her sweater of
hunter’s green with knitted cap to match, she looked very young and
boyish. A nipping wind had whipped the colour into her cheeks. In this
two-mile-high altitude she glowed like a Cherokee rose.

“Father sent me with a message,” she explained.

Perhaps she read incredulity in Hallack’s face. The telephone wires were
not down and mail still reached the camp. Even if Elliott should send a
confidential message surely he would not choose this wildling daughter
to carry it.

“It’s an important one,” she added, with just a flash of proud challenge
in the dark eyes. No doubt this Hallack thought she was fit for nothing
but frivolity. He was probably one of those archaic men who believe that
a girl’s place is in the home. She would show him about that before she
was through.

“Won’t you come in?” The engineer held back the flap to let her pass.

A small stove warmed the tent, in which were two cots, two camp stools,
and a table. There was no disarray of clothing or equipment. Everything
was in apple-pie order. The girl discovered that in the first sweeping
glance. Of course it would be, she reflected; he was just that old-maid
kind of a man. Since she did not like him, Joyce was quite ready to
disparage him in her mind.

“My suitcase is in the car. There are maps in it that we’ll need,” she
said.

Hill brought in the suitcase and put it on one of the cots. Joyce opened
it and found the papers she wanted.

A warm smile, apologetic, flashed upon the assistant engineer. “I’m
sorry, Mr. Hill, but Dad’s instructions were definite. I’m to give his
message privately to Mr. Hallack.”

Her look conveyed to him a comforting wireless. It said that if she were
following her own choice it would be he and not his chief with whom she
would confer.

“I’ve got to go anyhow and check up Simmons’s report,” Hill answered,
his vanity not in the least disturbed.

Joyce unrolled a map and pinned down the corners with a paper weight, a
pair of scissors, a magazine, and a pocket knife. There was a certain
businesslike directness in her movements. She wasted no energy in futile
fussiness, Hallack observed.

With cool level eyes she looked at him, as one man might at another. “Of
course you found out when you were down there that we can’t run through
Arapahoe Cañon,” she began.

She waited, expecting an answer. He said nothing.

His silence annoyed her. “Father says you did right not to tell me what
you found out down there. It doesn’t matter. Whether you know it or not
the fact is that we can’t use the cañon. Father never intended to use
it.”

“I’ve guessed that since we made our survey.”

“Perhaps you’ve guessed where he does intend to go.”

“Yes, but it’s only a guess.” He emended this. “Well, a little more than
that perhaps. After eliminating impossibilities there was not much of a
choice left.”

Looking at him, the girl weighed this in the back of her mind. “That’s
important—if you’ve guessed right. Because if _you_ could Mr. Ordway
could too.”

“That doesn’t follow. I’ve lived up here for a year, though not at a
stretch. From an engineering point of view I ought to know the lay of
the land better than he does.”

“Yes, but——” She broke off to start again. “That’s why I’m here. Mr.
Ordway is sending a big outfit of men and supplies into the mountains.
Father’s afraid he means to seize the cañon we need. He’s shrewd and
far-sighted—Mr. Ordway, I mean. If there is any way for him to find out
our route——”

Hallack considered this, eyes narrowed to concentrated thought.
“Possible, but not at all likely—unless someone has betrayed the
secret.”

“Nobody knew it,” she said quickly. “Nobody but Father and me.”

“Mr. Elliott’s whole plan of campaign has been worked out very
skilfully. The newspaper discussions, the surveys, the fight for
Arapahoe Cañon all presuppose that the cut-off is to follow the south
fork of the Rio Blanco. That would be the natural way to go and it is
the only route that has been mentioned. To go down the north fork a
railroad would have to climb a second mountain range and wind down
through earth rifts that seem impossible. Perhaps they _are_ impossible.
I don’t know. But the cut-off is going down that way or it isn’t going
down at all.”

“We’re going to tunnel through Thunder Mountain,” she explained.

“By Jove!” He caught at once the advantage of this. The road would miss
both the heavy grades and the deep snow that would be met if the track
climbed across. “Splendid, if the grades on the other side are feasible.
It will cost like sixty, but in the long run will be cheaper. Is it Box
Elder Cañon the roadbed goes through?”

She nodded, eyes a-sparkle. She forgot her personal dislike of Hallack.
They were partners for the hour in a great enterprise, one in which it
was plain he was as much absorbed as she.

“Yes. We get to the cañon from Thunder Mountain this way. See?” With a
pencil she traced on the map the line of the proposed railroad.

He asked questions, one after another, with crisp brusqueness. To his
surprise she was able to answer them. Jarvis Elliott had gone over the
subject with her in detail more than once and the attention she had
given had not been perfunctory.

“I’ll have to get my trucks and wagons loaded after supper,” he told
her. “Looks to me like snow and lots of it. If we wait till morning we
may have a hard time breaking through. Besides, if Ordway’s headed for
Box Elder we’ve got to beat him to it.”

“Yes,” she agreed. She stood for a moment, fixed in thought. A memory
had come back to her and was taking on significance. Louise had told her
that she had seen Winthrop Ordway talking to Miss Fellows, who had been
her father’s nurse. Was it possible that——? But no. She pushed it from
her as a discreditable suspicion. Win would never do that. It would be a
dastardly thing to bribe a nurse to tell what her patient had said in
his delirium. Especially under the circumstances. It had been Joyce
herself who had given him the suggestion, that morning when her father
lay stricken after the mine disaster and she had told Ordway he was
babbling about Arapahoe Cañon. But he wouldn’t—he couldn’t take
advantage of a chance word dropped by the woman he claimed to love, use
it to destroy her father when he was sheared of all defence.

But wouldn’t he. Even Jarvis Elliott kept paid spies in the camp of the
enemy, just as they did in his. That was different, she told herself,
though there was something about it that outraged her frank clean pride
of fair play. It was an understood part of the game they were playing,
entirely within the rules as both sides understood them. Yes, it would
be quite another thing for Ordway to pay a hired watcher for a report of
the delirious mutterings of his business enemy. If Winthrop had done
that, claiming all the time that he loved her, she would know how to
give him his answer without doubt.

She had taken his word in the case of Arapahoe Cañon. From her thoughts
she had dismissed the suspicion that he had used what she had let fall
to forestall her father. But they recurred now, the flashes of distrust
she had thrust from her. Some deep instinct told her that if Ordway was
rushing men to Box Elder now his action was dictated by information
picked up from the lips of Jarvis Elliott during his illness. She did
not think there was any other way he could know that Box Elder was the
only outlet for the railroad from the hills.

Joyce refused to believe this of him. Yet, somehow, she did.


                              CHAPTER XXVI
                  JOYCE SETS HER TEETH AND CARRIES ON

It was already snowing hard when Joyce stepped out from the big dining
tent after supper. Usually the men would have been in their quarters
playing cards, writing letters, or making ready for bed. But now
everyone was busy hitching teams, packing supplies, and loading trucks.

“You can have our tent to-night, Miss Elliott,” Hallack told her. “Tom
and I are going ahead to the cañon. There may be trouble keeping the
road open till I get my outfit through.”

Joyce looked up quickly. “I’m going too.”

“You can’t do that,” he protested. “We’ll be up all night.”

“Why can’t I? It won’t be the first time I’ve been up.”

“There’s a storm gathering. We may not get through.”

“Of course we shall. If you think I’m going to stay here—in a camp full
of men with no other woman—you can have one more guess, Mr. Hallack.”

“I could take you to the X C V ranch.”

“It’s five miles out of your way. Why should you? Besides, Dad sent me
up here to keep him informed about how we get along. A lot I could tell
him from the X C V.”

“I can ’phone him to-morrow.”

“He told _me_ to ’phone him. You may as well make up your mind to it.
I’m going along.”

Hallack shrugged. “All right. Don’t blame me if you’re not comfortable.”

They strapped a small tent to the running board of her car. Hill went
with her. Hallack led the way with his old rattletrap, the tonneau of
which was packed with food, blankets, and another tent. As they started
Joyce could hear the trucks moving into line, but their lights were soon
lost in the rear.

In the darkness, over the mountain grades, it took careful driving to
hold the road. The wind shield packed with snow so fast that Hill had to
use the rubber cleaner almost continuously. Fortunately there was no
wind to fill the ruts with drift snow.

Twice Hallack stalled and Hill went forward to help him buck his way
through. It was easier for the runabout, since the wheels could follow
in the tracks already made.

Hours passed, and the speedometer marked off the miles. The flashlight
of the engineer showed that they had travelled twenty since they had
left camp.

“Want me to drive awhile?” he asked.

Joyce shook her head. She was in a heavy fur coat that wrapped her to
the mouth, but the fingers inside the gauntlets were almost frozen.

Hill smiled understandingly. “Know how you feel exactly,” he said. “But
we ought to start fifty-fifty on this thing. Let me get at the wheel for
a while.”

They changed seats and while she was not cleaning the wind shield she
massaged her fingers and shook them to restore circulation.

“Some cold, I’ll tell the world,” her companion said cheerfully. “This
bucking blizzards isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

“No,” she admitted gaily. “I never did care for Arctic explorations
myself.”

They ran down into a gulch through timber which protected them from the
snow. After three miles of this they climbed to the flat tops slowly.
Snow was filling the tracks in the road, so that it was difficult to
keep the centre of it.

Both of the engineers were apprehensive. If the storm continued it would
not be possible to break a way very much longer. Ranches were few and
far in these uplands. They might be caught a long distance from shelter.
It was important, in case they were held up, to find some wooded draw
where they could make a reasonably comfortable camp. The flat tops would
not do at all.

“How far to the next gulch?” Hill asked his chief, shouting to make
himself heard above the running engine.

“Two miles, I should say. We run into a real road there.”

“Seems to me the storm isn’t as thick.”

“Not so bad as it was ten minutes ago. We’ll hit it up to the gulch
anyhow.”

Half-a-dozen times they stuck in the drifts before they got off the flat
tops. Somehow they missed the road and had to search for it. The storm
had worn itself out and only scattered flakes were now falling. But the
sky was still heavy with clouds and the night was dark. It was some time
before Hallack found what seemed to be the road.

“I’ll have a try at it,” he said. “Wait till I get down before you
start, Tom.”

The descent into the gulch was a chancy one, but Hallack took it slowly
on the brake. For choice he would not have picked a snow-packed mountain
edge, in the darkness of night, upon which to experiment. At any turn of
the wheel a tire might plunge through the soft snow into space and land
him with a broken neck at the bed of the creek. Inch by inch he crunched
down, clinging close to the rock wall on the inside of the slope.

From the bottom he shouted back. “All right, Tom. Look out you don’t
skid at the turn.”

But Tom was not driving. The girl had taken the place at the wheel while
Hill had been out looking for the road with Hallack.

The engineer made no protest. Nor did he give her any advice as they
crept forward. The bright lights were on, and they flung a stream of
illumination on the white path ahead. She followed the tracks made by
the other car except at the turn where it had almost slid into the gulf
to the left. The method she chose to negotiate this bad place was
characteristic of her. She might cling close to the wall, in which case
the rear wheels would certainly slip as had those of the touring car. Or
she might keep farther out, break a new track, and cut at an angle the
track already made. There was danger in this, for if she could not hold
the wheels to their place very little skidding would bring them to the
edge. But Joyce had learned from her outdoor life that the apparently
hazardous course is often the safest. She cut a new trail, gave the
engine gas, and almost leaped across the slippery snow to the
comparatively secure ground beyond.

From there to the creek it was easy to follow the track already cut.

“Good work,” Hill said heartily in his booming voice.

Hallack made no comment on her achievement. What he had to say referred
strictly to the business in hand. “The snow’s not so deep here. We’ll
keep going.”

Evidently the storm had not been so heavy here. For when the engines
snorted explosively and took up again the chant of the road the
travellers moved into tracks not entirely obliterated by the recent
snow. They ran faster. The sky was still very lowering and heavy, and
Hallack was anxious to find a place for a camp before it began to storm
again.

By Hill’s watch it was past two o’clock when they entered the upper
gateway of Box Elder Cañon. Joyce had not been here since the night of
her escapade with Ordway and the memory of it was vivid as the lights
swept the white gulf at the edge of the road.

Her companion had taken the wheel again and she was snuggled down in her
great fur coat, hands thrust deep into the pockets of it for what warmth
they could find there. She was cold and tired and very weary about the
shoulders, but she would not admit it to the big engineer beside her.

Halfway down the cañon a valley opened into it. Hallack swung from the
road into a draw that offered a level place for camping.

“We’re here,” Hill announced, descending stiffly from his seat. “And I’m
certainly glad to arrive, for I’m frozen to the eyebrows. About ’steen
times I figured we’d quit in a snowdrift. We would have too, if Bob
wasn’t such a go-getter he eats up blizzards for breakfast.”

He helped the girl down. She too was so stiff that she could hardly
stand. Hallack joined them and gave crisp orders.

“Bob, you’d better clear a place for a fire and a tent, then find some
firewood. Miss Elliott, you can help Bob.”

Joyce took this without protest in words. Inwardly she rather resented
it. She had been intending to help anyhow. He might have given her a
chance to offer before he ordered her like a navvy.

From the running board Hallack unpacked a small explorer’s tent of
balloon silk. He brought dry wood from his own car and started a small
blaze which soon grew larger. While Hill was chopping a dead-and-down
pine he set up the tent and furnished it with a folding cot and bedding
dug out from the mass of stuff packed in the tonneau.

Presently he joined Joyce at the fire, where she was gratefully
absorbing heat from the resinous pine knots Hill had piled upon the
kindling.

“Your bed is ready, Miss Elliott. I expect you’re pretty well done up,
aren’t you?”

“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, stifling a yawn. “I’d rather cook myself
awhile first before turning in. Aren’t you going to put the other tent
up?”

“Not now. Bob and I will have to run back to see how the trucks are
getting along. You won’t mind staying alone for a few hours?”

“No-o. But I’m sorry you have to do it all over again. The trucks can’t
be very far back unless they’ve stuck.”

“A few miles. I’ve left a small revolver beside your bed. You won’t need
it, but you may feel safer. If you hear a mountain lion howl, don’t
worry about it. The fire will keep him off.”

She nodded, drowsily. “Good of you to put up the tent for me. I am just
a little tired. Do you know where my suitcase is?”

“I put it in the tent. Would you like it here?”

“If you please, where I can see to get the things I want.”

Hallack brought it and undid the straps. “Anything else?”

“Nothing more, thank you.”

He disappeared in the darkness and presently Joyce heard the sound of an
automobile engine. She saw the lights sweep round as the car moved to
the road on the return journey. The sound of it died away.

Joyce made her preparations for the night, moved to the tent, partially
undressed, and slipped inside the blankets. She snuggled down closer for
warmth, and almost instantly fell asleep.


                             CHAPTER XXVII
                            THE BATTLE FRONT

Joyce woke to the sound of heavy voices, of snorting engines, of
creaking wheels. She lay for a few moments, wondering where she was,
then dressed swiftly to meet the new day.

When she opened the flap of the tent it was to look out upon a man’s
world. Loaded wagons were coming into the draw, which was already packed
with tents, trucks, stoves, bedding, boxes of supplies, and tools. Men
were at work, under the direction of Hill, bringing order out of the
chaotic jumble of confusion.

“Good morning,” she called to him. “I see the trucks got through.”

“Yes,” he told her after answering the greeting. “Bob got ’em through.
We found the first stalled on the flat tops. Timer out of commission.
Everybody standing around not knowing what to do. Couldn’t move the darn
thing. Inside of an hour Bob had a road built round it and the other
trucks on their way.”

“Where is Mr. Hallack now?”

“At the mouth of the cañon. He took twenty of the men with him.”

“Was he in time?” she asked eagerly.

“Haven’t heard yet. Don’t you think you’d better have some breakfast?”

“Yes, I do. Won’t you lead me to it?”

The eyes of the men followed the progress of this green and golden girl
as she walked to the dining tent beside Hill. She moved with perfect
ease and grace, lightfooted as one of the mountain deer that inhabited
these wilds. Her fine-textured skin was soft as satin. The clothes she
wore would have cost six months’ pay for one of them. Her vibrant
valiance belonged to a world many generations removed from some of these
floaters.

She was a member of the new aristocracy emerging out of our casual and
haphazard social system. All its prejudices and preoccupations were
presumably hers. For and by the sex to which she belonged an elaborate
caste system is being built. The engineer knew that, just as he knew
that she was of the ultra-moderns who plunge at life for the thrills it
gives them, or rather at the small and shallow segment of it represented
by their set.

To see her eating flapjacks from a tin plate and drinking coffee from a
tin cup, seated on a long bench at a grimy table, with a greasy and
soot-smeared cook’s flunky waiting upon her, should have been
incongruous—and yet was not. She so manifestly enjoyed herself. The
eager little boy in her that craved adventure danced joyously in her
eyes while she listened to his tale of the night.

“Isn’t it bully?” she exclaimed after he had finished.

That night trek through the storm, not yet ended for all engaged in it,
had been an achievement. From Hill’s story it was plain that the dynamic
force back of it had been Bob Hallack. He had coaxed, bullied, literally
lifted, his small army over a mountain range hardly passable.

“I don’t know another man could have done it,” the engineer said.

“My father could—before he was hurt,” Joyce answered instantly.

“Perhaps so, but my statement is still true, for I don’t know him.”

“He’s a wonder.” The girl’s face bubbled to laughter. “I don’t like your
Bob Hallack at all. He’s too—sour. But I’ll tell you a secret, Mr.
Hill. I have to keep remembering I don’t like him. The way he gets
things done is kinda fascinating, isn’t it?”

“I’ll say so,” her companion agreed promptly.

“Did he really swallow a poker? Or is it an exaggerated rumour?” she
asked with an impudent and insouciant tilt of the chin.

“You don’t understand Bob. He’s the best fellow alive. He’ll go farther
for you—do more. You can bank on him and know he’ll carry through. And
he’s lots of fun when you come to know him—not a bit stiff or formal,
though he does sometimes seem that way.”

“Just a little,” she agreed sweetly. “Does he think _all_ women should
be swept into the Gulf of Mexico? Or is he featuring me?”

“There’s a story back of that.” He hesitated, read encouragement in her
eye, and plunged on. “Bob didn’t use to be that way—stand-offish with
women, I mean. He’s one of these quiet fellows that women like. While we
were at college girls fell for him hard. You can see why, can’t you?”

“Because he’s so rude,” she suggested.

“But he isn’t rude. He’s naturally a most courteous chap.”

“Then he must be a product of art and not nature.”

“Honest Injun, don’t you like him?” he asked confidentially.

“Honest Injun, I think he’s the limit,” she said with her most boyish
grin.

“I heard about it in Denver. He fell in love with a lady there, and she
took it as hard as he did. She chucked him for another fellow—or
because he didn’t look like a million dollars to her. Maybe you know
her. She’s a Mrs. Barnes.”

“Tessie Barnes?” the girl asked quickly, interest sparkling in her eyes.

“Yes. You do know her, then?”

“In a way. She’s rather well known.”

“Good-looking, I’ve heard.”

“The loveliest thing you ever saw.”

“A good sort?”

There was a momentary pause before Joyce said,

“I don’t know her at all well—just by sight.”

Hill knew he had been answered. “Well, she chucked him, and it’s left
him rather bitter. There was another fellow, as I said before.”

The girl opposite him felt a quickening of the blood, for a sure
instinct told her who the other man was. “Just when was this—this
romantic episode in Mr. Hallack’s life?” she asked lightly.

“In the winter and early spring.”

Joyce did some mental arithmetic. It was about this time that Winthrop
Ordway had begun his rather notorious affair with Tessie Barnes. She
knew now why Hallack had refused to take him to the city in his car the
night of the Box Elder escapade. It was for him that Mrs. Barnes had
jilted the engineer.

“Think of any sane woman passing up Bob Hallack when she had a chance at
him,” his friend said.

“Impossible,” she said dryly.

He laughed. “Well, of course I don’t mean that. We always have to
exaggerate to express ourselves at all.”

“You’re sold on your Mr. Hallack all right, aren’t you? I think he’s got
you hypnotized.”

She rose, walked to the other end of the big tent, and thanked the cook
for her breakfast, with a smile that won him instantly. Henceforth he
was sealed of the tribe of her friends. That warm and friendly smile was
an asset Miss Joyce knew the full value of. Yet it would not be fair to
say that it was based on calculation. She gave it spontaneously to a
world that interested and entertained her.

“I’d like to go down to the mouth of the cañon now,” she told Hill. “I
want to ’phone my father this morning and tell him how things are.”

She ran down in the roadster over a road already packed by the broad
wheels of trucks. In a small draw, near the gateway, was a group of men.
Some were busy putting up tents and unpacking supplies. The girl caught
sight of Hallack, standing on the floor of a truck and superintending
the distribution of rifles to some of his men. After they had gone he
came across to where Joyce sat in her car.

“You were in time then?” she said.

“Just. Ordway’s outfit has started. I’ve just had word. Your father sent
a car filled with armed men. They’re at the entrance now.”

“You don’t think there’ll be—trouble?”

His eyes met hers coolly. “Not of our making—so long as they don’t try
to come into the gorge.”

“But—will they try?”

“Not if they know what’s good for them.”

“You wouldn’t——?”

“I’m going to hold Box Elder,” he said quietly.

“Do you know whether Mr. Ordway is with his men?”

“No. They’re not here yet. Mr. Elliott rushed his men through to get to
the mouth of the cañon first. We ought to hear from the enemy any minute
now.”

They heard, before the words had died out of his mouth. A rifle sounded
from below.

Joyce looked quickly at him, startled. “They’re not——?”

“No. It’s only a warning for them to keep back.”

“Let’s hurry down,” she urged.

“No need for you to go. There’s an off chance they may be foolish enough
to try to force a way in.”

“Of course I’ll go. I represent my father. There will be no attack if
I’m there.”

“I’d much rather you didn’t go. There may be danger.”

“Well, I’m going. It’s all nonsense about the danger.”

Hallack hesitated. He had half a mind to forbid this slender positive
young woman any part in the parley and to enforce the prohibition. The
impulse to a clash of wills with her was strong. That imperious manner
of hers set his back up. Did she think she could disturb important
issues at her whim? That her father had sent her up here to supersede
his superintendent? He would show her that this was no affair for a
woman to mix in.

But wasn’t it? If Ordway was with his men her appearance would spike his
guns at once. Even if he was not, the man in charge would hesitate to go
far in her presence. The very fact that he knew she was here might
prevent bloodshed. This was important. The effect of a battle would be
bad. If the public and the Government sided with Ordway it might have a
disastrous result on the fortunes of the Gateway Pass project.
Reluctantly Hallack gave way.

“Will you be careful and do exactly as I tell you? I mean about not
exposing yourself.”

“Careful? Certainly.” She spoke with crisp decision, already feeling for
the starter. “Jump in.”

“No spectacular rescues to-day, Miss Elliott, if you please.”

“Oh, don’t preach,” she flung out impatiently. “Are you going with me,
or aren’t you?”

He took the seat beside her. It irritated him that his mind could not
put her in her place once for all. She was as irrepressible as a
Jack-in-the-box, he told himself. Apparently she had never been taught
how unimportant she really was in the scheme of things. Yet, though he
silently scolded her, there stirred in him a grudging admiration. If the
rising generation of her sex was like Joyce Elliott, there was one
fundamental virtue in them that might save them from themselves. Beneath
her hard finish she had courage. She would go through to a gruelling
finish. He had seen her last night, at the end of an exhausting drive,
fagged and frozen but still indomitably smiling.

They swept down toward the plains. At the point where the road made its
last bend before running into the open two guards rose from behind
boulders.

Joyce stopped the car. Other men could be seen on the hillside above and
in the wooded slope that ran down, to the creek at the bottom of the
gulch. The sight of them sent a thrill through her. She felt as though
she were on a battle-front. At any moment the roar and flash of guns
might fill the gorge. Her imagination saw the pine-clad descent as a bit
of the Argonne forest.

The engineer asked questions and the men answered. Half-a-dozen trucks
loaded with men and camping equipment had come up the stiff grade
leading to the entrance of Box Elder. Anderson had fired into the air as
a warning to them and had gone out to tell the enemy that the cañon was
occupied.

“Let’s go out,” Joyce said quickly to the man beside her.

He had been about to propose the same thing. “All right, Miss Elliott.
We’ll see what they’ve got to say for themselves.”

A knot of men were gathered round a car at the head of the line of
trucks strung along the road. Joyce recognized instantly the man at the
driver’s seat. As soon as she was near enough she called to him.

“Morning, Win. Nice day for a picnic.”

Ordway descended from the car, shouldered through those about it, and
came across to Joyce.

“’Lo, Bubbles. Didn’t expect to find you here.”

“But you’re glad to see me of course,” she rapped at him quickly.

He laughed, harshly, with no amusement. “Well, I am and I aren’t.”

“That’s just your modesty. You don’t like your good deeds to shine in a
naughty world. When you take a lot of honest working men on a nice
picnic like this——”

“Is it a picnic?” he asked.

“Isn’t it? You can’t be going to build a power site in Box Elder too.”

She was both amused and triumphant at his discomfiture—and he knew it.
Beneath a cool aplomb he covered acute annoyance. It was the first time
she had seen him in the rôle of the defeated. Used to success, he was
not temperamentally fitted to endure the frustration of his plans. A
cheerful and ruthless winner, he chafed under the ridicule that
accompanied failure.

“Not at all. I’m on my way up to the headwaters of the South Fork.”

“A roundabout way, isn’t it?”

“It’s not the first time I’ve been through Box Elder on a roundabout
way,” he told her.

Joyce flushed angrily. “Thanks for reminding me, Win. It’s tactful of
you—and so decent under the circumstances. But since we’re on
reminiscences you’ll recall that you rather made a mess of trying to go
through then. Maybe you’re expecting better luck this time.”

Hallack spoke, for the first time, coldly. “If so, Mr. Ordway’s
expectations will outrun performance.”

Ordway turned cold hard eyes on the railroad builder. “Meaning that
you’ll keep us from going through?”

“Not at all. We’ll give you a special escort and see you through.”

The eyes of the men clinched and held fast. Each read in the other’s
gaze implacable hate, a mutual antagonism that might easily flame into
murderous action; each struggled with his rage and trod it down.

“That’s what we want—to go through,” Ordway snapped. He had to save his
face and carry out the program he had on the spur of the moment
announced. “We’ll not trouble you for an escort. We know the way.”

Joyce caught in an instant Hallack’s plan. He intended to see the enemy
through the cañon and let Ordway’s trucks get bogged down in the deep
drifts of the hills. Ordway did not know how heavy the snowfall had
been, though he could guess from the low hanging clouds that more would
soon follow. He was expecting to cross Ramshorn Pass and get back to the
city by way of Red Cañon. But he would not make it through the deep
drifts. The party would have to camp in some gulch and probably would be
held there a week or more till it could dig out.

Joyce was savagely glad over the prospect that faced her fiancé. Deep
within her was a conviction that he had done a dishonourable thing, that
he had been traitor to the love he professed for her. The persuasion of
it hurt. She wanted to punish him for his unworthiness.

“It’s a guard of honour, Win,” she mocked, smiling at him. “A very
special attention we reserve for you. If you like you can ride in my car
at the head of the procession.”

Ordway did not like her smile. It carried no message of friendly banter
or genial comradeship. He looked at her, a little sulkily. She thought
she could make a fool of him, did she?

“So glad you came,” she assured him with cheerful malevolence. “I want
to have a little talk with you—on an important subject—if you don’t
mind.”

The man to whom she was engaged grunted what an optimist might have
taken for an assent, a pessimist for a smothered “Damn!”

Joyce opened the door of the car to let him in.

He hesitated. “No need for you to go. I have my own car.”

“I’d rather you went with me. I’ve something to say to you.”

With ill-concealed annoyance he took the seat beside her.


                             CHAPTER XXVIII
                   ORDWAY EXPLAINS HIS BUSINESS CODE

Sitting beside Joyce in her car, Ordway had a feeling as though he were
being exhibited in a Roman triumph. He could hardly refuse to ride with
her, but he resented very much the circumstances of the ride. In his
relations with her he had always carried the day with a high hand. She
had known him always masterful and dominant. Now he was playing a poor
second best.

For once the fortunate star under which he moved had failed him. The
prestige of success was worth a lot. He had expected to add another
famous coup to his record. Instead, he must slip back to town defeated
and face the covert amusement of men who would not dare openly laugh at
him. His failure stung, like a barbed arrow, no less because he
considered it wholly temporary. The position he found himself in was
ridiculous and humiliating. He had walked straight into a trap, laid for
him by the man who hated him for shattering his romance with Tessie
Barnes. It did not increase his self-satisfaction to know that he had
made the mistake of underestimating his opponent and was paying for it
now.

“This important business you want to discuss—what is it?” he asked
Joyce heavily.

“Important to me,” she amended. “I want to know the real reason you came
with your men and your trucks to Box Elder.”

“Thought I told you. I’m on my way——”

“Tell that to the newspapers, Win,” she interrupted tartly. “You came to
intrench yourself in the cañon. I know that. I’m not a child.”

“Very well. If you know it, what’s the use of my telling you?”

She had been swinging round a curve and guiding the car up a bit of
narrow road that needed her full attention. Now she came to a stretch
well rutted. Her challenging eyes swept to his face.

“I want to know the truth. What makes you think we mean to use Box
Elder?”

“You mean to use it, do you?”

“Is that what Miss Fellows told you?”

The swift stabbing look he flashed at her was a betrayal. It asked, in
blank amazement, how she had found out. His eyes might, and did, take on
instantly the cold wary film of inscrutability. But it was too late. She
knew her question had struck home like the point of a rapier. He was
convicted.

“Who is Miss Fellows?”

“A lady you met at the glove counter of D. & K’s day before yesterday,
just before you came out to the club to play golf with me and
incidentally to ask me to marry you.”

“Oh, your father’s nurse.”

She stopped the car, without killing the engine, to face him more
directly. “Yes, my father’s nurse—from whom you gathered what you
thought was information about his plans.” Her scornful voice was like
the lash of a whip.

He laughed hardily. “That’s twice you’ve accused me of being a short
sport, Joyce. About time to show evidence, isn’t it?”

“You haven’t denied it.”

“That’s only half of it. I’m not going to.” He set his square jaw
obstinately. “If you want to believe that of me you can.”

“I don’t want to believe it. You know I don’t. But——”

“But you do.”

She did not flinch from her guns. “Yes, I do.” She added, a suppressed
sob in her throat: “We’re miles apart, Win, in the way we look at
things. I begin to see now. It wouldn’t do at all—what we were thinking
of.”

“Not if you mean to accuse me of some new crime every week. The trouble
is you have too much imagination. I stop your father’s nurse to ask her
whether he’s been getting along all right and you make it an offence.
You’re not a very good sport, Joyce.”

“Maybe I’m not, but that needn’t trouble you now because we can’t go
on.”

“Why not?” he demanded. “What do you know about me that you didn’t know
two days ago? Has this fellow—what’s his name, Hallack?—been talking
to you of me?”

“No, he hasn’t. Mr. Hallack and I discuss only business.”

“What is it, then? Why do you jump to conclusions that I can’t meet your
standards of honour? I don’t pretend to be over-scrupulous when I’m in a
financial fight. If I did I’d lose every time. I’m as fair to the other
fellow as I can afford to be. The law of the game is that you have to
use the weapons you’ve got, and you can’t be too particular about
whether it’s a court decision or a big stick you’re whacking the enemy
with.”

“Yet there are rules of the game to be observed, aren’t there? You don’t
hit a man when he’s down, for instance.”

“You hit him when he’s up or down, going or coming,” he said bluntly.
“Big business fights are war. Somebody is bound to get hurt. I’m looking
out for the interests I represent every minute of the time. If I’m
strong enough I’ll win: I lose if I don’t hit hard and often. That’s the
law of success. I didn’t make the rules, and I’m not responsible for
them. I have to take ’em the way they are.”

“Do you mean that there’s one creed of morality for individuals and
another for business?”

“Exactly. You’ve said it. Camouflage it all you please, in business
might makes right. The battle is to the strong. We play to win. It does
not matter how.”

He set forth his tenets of faith dogmatically. She could take them or
leave them as she pleased. He made no apology for the fact that they
frankly disregarded ethical considerations. She knew of course that he
would not have been so candid, so brusquely scornful of morality, if he
had not been annoyed. Probably he was saying more than he meant, more at
least than he would later be willing to defend. But even so she saw
clearly the colour of his mind.

Contrasted with him she saw her father and Robert Hallack, men who were
builders and not gamblers, dedicated to a great purpose, yet forced by
the moral callousness of Ordway and his kind to use weapons they
despised in opposing him. She made her choice swiftly.

“I think it does matter,” she said quietly. “It makes all the difference
between——”

She gave up, in despair of making him understand. How could she make him
see that if one didn’t believe in those abstractions we call honour and
right and justice there could be no joy or gladness in the world?

“—between Mr. Hallack and me,” he finished for her.

She ignored his sneer. But there flashed to her mind a sentence her
father had once used. _No man is great unless he’s good._ That was the
trouble with Winthrop Ordway. He refused to believe that the principle
upon which actions should be based is good will. Over the walnuts and
raisins Joyce had once heard Jarvis Elliott talk of a new world that was
to emerge out of the present one—a world in which the application of
scientific principles directed by good will would eliminate largely the
waste and cruelty perpetuated by inertia and habit and selfishness. His
vision had stirred her imagination, but she knew instinctively that
Ordway would smile ironically at such a hope. He had no faith in the
essential goodness of human nature, or in the value of life in the mass.

The honking of the trucks behind them brought Joyce back to the
immediate. The runabout moved forward.

“Is it all off between us? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?” he
asked.

She nodded. “Yes, Win. It wouldn’t do at all. I ought to have known all
along.”

He laughed, harshly. “Pleasant for me. I announce my engagement to you.
Next day I have to say that you have changed your mind.”

“I didn’t do right,” she said with conviction.

“No doubt, but that doesn’t help _me_ any,” he replied tartly.

“You can say that you’ve changed _your_ mind,” she suggested, with a
touch of malice.

“I’d be justified.”

“I dare say.” She tacked a rider to her admission. “Anyhow, you’d get
plenty of people to believe it. I’m a member of the ‘In Bad’ Club just
now.”

They fell into silence which lasted till they reached the upper end of
the gorge. From a heavy sky the first flakes of snow were beginning to
fall. They were large and feathery.

Joyce drew in close to the wall to let the trucks pass. With a curt
“Good-bye” Ordway joined his chauffeur, took the wheel, and followed the
trucks.

Hallack came forward from the truck filled with armed men which had
brought up the rear. “We can turn just above the point here, Miss
Elliott,” he explained.

“Yes,” she agreed.

A page of her life had just closed, not very satisfactorily. She was
heavy of heart. The process of disillusionment is never pleasant.


                              CHAPTER XXIX
                         ACROSS THE SNOWFIELDS

Out of a water-logged sky snow had come down for twenty-four hours. It
was as though the ceiling of the world were sagging. During a short
cessation of the storm Joyce looked out of her tent upon peaks truncated
by low-hung clouds. The draw was shrouded in damp mist.

That had been yesterday. To-day the dazzling sun was reflected from ten
thousand crystals of snow. It was a new world, awakened to joy, touched
by the wand of a fairy godmother to white beauty.

Immediately after Ordway’s forces disappeared into the mountains Joyce
had sent a cryptic message to her father by the driver of the automobile
in which the guards had come. She had written:

    Dear Dad:

    We are camped in Box Elder and having a lovely time. No other
    parties in the cañon. Win Ordway and some friends came, but they
    decided not to stay and went farther up into the hills.

    Don’t forget to take that medicine, Daddikins. Everything
    splendiferous here. See you soon. Will call you up to-morrow on
    the phone. Bushels of love.

                                                             Joyce.

She knew he would read between the lines and understand, but she knew,
too, that he would be waiting eagerly for details. Now that the storm
had passed she must get word to him that all was well.

Joyce walked to the road at the lower end of the draw. Except the cook
and his helpers everybody was away on the job. For Hallack had begun
work the moment the weather permitted.

A man ploughed up through the snow from the creek to the road, making
slow progress in the drifts of the steep incline.

“Mr. Hallack! Mr. Hallack!” Joyce cried, waving a handkerchief at him.

He deflected and came toward the girl.

“I want to talk with my father,” she said. “Do you know where the
nearest telephone is?”

“At Tex Kilso’s place—six or seven miles away—up the draw and over the
saddle-back here. I was just going to eat a bite and start there. Think
I ought to let Mr. Elliott know how things are moving.”

“How _are_ they moving?”

“All right. Hill is doing the preliminary survey work. We’ve decided
from the lay of the land where the roadbed must be at the upper part of
the cañon. There’s no choice. It must follow the creek. Anderson has a
gang busy with ploughs, scrapers, axes, and shovels.”

“When are you going to open the road out of the cañon?”

“No hurry.” He took her into his confidence with a smile. “So long as it
is closed nobody will be around asking inconvenient questions. The less
travel there is through Box Elder until I get the grading well under way
the better pleased I’ll be. Every day establishes the fact of possession
more definitely. We have supplies enough. What more do we want?”

“I’m content, except that I want to talk with Dad,” she said.

“I’ll give him your message,” the engineer suggested.

“No. He wants to hear from me direct. And I want to know how he is. I’d
rather talk to him myself. How can we get to this Kilso’s?”

He looked doubtfully at the slender glowing girl. The untamed joyous
freedom of her movements told of strength. So Ada Rehan walked in the
golden days of her prime. With such a poise of light erectness Joan of
Arc must have stepped resiliently to her mission when the glory of it
was first strong in her, he thought.

“On skis. It’ll be a long hard pull. Can you use runners?”

“I’ve been down Genesee Mountain on them fifty times,” she answered.
“Last winter we girls all did it.”

“I’m not talking about going down mountains but up them,” he told her.

“You have to go up Genesee before you can go down it,” she countered,
with the slight tilt of the chin that would have expressed debonair
impudence if the friendly eyes had not explained that she reserved this
for those in her good graces.

“You’re slender. How about your strength? I don’t want to overtax it.
Are you sure you can make it to Kilso’s and back?”

“Don’t worry about my strength,” she answered promptly. “If you’re not
pretty fit, Mr. Hallack, you’d better not go with me.”

Her smile robbed this of any semblance of boasting. She rather wished
someone were here to tell him that she had won the woman’s tennis
championship of the city in straight sets, that she was an expert
swimmer, that she was known as a fearless rider. Since there was nobody,
she had to leave this important evidence undivulged.

“All right. We’ll start at once,” he said.

In truth he wanted to take her along. Misogynist he might think himself
in his more bitter moments, but there was in this girl a boyish valiance
that penetrated the cynicism in which he had incased his feelings. She
was an arresting, an exciting personality. The swift and eager flashes
of her spirit, the glint of mocking humour in the eyes, had a disturbing
effect upon his detachment, upon his settled determination to have no
more to do with women. He remembered Masefield’s line,

              “The music of her dear delicious ways.”

His heart hardened. There had been another woman in his life who had an
enticing manner, one whose lovely eyes grew warm and cloudy for him,
whose passionate kisses had been his. She had wooed him with all the
warm seduction of her feminine appeal—and she had betrayed him for the
fleshpots her soft nature craved.

He did Joyce Elliott the justice to admit that she was different. She
was of the modern type, hard as nails in some ways, frank as Tom Hill
himself. As far as was possible she had discarded sex in her relations
with him. Her father’s representative, she demanded nothing but fair
play. She was a young woman in her manner only because nature had
stamped her sex upon her in a score of charming ways.

“I’ll have a pair of skis fitted for you,” he said.

They presently started up the draw for the saddle-back, Hallack leading
the way. He was dressed in laced boots of the Canadian pack type, heavy
knit socks, trousers of whipcord, an o.d. flannel shirt, and a leather
vest with corduroy sleeves. The sun was shining brightly, so that the
glare of its reflection smote their eyes, over which they wore smoked
glasses as a protection.

Hallack moved with a slow swinging stride, taking the slope at an angle
and not straight up. It was a pleasure to watch the undulations of his
figure as he pushed forward. He was a brown, cleanly built man and his
muscles, in perfect coördination, fell naturally into easy and graceful
sinuosities.

They reached the saddle-back and stopped a moment to look back upon the
white field dotted with canvas tents, wagons, tools, and teams.

“If I were a man I’d be a field engineer,” Joyce said impulsively.

The brave life of the open was having its way with her. She glowed, both
from the exertion of the climb and the joy of the adventure. Down in the
city, where little people went so seriously at the business of amusing
themselves with little pleasures, Wese and a lot of her friends were at
that precise moment playing auction, having just finished luncheon at
the club.

Joyce had counted on being there, the most important guest present, with
Winthrop Ordway’s ring on her finger. It was to have been an occasion, a
demonstration to Mrs. Clay B. Westover of the futility of any ban she
might attempt to lay upon her. The girl could see herself there, gay,
excited, triumphant. Instead, she was mushing across snowy wastes,
dressed in old riding togs and a flannel shirt.

What took her by surprise was the consciousness that she would rather be
here than there. Her friends would not understand her absence, and her
un-friends would think unkind things about it. Mrs. Westover would score
heavily, and now that she had broken with Winthrop it would be difficult
to recover lost ground. But she did not care. It all seemed to her now
of no importance, a trivial matter that had power to hurt only if she
gave it that power. In this clean white world that stretched endlessly
to the horizon only realities mattered. What she was and not what people
thought of her: that was what counted.

They were in a world of winter, a white undulating stretch empty of
life. This was the country of the deep snows, where was stored the
moisture which in summer irrigated thousands of acres of fertile land
stretching toward the Mississippi Valley. In its gulches and ravines the
drift snow would gather, deeper and deeper as the winter drew out, till
a stone flung with sufficient force would sink into the pack to a depth
of fifteen or twenty feet.

Hallack turned. “All right?” he asked.

“Fine and dandy,” she answered cheerfully. “I like this.”

“Better than a fox-trot?”

“Heaps better, just now. I s’pose you never do anything so frivolous as
dance, Mr. Hallack?”

“I’m out of the way of it, but I used to like dancing before I became a
senescent.”

“Good gracious! Are you all that?”

She thought but did not say that he certainly did not look it. The
vigour of him, so lean-flanked and muscular, held the confident strength
of youth. His face had taken on the lines that come from responsibility
and from introspective living, but to see him on the job, a man out of
ten thousand, reliable as tested steel, using his tremendous driving
power to achieve an end, was to know that the fires of early manhood
still ran turbulently through his veins.

Joyce did athletics well. She combined in consistent and harmonious
action a unity of brain and eye and muscle. But she had spent hours on
snowshoes where Hallack had spent weeks.

“I’m going too fast,” he said.

“It isn’t for me to say so, after all my bragging,” she laughed
breathlessly.

“Skiing calls into use a different set of muscles from motoring,” he
commented with a smile. “You’ll be stiff and sore to-morrow and for a
week. But we’re not doing a Marathon on runners. We’ll slow up.”

Alone on the snowfields, their spirits came together for companionship.
In the background of their minds there had always been a
half-unconscious clash of will between them. Each had built up as the
other a figure of straw and resented the qualities it was supposed to
possess. They made explorations now into each other’s minds, sent out
tentacles of approach that met response.

The hours flew, unnoticed. As they descended the slope toward Kilso’s
place Joyce observed with surprise that the shadows were growing longer.

“We’ll not get back to camp to-night,” she said, a little disturbed.

“’Fraid not,” he said. “I didn’t realize the snow was so bad for
travelling. Have to put up here till morning.”

He was more disturbed than she, for he had observed that no smoke was
coming out of the chimney of the ranch house. Had the Kilsos gone to
town and left the place deserted? It looked like it.


                              CHAPTER XXX
                            FALLING BARRIERS

The door was locked, but Hallack found a key hanging on a nail driven
into one of the porch posts. From the hall they passed into the living
room. There was a hot-blast stove, but the fire in it had gone out. Fuel
and kindling were piled in a box beside it.

“Probably went to Circle before the storm and couldn’t get back,”
Hallack surmised aloud.

In the kitchen there was food, plenty of it. The bread box held a loaf,
probably three or four days old. Hanging from a rafter was a knuckle
bone of a ham. Canned goods were piled on an upper shelf, including rows
of preserves that had been put up by Mrs. Kilso. Coffee and tea were in
canisters.

“We’ll not starve anyhow,” Joyce said. “Good of Mrs. Kilso to leave a
pantry so well stocked, but I wish she’d been here to welcome us
herself.”

“Yes,” her companion agreed.

The situation was embarrassing. Womanlike, she put a better face on it
than he did. For one thing he blamed himself for letting her come. If he
had realized that it was likely to take so long, that the going was so
heavy—— And he should have known it before he let her start. They were
confronted now with the necessity of spending the night together alone
at a ranch far from the nearest neighbour.

Joyce felt an unwonted sense of shyness, but she had none of the mental
distress that had filled her at the time of her escapade with Ordway.
She was here in the line of duty, sent by her father because he had been
unable to come himself. That night had caught her at the ranch alone
with Robert Hallack was unfortunate, but she could not blame herself for
any indiscretion. They had no way of knowing that the Kilsos had gone to
town.

She took charge, briskly, to cover the awkwardness. “You’d better light
a fire. We’ll have to make ourselves at home.”

He set one in the kitchen stove and put a match to it. Within a few
minutes the room was warm. Joyce took off her sweater and hung it on a
hook.

She asked for a connection with her father on the wire. In a
surprisingly short time she heard his voice.

“That you, Joyce? Where are you?”

She told him, and added details. “It’s a little awkward, Dad. We came on
skis, but it took us longer than we expected. It’s too dark to go back
to-night, and the Kilsos have gone away somewhere. We’re alone here, Mr.
Hallack and I.”

“Are you comfortable?” he asked. “Food and fuel and that sort of thing?”

“Yes, plenty. That’s not what I mean—exactly.”

“I understand. Don’t worry, Joy. Stay where you are till morning. How
deep is the snow up there?” And after she had told him, he plunged into
business. “How is the fishing going? Is it successful?”

The girl followed his lead. “Very much so, Dad. We’ve caught all the
fish we want, but I don’t think Mr. Ordway’s party has caught any. They
didn’t stay in the cañon—went right up through it into the hills. I
suppose he was afraid we’d got the best fishing. We’re doing fine. Mr.
Hill is fishing the upper end of the cañon to-day. He and his party took
their lunch with them as they thought they would be busy and they could
save time.”

She answered a question or two, then turned the receiver over to
Hallack. His talk with Elliott was brief and pointed. It covered a great
deal of ground in three minutes.

Darkness flowed into the valley. They found lamps and lit them. While
Joyce decided on toast, bacon and eggs, coffee, and canned plums for
dinner Hallack built a fire in the living-room heater. Presently it was
roaring in a red-hot drum.

They were hungry from their long trip across the mountain and they ate
with zest. The supply of toast ran out and Hallack made more. He would
not let Joyce do it.

“You’re worn out—must be. Stay there and let me.”

“I’m not either,” she protested with mock indignation. “What’s a little
walk across a mountain?”

“Through snow a foot and a half deep,” he added.

Afterward they did the dishes together, the sleeves of her flannel shirt
rolled to the elbows of the firm rounded arms. The intimate closeness of
the relation that had been thrust upon them stirred in both their
hearts. The storm had isolated them from a world which now seemed a
thousand miles away. They were alone, a man and a maid, as Adam and Eve
were in the primeval days of the Garden. Solitude engulfed them, miles
of white snow waste in which no sound would stir but the possible
howling of a wolf or the scream of a mountain lion.

He drew up the lounge before the fire in the living room and she nestled
into it. They talked—of her father, of the railroad, of her life in
town, of his far up on the roof of the continent, and at last of Ordway.

“Why do you hate him?” she asked. “What has he done to you?”

The muscles stood out on his cheeks like whipcords above the clenched
jaws. She could see the steel harden his eyes, and she reproached
herself for having let herself hurt him.

His answer was a Yankee one. “Are you going to marry him?”

The brusque directness of it took her breath. “You’re nearly as impudent
as I am,” she said, smiling at him.

“If we’re going to talk about Mr. Ordway I want the ground cleared
first,” he said bluntly. “I can’t discuss him with a young woman to whom
he’s engaged.”

“I’m not engaged to him,” Joyce said on swift impulse, wondering why.

The look in his eyes startled her. She knew, without any need of words,
that he was glad.

“But you’re his friend.”

“I’m not even his friend.” There was the shadow of sorrow in her low
voice.

“I thought—I had heard rumours——”

“Go on,” she told him.

“That he wanted to marry you.” He did not look at her. The stove
occupied his attention. He was throwing some coal into the glowing mass
of heat.

“Do you believe all you hear, Mr. Hallack?” she asked lightly.

“No, but I believe that. Of course he would want to.”

“Why of course?”

He looked at her then, a golden girl to dream about, buoyant with the
rhythm of life, vivid as the crimson bloom of a hollyhock. He knew why,
but he could not tell her.

“I thought you were great friends,” he said lamely.

“We were.” Again she felt the lift of an impulse. “Until the last time I
saw him.”

He asked no question, though she could see by his intentness that he was
absorbed in her avowal.

“We—disagreed,” she went on. “There was something came up. . . . He’s
too much of a buccaneer for me.”

“That’s a good word for him—a social and business buccaneer. Captain
Kidd in dinner clothes.”

“He’s very entertaining—awf’ly likable when he wants to be. Then, too,
he’s such a sixty-horsepower man. If he weren’t so—destructive,” she
said ruefully.

Hallack nodded. He saw this girl with eyes from which the scales had
been removed. She had seemed to him an example of a new type of woman
that repelled him—hard as iron beneath the soft smiling surface,
worldly to the core, self-willed and pampered, out for number one quite
ruthlessly. Her thoughts began with dress and dances and joy rides, he
had supposed, and ended with men, considered wholly in their relation to
her pleasure.

He could have laughed sardonically at his priggish folly. Her hardness
had carried her without a murmur of complaint through a gruelling night
of storm, had brought her gaily across mountain snows when she was ready
to drop with fatigue. She had shown how worldly she was by giving up a
man who could offer her all the material advantages of wealth and
position. Self-willed, perhaps, as all eager and impulsive youth must
be, but certainly far from pampered. How could he help loving the dear
spirit of her that reached out through her flippancy for the joy and
beauty of life?

“You’re for your father in this fight then?” he said, though he needed
no reassurance now.

She looked at him, surprised. “All the way. What do you think I came
here for?”

He flushed and made a clean confession of it. “At the time I first met
you I was prejudiced against you. I thought you—different. I’m a
stubborn fool and an idea sticks with me. But I’ve known I was wrong
ever since you came into my tent at the camp.”

She gave him a smiling little nod of approval. “It’s very decent of you
to say so. And when you say you thought me different you interest me,
kind sir. How—different?”

“It would embarrass me to explain,” he replied, trying to meet her light
touch.

“Like Tessie Barnes, perhaps. That what you mean?”

She was sorry the instant the words were out. For his face froze. Yet
she had spoken purposely, even though without deliberation. Her thought
had been that talk on that subject would be a relief to him. He had
eaten his heart out in silence long enough. What he needed was to bring
his trouble to the light, to shun no longer friendly sympathy.

He rose and stood stiffly.

“You’re tired, Miss Elliott. I’ll give you a chance to retire. If you’ll
take the bedroom next this room I’ll go upstairs.”

“Very well,” Joyce said in a small subdued voice.

She had been properly punished, she told herself, for intruding into the
privacy of a man’s heart. She blamed herself, yet blamed him too. Did he
think that he was some kind of Hamlet and that this love affair of his
had to be held to the high tragic note? It was absurd to consider any
flirtation with Tessie Barnes on such a basis. She was too light-minded
to be taken seriously.

Why didn’t he have a sense of humour instead of acting as though she had
struck him a mortal blow?

“Do I have to go to bed? Can’t I stand in the corner instead?” she asked
flippantly.

He was already moving to the door. “I hope you’ll sleep well, Miss
Elliott.”

“And say my prayers and ask to be made a better little girl,” she
mocked.


                              CHAPTER XXXI
                               TWO—ALONE

Joyce knew of no place so favourable for thought as bed in the darkness
of night. Alone, with all objects obscured, free from any possibility of
interruption, her brain could function clearly and work out troublesome
problems.

That was what she meant to do to-night. While she undressed in the
living room before the warm stove she deliberately pushed into the
background of her mind the developments of the day. She did not want to
face them until she was free from even the trifling preoccupations of
preparing for bed.

She closed the draughts of the stove and carried the lamp and her
clothes into the other room. When she had blown out the light she
shivered down into the blankets, drew them close to her form, and
cuddled up. Before she began to review what had taken place it was
necessary to get warm, so that she would not be disturbed by any
awareness of discomfort.

First, Winthrop Ordway! She knew that she had definitely and finally
broken with him. For that she did not blame herself. He had done
something she felt to be dishonourable and he had hardly taken the
trouble to deny it even formally. But she had whips of scorn for herself
because she had ever let herself become engaged to him. It was all very
well to flirt with him, to let herself go a bit emotionally, to let him
make love to her if she felt so disposed. That did not trouble her at
all. What filled her with disgust was the fact that she had, even for a
moment, been willing to use him in her fight to hold her own against
Mrs. Westover. That was the sort of thing she despised in other
women—the willingness to use all sorts of means to further their social
campaigns.

She told herself that hadn’t been the reason why she had become engaged
to him. But hadn’t it? It had had some weight with her. How much? Had it
been a determining factor? If she was honest—and that was just what she
meant to be, so far as she herself was concerned—she must admit that it
had given a triumphant exultation to the announcement of the engagement.
She had accepted him at the very hour when she was casting about for
weapons with which to hold her own.

Joyce found herself too sleepy to think clearly. Her eyes were heavy,
her mind wandered. She had treated Winthrop shabbily. He had a right to
resent it, and he probably would very effectually. It would not be
necessary for him to say a word to convince their world that he had
broken with her for reasons which he was too generous to mention. One
look, with the proper implications of silence behind it, would be enough
for Esther Dare, say.

Well, she would have to hold her chin up and whistle. Somehow it did not
seem so very important what folks said, she felt drowsily. Not up here,
in these hills . . . where by some magic you were washed clean of
meanness . . . where the great white wastes stretched to the horizon and
one saw naked aspens shivering and firs with their lower branches
drooping heavily to the ground . . . and alders half buried in drifts
. . .

It was broad daylight when she awoke. Vaguely, as she still groped with
the mists of semi-sleep, she knew that someone was rattling the damper
of a stove. She yawned and stretched her legs. Instantly the muscles
below the calves reminded her painfully that she had yesterday been on
skis.

The movements in the other room ceased. She must have slept again for a
few minutes, for when she opened her eyes again the door of the room was
closed. Near it were a pitcher of water, a wash basin, soap, and a
towel.

Joyce rose. She put the tip of her finger into the water and found it
hot. After she had bathed and dressed she passed through the living room
into the kitchen. The delicious odour of bacon and hot biscuits was in
the air.

“Good morning,” she said.

Hallack looked up from the coffee pot he was filling. It would have been
impossible for him not to meet in kind the smile of this golden girl.

“Morning. Did you sleep well?” he asked.

“All round the clock.”

Joyce did not ask him how she could help. Without instructions she began
to set the table.

He was in his shirt sleeves, a fine figure of efficient muscular
development. Even as a cook, he made few waste motions. There was a
certain strong economy in the way he obtained results. The girl approved
the rich brown colour of his firm flesh. He was an outdoor man, a
product of wind and sun and the mountains. But it was civilization that
had given him the close-gripped jaw and salient chin. Human contacts had
helped to make him what he was, a leader by grace of the force within
him.

They ignored the clash of last night until they had finished eating,
though both felt it as a barrier between them.

He apologized, chin in hand, looking straight at her across the table.
“My fault—last night. I’m too sensitive.”

“No. I oughtn’t to have said it. I’m like that. Always rushing in. I
thought—— Oh, well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”

He would not let it go that way. For two minutes both talked at once,
each trying to take the blame. Neither would listen to the other.

Joyce broke off, laughing. “We’re not very polite, are we?”

He laughed with her. After that no explanations were necessary. The
slate had been washed clean of any disagreement between them.


                             CHAPTER XXXII
                               SNOW BLIND

The last word of Jarvis Elliott over the telephone had been an
admonition to ring up again in the morning. After breakfast Joyce put in
a call for her father but found it hard to get him on the wire. The
operator mentioned trouble on the line as an excuse and promised that it
would soon be cleared up.

“I’m going to look around and see if there is any stock on the place,”
Hallack said. “If there is I’ll have to feed. Kilso will probably get
back to-day. He’ll likely snowshoe over.”

“All right,” Joyce agreed. “I’ll stay and try to get Dad. Soon as I do
we can start back to camp.”

The operator presently notified Joyce that Mr. Elliott was on the wire.
They talked for a few minutes, the father and daughter. He was mainly
concerned to know that all was well with her. She was hanging up the
receiver when Hallack came into the house.

“A man’s coming down out of the hills,” he told Joyce. “Probably Kilso,
but if so he hasn’t been to Circle, for he’s coming from the opposite
direction.”

“Did you find any cattle or horses?” Joyce asked.

“Yes. Half-a-dozen cattle and two horses. I’ve given them hay enough for
their needs.”

“I’m glad Mr. Kilso’s coming back. I don’t like to think of cattle
suffering.”

They walked out to the porch and watched the black figure of the man
coming down the slope.

“What’s the matter with him?” Hallack said. “He acts as though he’s
drunk.”

“Yes. See how he weaves about. He gets off the trail and staggers about
till he finds it again.”

In spite of the sunshine the day was a little hazy. The diffused light
was too strong for the eyes. Joyce went into the house and brought her
smoked glasses.

The approaching man was well down in the valley now. He followed, in a
vacillating and erratic way, the trail they had made yesterday in coming
to the ranch.

“I believe he’s sick,” the girl said. “Let’s go help him.”

They put on their skis and shuffled across the field. From the throat of
Joyce came a small cry of surprise.

“It’s Winthrop Ordway.”

She was right. As she hurried forward she called to him.

“You sick, Win?”

Without answering, he plunged full length into the snow.

He was trying to recover his feet when they reached him.

“What is it, Win? Tell me,” she cried, filled with apprehension.

Hallack helped him up. He swayed, and steadied himself, looking in the
direction of the girl.

“Is it—Joyce?” he asked.

“Of course. Don’t you know me? Can’t you see me?” She caught his arm and
looked anxiously up at him.

“I’ve gone blind—snow blind,” he told her. “Where am I?”

“At Kilso’s ranch.” Her mind hurried back to the disaster that had
befallen him. “Do you mean—quite blind?”

“I can just see you—as if you were a tree. It’s been hell.” His fingers
tightened on Hallack’s arm. “Get me a doctor, Kilso. Or do something for
me. I’ve got red-hot cinders in my eyes.”

Between Joyce and Hallack wireless messages flashed. It was better not
to tell the stricken man just yet that it was to his enemy he had
appealed. He had enough to bear without that added humiliation.

“We’ll get you to the house and look after you,” the engineer said.
“When did it begin to trouble you?”

“Yesterday afternoon. I started over the snow—to do some telephoning.
Lost my way—and night came on.”

“You’ve been out all night?” Joyce was tremulous with sympathy.

“Yes.”

“Oh, Win!” she wailed.

He was exhausted, as well as in great pain. Evidently he had discarded
his snowshoes because he could not guide them without sight. For hours
he had wallowed in deep drifts and ploughed through heavy masses of
snow. He staggered as he moved, clinging helplessly to Hallack’s arm
while he lurched toward the house.

Joyce gulped, to keep down a sob. In her bosom she was a river of tears
for him. Her imagination pictured that night of horror—the cold, the
pain, the deadly weariness, the horrible uncertainty as to where he was
going. He had probably stumbled and fallen dozens of times, as he had
done just before they reached him. Only the indomitable will to live had
kept him going—and if it had not been for the chance that had held them
here overnight he would have succumbed at last.

They got him into the house, to the lounge in the living room.

“Soak your handkerchief in salt water,” Hallack suggested, and while
Joyce flew to do this he wrested the frozen boots from the feet of
Ordway.

By mutual consent it was Joyce who nursed the tortured man, Hallack who
supplied her with what she needed. There was a hot-water bag in the
house. The girl gave this to Ordway to warm his hands and body. Hot
bricks she put at his feet. The bandage over his eyes she changed
whenever it grew hot and dry.

Ordway had never been ill in his life for more than a day or two at a
time. Like many men of robust health he did not endure with patience
pain or sickness. They were too foreign to his habit of thought. He
tossed and groaned restlessly, resentful of the fate that had laid him
low. The fear gnawed at him that he had become permanently blind, though
Hallack assured him that the chance of this was slight.

“Easy for you to say that, Kilso—if that’s your name—but it would be
different if it was you,” he complained.

Joyce was struck by the contrast with her father in his illness. The old
railroad builder had been a stoic, full of gentleness and consideration
for those who waited on him. His daughter traced the difference between
him and Ordway to the philosophy that animated them. Ordway was an
anti-social animal. He was out to play his own hand. A blow at his own
well-being was fatal to his scheme of life, since the foundation of it
was frankly selfish.

Hallack prepared other simple remedies known to the mountaineers who
lived in the country where blindness of this sort was common. He grated
raw potatoes and Joyce applied them gently. He steeped tea leaves. He
gathered soot, with which she painted the hollows under the eyes.

The blind man ate a breakfast prepared for him by Hallack, after which
he was in better physical trim. The heat was restored to his body and
his blood was circulating again normally. Toward noon, from complete
exhaustion, he fell into troubled sleep.

“I’d better call Dad again,” Joyce told Hallack. “We’ll have to stay all
night now, won’t we?”

“Unless I go to the camp for help,” he replied. “And I don’t know what
good that would do. He’s better off here than there. We’re doing
everything for him that can be done.”

“Besides, he wouldn’t want to go to our camp. He’d hate to be taken
there. While he’s at the ranch he’s on neutral ground.”

Her companion nodded appreciation of this. In Ordway’s place it would
hurt his pride very much to be carried helpless to the camp of his enemy
and there nursed.

“I _could_ go to the camp and send Tom over in my place,” he suggested.
“Ordway doesn’t hate him as he does me. He wouldn’t mind so much being
under an obligation to him, although as far as that goes he’s not in my
debt at all. I did what it was up to me to do. That’s all.”

She shook her head emphatically. “To-morrow, maybe, not now. I don’t
want you to leave while he’s in such pain. You know better than I do
what to give him. But I think you’re right about sending Mr. Hill.
To-morrow will be soon enough, though. He won’t see to-day, will he?”

“No. Perhaps not for two or three days.”

She looked up at him, eyes shining. “You don’t hate him any more, or you
wouldn’t be scheming to save his feelings.”

His smile was a little grim. “You can’t hate any one who has gone blind,
can you? I’m saving it up for him. I’ll hate him plenty when he’s
himself again.”

“You won’t,” she prophesied. “You can’t do things for a man—decent
kindly things to help him—and keep on hating. That isn’t the way we are
made. Besides——”

She stopped, a little breathless.

“Besides——?” he prompted.

“I’ll tell you the rest some other time.” Her eyes fell away from his.
She was flushed beneath the tan.

“I’ll remind you of that promise—soon.”

She moved to the telephone. “I’ll get Dad if I can.”

Unaccountably, she felt within her an emotional heating of the blood.
Excitement throbbed in her pulses.

There was no sense in being silly, she told herself severely.


                             CHAPTER XXXIII
                         A MOUNTAIN LION HOWLS

Dusk was falling over the valley.

Joyce had stepped out to get some deep breaths of fresh air. She was
facing a western sky of deep purple in a saddle between two peaks, out
of which a radiant afterglow of sunset was slowly fading. The crisp
crunch of feet on the snow crust brought her gaze swiftly back. A short
heavy-set man had come round the corner of the house.

It is difficult to say which of the two was the more startled, but
certainly the young woman recovered first. She could give a fair guess
as to who this was. Kilso could not leave his cattle to starve. In a way
she had been expecting him. But the man was not looking for her at all.
What under heaven would a girl like this be doing at his snowbound ranch
in the heart of the hills?

“Mr. Kilso, isn’t it?” she said.

“Yep, Tex Kilso.” Only his eyes asked who she was.

“I’m Joyce Elliott. We came over from Box Elder yesterday to telephone
and had to stay all night.”

“You’re a daughter of Jarvis Elliott, the man who is building the
cut-off?” His words were a question rather than a statement.

“Yes. Mr. Hallack came over the hills with me. We’ve rather made free
with your house and provisions.”

He waved a hand in the large Western way. “What they’re for. Sorry Mrs.
Kilso wasn’t to home. We got caught in town.”

“That’s what we thought.”

“Had to break through to feed my stock. Make yoreselves to home.”

She laughed. “We’ve certainly done that. Mrs. Kilso is a good provider.
Mr. Ordway is here too. He’s snow blind.”

“By Godfrey, you don’t say. I’ve noticed it’s more apt to hit them
fellows with light blue eyes.”

“You know Mr. Ordway then?”

“Met him a coupla times. He high-toned me.”

“Did what?” asked Joyce.

“High-toned me, if you know what I mean. Looked through me like I hardly
wasn’t there.”

Joyce understood. Winthrop Ordway could be very entertaining and
extremely winning when he took the trouble, but he had a way of ignoring
blankly those whom he did not consider worth while. This did not make
for widespread popularity.

“That’s just his way,” she apologized for him.

“Well, his way ain’t pleasin’ to me. Course he’s welcome here while he’s
sick, but soon as he’s able he can go right down the road any time he’s
a mind to. That don’t apply to you and yore other friends.” The rancher
looked at her with the level fearless gaze of the outdoor hillman. He
was used to saying exactly what he thought.

“We found him staggering around in the snow. He’d been travelling all
night, without being able to see where he was going. Then he had crossed
our trail and followed it. He was in a bad way. We had to bring him
here.”

“Sure you had. That’s all right. I’m not kickin’ any. All I’m sayin’ is
that I don’t like the colour of his hair or the way he walks or a thing
about him. Up here we’re all for the Gateway Pass cut-off. Ordway and
his gang are a bunch of financial cutthroats, by our way of thinking.
An’ we ain’t concealin’ our opinion any.”

“Mr. Hallack fed the stock,” Miss Elliott mentioned, after a moment’s
pause.

“Good. I expect they et that hay right ravenous.”

“Yes.” She mentioned aloud what was in her mind. “It’s a little awkward,
Mr. Kilso. This railroad fight is pretty bitter, you know, and Mr.
Hallack and Mr. Ordway aren’t friends. Mr. Hallack is leaving for camp
in the morning, and since Mr. Ordway can’t see we thought it better not
to tell him that Mr. Hallack is with me. You see, he jumped to the
conclusion that you were the man that helped him to the house. So we let
him think so.”

“Suits me. Let ’er ride the way she is.”

They passed into the house, where Hallack was lighting the kitchen fire
for supper. Joyce was not an expert cook, but she had taken lessons and
knew something of the art. She baked potatoes, boiled rice, and made
biscuits. When they had eaten, Tex appointed himself dishwasher.

Joyce brought to the kitchen the dishes of the patient. Ordway was
improving. The burning in his eyes was less painful. Within a day or two
he would be able to see. As a convalescent he was disposed to claim all
the time his nurse would allow him. He felt dependent upon her, and his
helplessness made him feel the need of her companionship. In his anger
he had accepted her decision as to their relations without much demur,
but he was disposed now to fight for his place in the sunshine of her
favour. All day she had been kind and tender to him. He did not want to
let her go out of his life. Why should he, merely because she had flown
out at him? He had always known that she was high-spirited and
temperamental. It was one of the things he had liked about her.

“Come back and read to me,” he said as she had left.

“After a little. I want to go out and exercise a bit.”

“Don’t be long, then,” he pleaded.

“No,” she promised.

He was like a child in his demands, she thought, impatient with anything
that stood in the way of his comfort or pleasure. She did not resent
this. The mother love that is in all women, active or dormant, went out
to his need. His exacting claims, the unconscious arrogance of them,
amused and touched her.

“I’ve got something to say to you, Joyce,” he said, reaching for her
hand and finding it.

She let her hand lie in his a moment. “To-morrow,” she suggested. There
was a gentleness in her voice he had not heard before.

Like most young girls he knew she had been avid for pleasure. The ego in
her had demanded deference, attention, admiration. He found in her now a
deeper and less clamorous charm. She had become a woman, had begun to
learn the age-old lesson that her sex must give more than it takes.

Joyce bundled up and went outside. She had made no appointment to meet
Hallack, but he was waiting for her as she knew he would be. In the
still night their feet crunched as they walked over a beaten path to the
top of a hillock not far distant.

It was a night of ten thousand stars and a moon that drenched the valley
with soft light. The white world was touched with enchantment.

He waited till they had reached the summit before he spoke. “Was there
ever a more perfect hour?” he said, and there was reverence in his
voice.

“Never—not since the world began.” She took a deep breath of delight
that was almost poignant in its intensity. “I don’t wonder that you love
your hills—if they’re often like this.”

“Their beauty gets into the blood—becomes a part of one,” he replied.
“The mountains have a thousand moods in every season. Even in winter
they are not always clean and cold and austere. Sunrise, sunset, dawn,
and dusk—always new and wonderful pictures that almost hurt in their
loveliness.”

They were silent for a long time.

He turned to her, smilingly. “Besides——?”, he reminded her.

“I didn’t say _when_ I’d finish that sentence,” she defended.

“But since I’m going away in the morning and I may not see you again
alone you’ll tell me now, won’t you?”

The day had brought them much closer, though they had been with Ordway
most of it. Intuitively she knew that he would not repulse her if she
attacked his reserve now, but she was not sure that she wanted barriers
to fall between them.

She tried for a light note. “You might send me to bed again for not
behaving like a nice little girl.”

“You told me you had forgiven that,” he reproached.

“No, I told you I was to blame—and I was. But——”

“But and besides——”

Joyce met him eye to eye. A mounting tide of excitement was racing in
her blood. “Besides, since you want to know, you ought not to hate Mr.
Ordway for saving you from doing something that would have ruined your
life.”

She could have counted her heart-beats before he answered. “No, I should
be grateful to him. I’ve known that ever since I was in Denver last
time.”

“But it still hurts,” she said, softly.

“Only my vanity, I suppose.”

“You cared—a great deal?”

“Yes,” he said simply. “I didn’t understand that we were playing a game,
that we were to experiment with emotion and let it take us where it
would. I’m not expert at—such things. I suppose I’ve lived too far from
the female of my species. So I don’t understand her very well.”

She laughed a little. “Who does?” Then, “Haven’t you any sisters?”

“No. Perhaps that’s why I was always a little afraid of girls. I put
them on pedestals. That’s why I made a fool of myself about this. I was
entirely serious. She wasn’t. I see now she had no intention of marrying
a nobody.”

Joyce volunteered information out of the deep intuition of the feminine
mind. “She meant to marry Winthrop Ordway if she could. Probably she
still means it. She’s very clever—and very lovely. It wouldn’t surprise
me one bit if she pulls it off.”

Hallack looked at her in surprise. She spoke with detachment, as if it
were no concern of hers. What she had said was in itself rather amazing
to him. Would Ordway marry a woman after a torrid flirtation in which
she had compromised her reputation?

Joyce read his mind and flushed. She was recalling a joy ride with
Ordway in which he had made _her_ talked about.

“Win’s vain,” she explained. “If she flatters him in just the right
way—if she makes just the right appeal to him—I believe she could land
him. He’s very much attracted by good looks, and heaven knows she has
enough of them. I’ve always known that he admires her a great deal.”

Presently he asked her diffidently, “Don’t you care at all?”

She shook her head. “It’s queer, but I don’t. They’ll say it was
Winthrop that jilted me.”

“That will hurt, won’t it?”

She laughed, ruefully. “I suppose it will, but—that’s the funny thing
about it—I can’t seem to think that it’s of any importance what folks
say. I’ve been studying my father. He does what he thinks right. People
can say what they like. If it isn’t true it will fall to the ground, he
believes. When you come to think of it, society—I mean country-club
sets and that sort of thing—is a piffling little business, isn’t it? We
run around in circles and get nowhere. We ought to want freedom for
expression—and that’s the very thing society deprives you of. All the
women I know are for the world and against the spirit,” she said
reflectively.

“All of them?”

“Oh, no, not all. But most of them—and they’re dear good kind women,
too.”

“It’s true of men, too, isn’t it?”

“Not so much so of men. I’m not putting it well. What I mean is that we
women let the real things that count get crowded out by non-essentials.
We’re like sheep. We all troop through a gap in a fence because our
leader does. We don’t know why. It’s the thing to do, so we follow.”

“_You_ don’t,” he denied.

Her tender mocking smile derided his dense masculine perception. “Now
you’re putting _me_ on a pedestal, and I’ll never in the world be able
to stay there.”

“You don’t need to be on a pedestal. You’re what you are.”

“And what am I?” she wanted to know in the most casual of voices.

“You are—Joyce Elliott.”

What that had come to mean to him he could not tell her. She was the
promise that one day would be the crown of some man’s life. For him she
was wrapped in the exquisite mystery of a maiden’s dreams. All things
fine and brave and generous found expression in the flow and rhythm of
her movements. Yet the thought was charged with comfort for him that she
was intensely, faultily human—a creature born for dear companionship.

Joyce looked at him—and looked away. “I must go in,” she said.

“Why must you?” he protested. “It’s my last night. I’ll go back to the
job—and you to town, with all that means. Here I’m your friend, but
down there I’m nothing. You’re absorbed in a thousand things I can’t
touch.”

“I’ll be busy going through that gap in the fence with the other sheep,”
she said, smiling. And she held out her hand. “Good night. I’ve got to
go now. I promised not to stay long.”

His eyes were hungry for her, but he felt dumb and inarticulate. If he
could show her his vision and his dreams—the fine fervour with which
she was beginning to inspire his life——

But he could not. The tumult of feeling in him would not overflow into
words. It was impossible to tell her what she meant to him.

Perhaps she guessed. She said, not very surely, with high spots of
colour beneath her eyes, halting words of comfort.

“I’d like you to know something—about me. I’ve found—up here in the
hills, in these three days—what I needed tremendously. I can’t tell you
just what I mean—not exactly. I’d been drifting into wrong ways of
looking at things. Dad knew it. He warned me, and I thought he was just
a back number. But he wasn’t. He was right. I see clearer now. I’m not
going through that gap in the fence—not if I can help it.”

From the timbered slope above there came a horrible unearthly scream, as
of a woman in deadly fear and pain.

Joyce caught at her friend’s hand. She was white to the lips. “What is
it?” she whispered.

“Only a mountain lion,” he reassured.

The shock of that weird shriek had left her limp. Her body for a moment
swayed almost imperceptibly to him.

Then, by some impulse outside the volition of either, she was in his
arms murmuring weak protest.

“Not yet—please!” she begged.

And even as she spoke her arm was creeping round his neck and her lips
were lifting for the sting of his kisses.


                             CHAPTER XXXIV
                          THE ETERNAL TRIANGLE

There was a change in Joyce that penetrated the blindness of her
patient. He could feel her shining eyes, the tremulous vibration of her
low full voice, the warmth and colour of her glowing personality. Used
to her moods though he was, this one puzzled him. What had she found,
out there in the darkness of the snow, that had so filled her with
throbbing life?

She was very impressible. A stretch of blue sky edged by sunset lights,
the lifted joy-song of a bird, wind in trees that told of coming winter:
any of these might stir her to emotion. But it was in character for him
to seek another cause.

“Who’s the man that came just before supper?” he asked suspiciously.

“Someone that works here.”

“I didn’t ask where he works. I said, who is he?”

“His name is Kilso.”

“Thought the other man was Kilso.”

He had cornered her. She might have known that he would. It had been a
mistake not to set him right at once as to who had been with her when
they rescued him.

“No, he came with me from our camp.”

“You didn’t tell me that. You let me think he was Kilso.” His voice was
sharp, accusing. “What man?” He answered his own question instantly.
“Hallack, of course.”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been deceiving me, laughing up your sleeve at me,
pretending——”

“No, Win,” she cried. “That’s not true. You were sick and blind. We were
afraid you wouldn’t want to take help from Mr. Hallack. So when you
thought he was Mr. Kilso we just let it go.”

“I was so helpless that you pitied me. You were going to do me good and
be generous about it,” he retorted bitterly. “By God, I ought to be
grateful. You went into a conspiracy with a man who hates me, to
sugar-coat a bitter pill. Because I’m a down-and-outer, I suppose. Well,
I’ll show you about that.”

“What’s the use of talking so—so harshly, Win?” she asked gently. “I
want to be friends with you—if you’ll let me. Can’t you see? There
wasn’t any conspiracy. It’s absurd to say so. We just didn’t want you to
feel under any sense of obligation to Mr. Hallack, so we didn’t correct
your mistake.”

“_We— We_,” he iterated. “So you’re lined up with him, eh? Well, you
needn’t worry. I don’t feel under any obligation. When I get ready I’ll
crush him like an empty eggshell.”

“Don’t, Win. Don’t talk that way,” she begged. “You’re not a god sitting
on Olympus. You have to lean on others just as we all do. Why do you
hate him so? He’s never injured you. It’s been the other way, hasn’t
it?”

“How do you know? Who told you anything about it?” His mind jumped to a
recent humiliation. “No man alive can make a fool of me and get away
with it. I’ll tell you that. He knew if we got into the hills above Box
Elder Cañon our trucks would get bogged down in the snow. Some day he’ll
settle with me for that trick.”

“Why, that was all in the game. Don’t you see that? You were trying to
get the cañon from us, and we got here first. You pretended you only
wanted to pass through. So Mr. Hallack called your bluff. There’s
nothing personal in that.”

“That so?” In a flash of insight he found a reason for the hate she had
mentioned. “Do you think I’m a fool? You’re jilting me for him.”

“I’m not jilting you,” she cried in a low voice. “You know I’m not. I
told you if I ever found I didn’t love you——”

“He’s helped you find that out, has he?”

Joyce lifted her head proudly and yet humbly. “Yes,” she answered.

“You’re—you’re going to marry him,” he burst out.

“I am.”

Ordway was for the moment struck dumb. He could hardly believe it. Her
declaration was an offence to his vanity. Always he had been a victor.
From the days when he had passed from buoyant youth to manhood women’s
eyes had followed his triumphal career. This was the first time he had
been told by one whom he favoured that she preferred another. He could
not understand it. Not a year ago he had stepped in carelessly,
audaciously, and taken from Hallack the woman he loved. Now the tables
were turned. This fellow had stolen from him the mate he had chosen. A
surge of impotent rage beat in his veins. He longed to get his fingers
round the throat of the man who had thwarted him.

But this would not do. He had to carry through in the proper
conventional way.

“I wish you joy of your choice, Miss Elliott,” he said with obvious
irony.

There was nothing more to be said. His attitude precluded further
discussion of the subject. But to Hallack, as he was leaving next
morning, she gave as well as she could some of the reasons for her
choice.

The night had brought him only amazement. He was a modest man, and it
was difficult for him to believe that he had won the heart of this
golden girl. He said as much to her.

“Why not Ordway instead of me?” he asked. “He has everything that I
haven’t to make life pleasant for you—wealth, social position,
financial standing, success, good looks, strength, confidence. He’s one
of the seven wonders of the world, and I—I’m only a poor struggling
engineer. I’ve nothing to offer you.”

“Nothing—except the things I happen to want.” She smiled at him, with
the world-old wisdom of her sex. “Winthrop Ordway has too much to offer.
I’d like to give a little myself. I want to marry a man who needs me.”

“I need you badly enough,” he admitted, almost humbly.

“Of course you do. If you didn’t I wouldn’t look at you. But Win Ordway
doesn’t really _need_ any woman. He’s sufficient to himself.”

“But you’re not marrying me just because I need you.”

Her warm dancing eyes carried mock derision. “Do you think I’m going to
give myself away to start with, Bob Hallack? Maybe I kinda like the way
your hair curls. Or the way you swing those shoulders. I’ll have heaps
of time to tell you about that. I don’t mind telling you one thing,
though. You remind me of my dad in some ways.”

“You’re paying me a big compliment.”

“I am,” she nodded. “You don’t look a bit like him. That’s not it.
But—Dad’s so—so foursquare.”

“Thank you.”

Joyce hurried on to matters less personal. “Now, you go back and build
that railroad. If you don’t Dad will be kicking to me because you don’t
give him an eight-hour day. See you in town next week.”

“Yes,” he agreed.

They shook hands. Kilso was in sight, and this was their formal
good-bye. A more demonstrative one had been given in private a little
earlier.

Hallack struck across the valley toward the hill opposite. The girl
watched him till he reached the summit. He turned and waved a hand to
her, then disappeared over the ridge.

She went back into the house to nurse a surly patient.


                              CHAPTER XXXV
                        LOUISE SAYS “CHRISTMAS”

Louise sat up in the chaise-longue, her brown eyes wide with surprise. A
flicker of excitement sparkled in them.

“You’re not telling me, Joy Elliott, that you’re going to _marry_ the
grouch with the tin Lizzie,” she exploded.

“That’s not what I call him _now_,” her friend replied, flashing a
boyish grin.

“Christmas! Some more of your speed, Bubbles. Why, you haven’t been away
from town a _week_. You musta stepped on the gas hard.”

“Yes,” Joyce admitted demurely.

“I’ll tell the world you’re a speed.” Louise came to another aspect of
the situation with a little joyous rush of anticipation. “And Winthrop
Ordway! What about him? Lemme see, it was a week ago Thursday we girls
were kissing you on _his_ account. You were going to marry _him_ as big
as cuffy.”

“We’ve changed our mind.”

“Which of you?”

“Both of us. We talked it over and saw it wouldn’t do. So we shook hands
on it and quit.”

“_Why_ wouldn’t it do? You were made to order for each other, seems to
me. Did you let this garage man who claims he’s no gentleman vamp you
while you were skiing over the hills with him?”

“He’s not a garage man, Wese. He’s an engineer and builds railroads. I’m
awf’ly lucky to get him,” Joyce said, dropping her bomb casually.

“Lucky! Jarvis Elliott’s daughter lucky to catch one of his workmen.
What’s got into you, Bubbles? Are you a _socialist_—or something?”

“That’s it, Wese. He’s a workman,” Miss Elliott explained. “And he’s a
good one. He gets things done. Building the Gateway Pass cut-off is a
man’s job. He’s going to win—he and Dad together.”

“Yes, but——” Louise stopped to light a cigarette and pass the box to
her visitor. Also, she wanted to marshal her arguments. “He’s not your
sort. You and he weren’t brought up in the same pasture.”

Joyce rejected the proffered cigarettes. “I’m off them.”

“Doesn’t your gar—your railroad engineer like women who smoke?” Louise
asked with friendly malice.

“I don’t think he’d like me to smoke.”

“So you’ve quit.”

“So I’ve quit.”

A thin trail of blue smoke followed Louise’s gesture of exaggerated
amazement. “And this is Bubbles the independent, who rode up the State
House steps in spite of indignant protests, who drives around the
mountains at all hours of the night and——”

“She doesn’t any more. She’s tamed,” Joyce broke in, smiling gaily.

“H’m! You’ve gotta _show_ me,” Louise said incredulously. “Why, this
fool notion of yours is only a mental joy ride, kid. When you wake up in
the cold grey dawn of the morning after—— Oh, boy, what a jolt for
your gar—for your engineer.”

Joyce shook her head. She was still smiling, but in her face was an
expression sure and steadfast. “No, Wese, it’s for keeps this time. Poke
fun at him if you like. I don’t mind. You won’t do it after you know
him. If he were a garage helper I’d marry him just the same. I’d know he
wouldn’t stay that. No, dear, I’m not a socialist. I’m just in love.”

“But, holy smoke, Bubbles, why didn’t you fall in love with someone who
talks our language. Betcha a box of chocolates he doesn’t know a putter
from a mashie.”

“You’re on. I happen to know he plays a good game of golf. But if he
didn’t—if he thought in Chinese—I’d start learning it to-day.”

Louise threw up her hands. “If you’re as far gone as that.”

Her friend nodded. “I am. It’s not just Bob Hallack, though that’s a big
part of it. What he stands for— That’s the important thing. I’ve always
wanted really to live—to do something worth while. Look at me, Wese
Durand. What am I good for? To the world, I mean. How do I earn my board
and lodging?”

“You don’t have to as long as your father is good for a million or two,”
answered Louise literally.

“I do have to. That’s just it. I’m a parasite, but I’m not going to be
any longer. I’ve been working ever since Dad was hurt. I’ve really done
something for the first time in my life. It’s fun—lots more fun than
trying to amuse myself all the time. That’s what I mean when I say I’m
lucky to get a man like Bob Hallack. He needs me. I’ll make myself
useful. There’s another reason too of course.” Into her eyes came an
expression soft and tender, one so rapt that it startled Louise and
shook her faith in the worldly wisdom she had been parroting. “It just
happens that I love him.”

“Oh, well!” Miss Louise did an about-face instantly without waiting to
pave the way. “You’re not like other girls, Bubbles. If you’re
honest-to-goodness in love I’ll not say a word against your knight of
the tin Lizzie. Only if I had to drive it I’d get him to put in a
self-starter, honey.”

Louise rose from the chaise-longue and swarmed over to her friend. She
smothered her with kisses and good wishes expressed in exclamatory
slang. In spite of her hard finish she believed implicitly in true
romance.


                             CHAPTER XXXVI
                               “AND EVER”

Driving home from the Durands, Joyce passed a sport car into which a man
and a woman were getting. Neither of them saw her. They were absorbed in
each other. She smiled. A prediction made by her appeared to be on the
way to fulfilment. For the smiling lady being helped to her seat by
Winthrop Ordway was Mrs. Barnes.

A maid met Joyce in the hall. “Mr. Hallack on the ’phone to talk with
you, Miss Elliott,” she said.

Joyce moved to the receiver, a lilt in her heart. Nobody could have
guessed it from the few words spoken by her.

“When did you get in? . . . That’s good. . . . Come to dinner. Better
come early. Dad will want to talk with you. . . . Good-bye.”

That was all, but the sound of his voice had been like a trumpet call to
joy. She went straight to the library where her father was working with
Smithers and his stenographer.

“You’ve worked long enough, Dad. ’Member what Dr. Van de Vanter said
about taking things easy for a while.”

“Just finishing, Joy. Don’t forget to have Brokaw look at that contract,
Smithers. That will do for to-night.”

When they were alone Joyce went swiftly to her father and sat down on
the arm of his chair. She put an arm around his shoulder.

“Someone coming to dinner, Dad. Guess who?”

He knew of old that subdued but quivering excitement in the low full
voice. “How many guesses do I get?” he asked.

“Three.”

“Then I’ll guess Robert Hallack first, Bob Hallack second, and R.
Hallack third,” he said promptly.

“Why do you pick _him_, Dad? He’s not the only man I know.”

“I pick him because I know your ways, young woman. I’ve heard nothing
for two days but what a wonder this young fellow is. Till you get tired
of him—or find someone else to play with——”

She interrupted, very softly. “I’m not going to get tired of him, Dad.”

Jarvis Elliott pulled her from the arm of the chair to his knees and
swung round the fair head so that he could look into the telltale eyes.
A soft warm colour beat into the cheeks of the girl.

Her father had been given to understand that she was off with the old
love, but this was the first direct intimation that she was on with the
new.

“You’ll like him, Dad,” she promised.

“Shall I?” he asked, rather grimly.

“I picked him because he’s like you, kinda.”

“Hmp!” he grunted, by way of notification that he was impervious to
flattery.

“He’s devoted to you—thinks you’re one of the great men of the
country.”

“I see. Both of you were thinking of me and not of yourselves when
you—came to an understanding,” he suggested ironically.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” she admitted; then decided boldly to carry the
war into the country of the enemy. “But it’s your own fault. You sent me
up to the camp to get me away from Winthrop Ordway—to interest me in
other things. Oh, yes, you did. I know _your_ little ways too. Can you
blame me if I did get interested?”

“Did I ask you to fall in love with one of my men?”

“No-o, but——” Her arm tightened round his neck. “Listen, Dad. I want
to tell you about it, ’cause it’s the real thing this time.”

“Go ahead,” he told her, nodding his grizzled head.

She opened her heart to him, not sparing herself. Part of the story he
already knew or guessed. Ordway’s boldness, the glamour of success about
him, his dominant personality, had fascinated her and yet repelled. She
had admired tremendously the bigness of the man. The accident to Jarvis
Elliott had diverted her interest and stirred in her a latent
dissatisfaction with the life she was living, and she had tried to
persuade herself that marriage with Winthrop Ordway would open new
channels of usefulness.

It was while she was in this state of restlessness that she had become
engaged to him, but she made it clear that meaner considerations had
entered into her decision. The entirely selfish desire to hold her own
against Mrs. Westover’s attack on her social position had been a factor,
and there had been others no more worthy.

Then she had gone into the hills, and the white cleanness of them had
washed her soul of littleness. She had been drawn into and become a part
of a great enterprise, one in which men gave their best without counting
the cost. From her eyes the scales had fallen. She saw Ordway as he was
and contrasted with him Hallack. Before she knew it love had taken her
unaware.

“Sure of that?” her father asked. “Sure your happiness lies with this
man?”

“As sure as Mother was when she found you.”

“He can’t give you what Ordway can.”

“He can give me what Mr. Ordway can’t—what you gave Mother.”

“And what was that?”

“Not only love. ’Member that verse you once quoted to me, something
about wearing

                       ‘. . . with every scar
                       Honour at eventide.’

Bob Hallack can do that when his evening comes, and if I marry him I can
do it too.”

“You feel that about him?”

“Don’t you?”

“Yes. My judgment is that he is square. But it’s not enough that he is a
good man. You have to know that he is the one man you want to walk
beside all that long journey between now and eventide.”

On that point she gave him serious but smiling reassurance.

He carried back to a word she had used earlier in their talk.

“You mentioned my accident. It wasn’t an accident. An ignorant foreigner
set off a large charge of dynamite in the mine. He had been stirred up
by men hired to incite trouble at the Invincible. Ordway was at the back
of it, my detectives say. I don’t mean of course that he paid to have
the mine blown up. That was a consequence he did not foresee. But he is
morally responsible for it.”

“So am I partly. I gave aid and comfort to the enemy,” Joyce said.

“Nonsense. You didn’t realize that the man is unscrupulous. How should
you, knowing nothing about such people?”

A maid came in to announce Mr. Hallack.

Elliott shook hands with him and looked hard into his eyes.

“What’s this I hear about you and Joyce? Have I been paying you wages to
make love to my daughter?”

The engineer flushed. “It doesn’t look quite right on the face of it,
sir, but it’s more right than it looks.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that I did not deliberately try to win my employer’s daughter. I
couldn’t help caring for her, but I meant not to say anything about it.
Somehow I was carried out of my intention.”

“Able to support her, are you, in the way to which she’s been
accustomed?”

“No, I’m not. That troubles me.”

“It would trouble you more if I could show you her bills for the past
year,” the older man warned. “I’ve found her a most expensive luxury,
Hallack.”

“Then you ought to be glad to get rid of me, Dad,” Joyce contributed
gaily.

“I’m not.” Elliott turned to the young man. “Joyce will have to train
herself to economy. But she can do it. She can do anything she wants to
do. It’s up to you to see that she wants to. I suppose you know that
she’s a girl out of a thousand.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then be good to her. Protect her from herself. Be patient with her
impulses. Whether she will be a good wife or not rests with you as much
as it does with her.” He took Joyce in his arms and kissed her, smiling
a little sadly. “Think I’ll go and lie down for an hour before dinner,
my dear. I daresay you’ll be able to entertain Mr. Hallack without me.
Later I’ll want to talk with him about the work.”

Joyce watched him go, sudden tears in her eyes. She had a vision of
life’s cruelty toward the old, and with it a feeling of resentment on
behalf of her father. She would show him that he had not lost her. More
than ever she would love him now.

Her remorse was but for a moment. There was no room in her heart for
anything but gladness. Already her lover’s arms were round her and he
was whispering, “My Joy in life.”

“We _will_ make it up to him, won’t we, Bob?” she cried in a low voice.
“He’s old, and I’m all he has.”

“Of course we will. But don’t forget that _I’m_ young and you’re all _I_
have.”

“That’s different. You may get over it, and he never will,” she
challenged blithely.

“Nor I,” he promised, with the valorous optimism of untested love. “It’s
for ever and ever.”

“And ever,” she added softly.

                                THE END




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.

[The end of _Roads of Doubt_, by William MacLeod Raine.]