"Oho! tried to cover it up, did you? Afraid I'd fire you? You needn't be. My job as president merely gets me pa.s.ses over the road. Ford's your man; he's the fellow you want to be scared of."

"I am," laughed Lidgerwood. The big man's heartiness was always infectious. Then: "Coming over to camp with us awhile? If you are, I hope you carry your commissary along. Angels will starve you, otherwise."

"Don't tell me about that tin-canned tepee village, Howard--I _know_.

I've been there before. How are we doing over in the Timanyoni foot-hills? Getting much ore down from the Copperette? Climb up here and tell me all about it. Or, better still, come on across the desert with us. They don't need you here."

The a.s.sertion was quite true. With Dawson, the trainmaster, and an understudy Judson for bosses, there was no need of a fourth. Yet intuition, or whatever masculine thing it is that stands for intuition, prompted Lidgerwood to say:

"I don't know as I ought to leave. I've just come out from Angels, you know."

But the president was not to be denied.

"Climb up here and quit trying to find excuses. We'll give you a better luncheon than you'll get out of the dinner-pails; and if you carry yourself handsomely, you may get a dinner invitation after we get in.

That ought to tempt any man who has to live in Angels the year round."

Lidgerwood marked the persistent plural of the personal p.r.o.noun, and a great fear laid hold upon him. None the less, the president's invitation was a little like the king's--it was, in some sense, a command.

Lidgerwood merely asked for a moment's respite, and went down to announce his intention to McCloskey and Dawson. Curiously enough, the draftsman seemed to be trying to ignore the private car. His back was turned upon it, and he was glooming out across the bare hills, with his square jaw set as if the ignoring effort were painful.

"I'm going back to Angels with the president," said the superintendent, speaking to both of them. "You can clean up here without me."

The trainmaster nodded, but Dawson seemed not to have heard. At all events, he made no sign. Lidgerwood turned and ascended the embankment, only to have the sudden reluctance a.s.sail him again as he put his foot on the truck of the _Nadia_ to mount to the platform. The hesitation was only momentary, this time. Other guests Mr. Brewster might have, without including the one person whom he would circle the globe to avoid.

"Good boy!" said the president, when Lidgerwood swung over the high hand-rail and leaned out to give Williams the starting signal. And when the scene of the wreck was withdrawing into the rearward distance, the president felt for the door-k.n.o.b, saying: "Let's go inside, where we shan't be obliged to see so much of this G.o.d-forsaken country at one time."

One half-minute later the superintendent would have given much to be safely back with McCloskey and Dawson at the vanishing curve of sc.r.a.p-heaps. In that half-minute Mr. Brewster had opened the car door, and Lidgerwood had followed him across the threshold.

The comfortable lounging-room of the _Nadia_ was not empty; nor was it peopled by a group of Mr. Brewster's a.s.sociates in the copper combine, the alternative upon which Lidgerwood had hopefully hung the "we's" and the "us's."

Seated on a wicker divan drawn out to face one of the wide side-windows were two young women, with a curly-headed, clean-faced young man between them. A little farther along, a rather austere lady, whose pose was of calm superiority to her surroundings, looked up from her magazine to say, as her husband had said: "Why, Howard! are you here?" Just beyond the austere lady, and dozing in his chair, was a white-haired man whose strongly marked features proclaimed him the father of one of the young women on the divan.

And in the farthest corner of the open compartment, facing each other companionably in an "S"-shaped double chair, were two other young people--a man and a woman.... Truly, the heavens had fallen! For the young woman filling half of the _tete-a-tete_ chair was that one person whom Lidgerwood would have circled the globe to avoid meeting.

XIII

BITTER-SWEET

Taking his cue from certain pa.s.sages in the book of painful memories, Lidgerwood meant to obey his first impulse, which prompted him to follow Mr. Brewster to the private office state-room in the forward end of the car, disregarding the couple in the _tete-a-tete_ contrivance. But the triumphantly beautiful young woman in the nearer half of the crooked-backed seat would by no means sanction any such easy solution of the difficulty.

"Not a word for me, Howard?" she protested, rising and fairly compelling him to stop and speak to her. Then: "For pity's sake! what have you been doing to yourself to make you look so hollow-eyed and anxious?" After which, since Lidgerwood seemed at a loss for an answer to the half-solicitous query, she presented her companion of the "S"-shaped chair. "Possibly you will shake hands a little less abstractedly with Mr. Van Lew. Herbert, this is Mr. Howard Lidgerwood, my cousin, several times removed. He is the tyrant of the Red b.u.t.te Western, and I can a.s.sure you that he is much more terrible than he looks--aren't you, Howard?"

Lidgerwood shook hands cordially enough with the tall young athlete who, it seemed, would never have done increasing his magnificent stature as he rose up out of his half of the lounging-seat.

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Lidgerwood, I'm sure," said the young man, gripping the given hand until Lidgerwood winced. "Miss Eleanor has been telling me about you--marooned out here in the Red Desert. By Jove!

don't you know I believe I'd like to try it awhile myself. It's ages since I've had a chance to kill a man, and they tell me----"

Lidgerwood laughed, recognizing Miss Brewster's romancing gift, or the results of it.

"We shall have to arrange a little round-up of the bad men from Bitter Creek for you, Mr. Van Lew. I hope you brought your armament along--the regulation 45's, and all that."

Miss Brewster laughed derisively.

"Don't let him discourage you, Herbert," she mocked. "Bitter Creek is in Wyoming--or is it in Montana?" this with a quick little eye-stab for Lidgerwood, "and the name of Mr. Lidgerwood's refuge is Angels. Also, papa says there is a hotel there called the 'Celestial.' Do you live at the Celestial, Howard?"

"No, I never properly lived there. I existed there for a few weeks until Mrs. Dawson took pity on me. Mrs. Dawson is from Ma.s.sachusetts."

"Hear him!" scoffed Miss Eleanor, still mocking. "He says that as if to be 'from Ma.s.sachusetts' were a patent of n.o.bility. He knows I had the cruel misfortune to be born in Colorado. But tell me, Howard, is Mrs.

Dawson a charming young widow?"

"Mrs. Dawson is a very charming middle-aged widow, with a grown son and a daughter," said Lidgerwood, a little stiffly. It seemed entirely unnecessary that she should ridicule him before the athlete.

"And the daughter--is she charming, too? But that says itself, since she must also date 'from Ma.s.sachusetts.'" Then to Van Lew: "Every one out here in the Red Desert is 'from' somewhere, you know."

"Miss Dawson is quite beneath your definition of charming, I imagine,"

was Lidgerwood's rather crisp rejoinder; and for the third time he made as if he would go on to join the president in the office state-room.

"You are staying to luncheon with us, aren't you?" asked Miss Brewster.

"Or do you just drop in and out again, like the other kind of angels?"

"Your father commands me, and he says I am to stay. And now, if you will excuse me----"

This time he succeeded in getting away, and up to the luncheon hour talked copper and copper prospects to Mr. Brewster in the seclusion of the president's office compartment. The call for the midday meal had been given when Mr. Brewster switched suddenly from copper to silver.

"By the way, there were a few silver strikes over in the Timanyonis about the time of the Red b.u.t.te gold excitement," he remarked. "Some of them have grown to be shippers, haven't they?"

"Only two, of any importance," replied the superintendent: "the Ruby, in Ruby Gulch, and Flemister's Wire-Silver, at Little b.u.t.te. You couldn't call either of them a bonanza, but they are both shipping fair ore in good quant.i.ties."

"Flemister," said the president reflectively. "He's a character. Know him personally, Howard?"

"A little," the superintendent admitted.

"A little is a-plenty. It wouldn't pay you to know him very well,"

laughed the big man good-naturedly. "He has a somewhat paralyzing way of getting next to you financially. I knew him in the old Leadville days; a born gentleman, and also a born buccaneer. If the men he has held up and robbed were to stand in a row, they'd fill a Denver street."

"He is in his proper longitude out here, then," said Lidgerwood rather grimly. "This is the 'hold-up's heaven.'"

"I'll bet Flemister is doing his share of the looting," laughed the president. "Is he alone in the mine?"

"I don't know that he has any partners. Somebody told me, when I first came over here, that Gridley, our master-mechanic, was in with him; but Gridley says that is a mistake--that he thinks too much of his reputation to be Flemister's partner."

"Hank Gridley," mused the president; "Hank Gridley and 'his reputation'!

It would certainly be a pity if that were to get corroded in any way.

There is a man who properly belongs to the Stone Age--what you might call an elemental 'scoundrel."

"You surprise me!" exclaimed Lidgerwood. "I didn't like him at first, but I am convinced now that it was only unreasoning prejudice. He appeals to me as being anything but a scoundrel."