"Well, what _do_ you expect?" she asked, struggling feebly against his grasp.

"I expect," he answered, "that you'll state your grievance and tell me why you won't have me?"

"And if I do, will you let me go?"

"When I get good and ready," he responded grimly. "I don't know whether I'm in love with you or not."

"Well, my grievance," she went on defiantly, "is that you went to work deliberately and robbed me and mother of our mine. And as for winning _me_, that's one thing you can't steal--and I'll kill you if you don't let go of that hand!"

"Yes," he said, "I've heard that before--it seems to run in the family.

But don't you think for a minute that I'm afraid of getting killed--or that I'm trying to steal you, either. If you were an Indian squaw you might be worth stealing, because I could beat a little sense into your head; but the way things are now I'll just turn you loose--and kindly keep off my ground."

He flung back her hand and stepped out of the trail but Virginia did not pa.s.s. Her breast heaved tumultuously and she turned upon him as she sought for a fitting retort; but while they stood panting, each glowering at the other, there was a crash from inside the old mill. Its huge bulk was lit up by a flash of light which went out in Stygian darkness and as they listened, aghast, the ground trembled beneath them and a tearing roar filled the air. It began at the stone-breaker and went down through the mill, like the progress of a devastating host, and as Wiley sprang forward, there was a terrifying smash which seemed to shake the mill to its base. Then all was silent and as he looked around he saw Virginia dancing off down the trail.

CHAPTER XXIII

ON DEMAND

If there was anything left of his mill but the frame, Wiley's ears had played him false; and yet he stood and looked after Virginia. This grinding crash, this pandemonium of destruction which had left him sick with fear, had put joy into her dancing feet. Yes, she had danced--like a child that hears good news or runs to meet its father--and he had thought her worthy of his love! He had battered his brain for weeks to devise some plan whereby he could make his peace; he had taken her blows like a dog; and she had answered with this. Whether it was Stiff Neck George or some other man, she had known both his presence and his purpose; and now she rejoiced in the catastrophe. A hundred dollars would buy him a squaw more worthy of confidence and love.

There was darkness in the mill, but when they brought the flares, Wiley saw that the ruin was complete. From the rock breaker to the concentrators there was nothing but splintered wood, twisted iron and upturned tanks; and the demon of destruction which had raged down through its length was nothing but the fly-wheel of the rock crusher.

What power had uprooted it he was at a loss to conjecture but, a full ton in weight, it had jumped from its frame and plowed its way down through the mill. The ore-bins were intact, for the fly-wheel had overleapt them, but tables and tanks and concentrating jigs were utterly smashed and ruined. Even the wall of the mill had given way before it and the cold light of dawn crept in through a jagged aperture that marked its resistless course. The fly-wheel was gone and the damage was done; but there was still, of course, the post mortem.

What had caused that ma.s.sive shafting, with its ponderous speeding wheels, to leap from its bearings and go crashing down the descent, laying everything before it in ruins? Wiley summoned his engineer and, in the shattered jaws of the rock-breaker, they found the innocent-looking instrument of destruction. It was not a stick of dynamite, but a heavy steel sledge-hammer that had been cast into the jaws of the crusher. They had closed down upon it, the hammer had resisted, and then all the momentum of that whirling double fly-wheel had been brought to bear against it. Yet the hammer could not be crushed and, as the wheel had applied its weight, the resistance to its force had caused it to leap from its bearings and go hurtling down the incline.

It was a very complete job, even better than dynamiting, and yet Wiley did not blame it on Stiff Neck George. Some miner, some millman, who had seen it done before, had repeated the performance for his benefit. Or was it, perhaps, for Virginia's? He remembered the engineer who had fed his greasy overalls into the gearings of the hoist. He had boarded with Virginia and had waved her a parting kiss--but this time it would be some trammer. Wiley gave them all their time on general principles, but he did not go down to witness the farewell. Whether the trammer kissed her good-by or simply kissed her hand was immaterial to him now--and, in case it might have been a millman or some miner underground, he laid off the whole night shift. The night-watchman went too, and the stage the following evening brought out a cook to start up the boarding-house.

Wiley did not guess it--he knew it--Virginia Huff was the witch who had mixed the h.e.l.l-broth that had raised up all this treachery against him.

She had poisoned his men's minds and incited them to vandalism, but it would not happen again. He had been a fool to endure it so long; but she could starve now, for all that he cared. If she thought she could twist him like a ring around her finger while she egged on these men to wreck his mill, she had one more guess coming and then she would be right, for he had come to his senses at last. This was not the Virginia that he had known and loved--the Virginia he had played with in his youth--but a warped and embittered Virginia, a waspish, heartless vixen who had never been anything but cold. She had worked him deliberately, resorting to woman's wiles to gain what was not her due, and now when his mill was smashed into kindling wood, she danced and laughed for joy.

What kind of a mind could a woman have, to do such a senseless thing and then laugh at the man who had helped her? She was kind to her cats, the neighbors all liked her, to everyone else she seemed human; but when it came to him she was a devil of hate, a fiend of ruthless cunning. She would tell him to his face--at three in the morning, when he had caught her running away from the mill--that she hoped his old mill would be ruined. And now, when the trammer or some other soft-head had sent one of his sledges through the crusher, she was laughing up her sleeve. But there was a hereafter coming for Virginia and her mother and they would get no more favors from him. If they crept to his feet and said they were starving he would tell them to get out and hustle. Meanwhile they had sent him broke.

There would be no more ore concentrated in the Paymaster mill during the life of his bond and lease; and unless he could raise some money, and raise it quick, he was due to lose his mine. Whether he had abetted it or not, Blount would not fail to take advantage of this last, staggering blow to his fortunes; and there were notes and paper due which would easily serve as a pretext for a writ of attachment on his mine. Bad news travels fast, but Wiley set out to beat it by s.n.a.t.c.hing at his one remaining chance. His mill was ruined, his output was stopped, but he still had the ore underground--and the buyers were crazy to get it. He sent out identical messages to ten big consumers and then sat down to await the results. They came with a rush, ten scrambling frantic bids for his total output for one year--and one of them was for eighty-four dollars! It was from the biggest buyer of them all, a man who was reputed to be the representative of a foreign government, a man who had paid cash on the nail. Wiley pondered a while, looked up his obligations to Blount, and accepted immediately by wire. But there was one proviso--he demanded an advance payment, which the buyer promptly wired to his bank. Then Wiley twisted up his lip and waited.

Blount appeared the next day, dropping in casually as was his wont; but there was a cold, killing look in his eye and he had a deputy sheriff as a witness. They looked through the mill and Blount asked several leading questions before he ventured to come to the point, but at last he cleared his throat and spoke up.

"Well, Wiley," he said, drawing some papers from his pocket, "I'm sorry, but I'll have to call your notes. If it were my money it would be different; but I'm a banker, you understand, and your paper is long overdue. I've extended it before because I admired your courage and thought you might possibly pull through, but this accident to your mill has impaired the property and I can't let it run any longer."

"Oh, that's all right," said Wiley, "but you don't need to apologize, because there won't be any attachments and judgments. Just tell me how much it comes to and I'll write you out a check." He took the notes from Blount's palsied hand and spread them on the desk before him, but as he was jotting down the totals Blount grabbed them wildly away.

"Not much!" he exclaimed, "I don't surrender those notes until the money is put in my hands! Your check isn't worth a pen stroke!"

"Well, I don't know," returned Wiley. "There may be two opinions about that. I had a hunch, Mr. Blount, that you might spring something like this and so I made arrangements to accommodate you."

"But you're strapped! You owe everybody!" cried Blount in a pa.s.sion. "I don't believe you've got a cent!"

"Just a minute," said Wiley, and took down his telephone. "h.e.l.lo," he called, "get me the First National Bank." He waited then, twiddling his pencil placidly, while Blount's great neck swelled out with venom.

"I figure," went on Wiley, as he waited for the connection, "that I owe you twenty-two thousand dollars, with interest amounting to two-eighty-three, sixty-one. Here's your check, all filled out, and when I get the bank you can ask the cashier if it's good."

"But, Wiley--," began Blount.

"h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo! Is this the First National? This is Holman, out at the Paymaster. Mr. Blount is here and, as I'm closing my account with him----"

"No! No!" cried Blount in a panic, but Wiley went on with his talk.

"Yes," he said, "the check is for twenty-two thousand, two eighty-three, sixty-one. Will you please set that amount aside to meet the payment on this check? All right, Mr. Blount, here's the bank."

He held out the instrument and Blount seized it roughly, for he had heard of fake telephone messages before, but when he listened he recognized the voice.

"Oh, Agnew?" he hailed, smiling genially at the 'phone. "Well, sorry to have troubled you, I'm sure. Oh, yes, yes; I know Wiley is all right; he's good with us for twenty thousand more. No, never mind the certification; we may let the matter drop. Yes, thank you very much--good-by!"

He hung up the receiver and turned to Wiley; but the cold, killing look was gone.

"Wiley," he chuckled, slapping him heartily on the back, "you certainly have put one over. It isn't every day that I find a man waiting with the check all made out to a cent; and somehow--well, I hate to take the money."

"Yes, I know how you suffer," replied Wiley, grimly, "but let's get the agony over." He held out the check and Blount accepted it reluctantly, pa.s.sing over the notes with a sigh.

But for the trifling detail that "demand" had not been waived Blount could have gone into court without even asking for his money and secured an attachment against the property. But Wiley's firm insistence that all cut-throat clauses should be omitted had compelled Blount to demand payment on the notes; and then, by some process which still remained a mystery, he had raised the full amount to meet the payment. And so once more, after going to all the trouble of bringing a deputy sheriff along, Blount found himself balked and his dreams of judgment and lien permanently banished to the limbo of lost hopes.

Wiley's over-prompt payment had confused Blount for the moment and thrown him into a panic. He had counted confidently upon crushing him at a blow and cutting short his inimical activities, but now of a sudden he found himself threatened with the loss of all his interests.

If Wiley had made profits beyond his calculations--but no, he could not, for under the terms of their bond and lease one-tenth of the net profit on all his shipments was sent direct to Blount. And if what Wiley had received was only ten times the Company's royalty, he was still in debt to someone. Blount had followed him closely and he knew that his expenses had absorbed all his profits, up to date. But perhaps--and Blount paused--perhaps the other bank, or some outside parties, were backing him in his enterprise. He would have to look that matter up--first. But if not--if he was still running his mine as he had from the first, on his nerve and his diamond ring--then there were ways and means which should be speedily invoked to prevent him from meeting his payments.

Scarcely a month remained before the bond and lease lapsed--and Wiley's option on Blount's personal stock--but any day he might raise the money and, by taking over Blount's stock, place him out of the running for good. These tungsten buyers who were so avid for its product might purchase an interest in the mine; they might advance the fifty thousand and take it over under the bond and lease, and bring all his plans to naught. As Blount paced about the office he suddenly saw himself defrauded of that which he had worked for for years. He saw his stock bought up first, to deprive him of the royalties, and then the mine s.n.a.t.c.hed from his hands; and all he would have left would be the forfeited Huff stock and the small payment it would earn from the sale.

Something would have to be done, and done every minute, to prevent him from carrying out his purpose.

Blount paused in his nervous pacing and held out a flabby hand to Wiley, who was writing away at his desk.

"Well, Wiley," he said, "I guess I must be going. But any time you need money----" He stopped and smiled amiably, in the soft, easy way he had when he wished to appear harmless as a dove, and Wiley glanced up briefly from his work.

"Yes, thank you, Mr. Blount," he said. But he did not take his hand.

CHAPTER XXIV

DOUBLE TROUBLE

The next two weeks of Wiley Holman's life were packed so full of trouble that there were those who almost pitied him, though the word had been pa.s.sed around to lay off. It was Samuel J. Blount who was making the trouble, and who notified the rest to keep out, and so great was his influence in all the desert country that no one dared to interfere. What he did was all legal and according to business ethics, but it gloved the iron hand. Blount was reaching for the mine and he intended to get it, if he had to crush his man. The attachments and suits were but the shadow boxing of the bout; the rough stuff was held in reserve. And somehow Wiley sensed this, for he sat tight at the mine and hired a lawyer to meet the suits. His job was mining ore and he shoveled it out by the ton.

The distressing accidents had suddenly ceased since he began to board his own men at the mine and, while his lawyer stalled and haggled to fight off an injunction, he rushed his ore to the railroad. It was too precious to ship loose, for at eighty-four dollars a unit it was worth over four dollars a pound; he sent it out sacked, with an armed guard on each truck to see that it was delivered and receipted for. As the checks came back he paid off all his debts, thus depriving Blount of his favorite club; and then, while Blount was casting about for new weapons, he began to lay aside his profits.

They rolled up monstrously, for each five-ton truck load added several thousand dollars to his bank account, but the time was getting short.

Less than three weeks remained before the bond and lease expired, and still Wiley was playing to win. He crammed his mine with men, s.n.a.t.c.hing the ore from the stopes as the bonanza leasers had done at Tonopah, and doubling the miner's pay with bonuses. Every truck driver received his bonus, and night and day the great motors went thundering across the desert. The ore came up from below and was dumped on a jig, where it was sorted and hastily sacked; and after that there was nothing to do but sent it under guard to the railroad. There was no milling, no smelting, no tedious process of reduction; but the raw picked ore was rushed to the East and the checks came promptly back.