"If there was one thing which more than another tempted me to refuse you every sc.r.a.p of a.s.sistance it was the conclusion I arrived at," said Geoffrey. "However, I'll try to keep faith with the dead man, and Heaven send me sense sufficient to steer clear of difficulties."

"I can trust your honesty any way," remarked Halliday. "There's a heavy load off my mind at last. You are a good fellow, Geoffrey, and, excuse the frankness, even in questions beyond your usual scope not so simple as you sometimes look."

A day or two before this conversation took place, Henry Leslie, sitting at his writing-table in the villa above the inlet, laid down his pen and looked up gratefully at his wife, who placed a strip of stamped paper before him. Millicent both smiled and frowned as she noticed how greedily his fingers fastened upon it.

"It is really very good of you. You don't know how much this draft means to me," he said. "I wish I needn't take it, but I am forced to.

It's practically the whole of the first dole your skinflint trustee made you, isn't it?"

"It is a large share," was the answer. "Almost a year's allowance, and I'm going to pay off our most pressing debts with the rest. But I am glad to give it to you, Harry, and we must try to be better friends, and keep on the safe side after this."

"I hope we shall," replied the man, who was touched for once. "It's tolerably hard for folks like us, who must go when the devil drives, to be virtuous, but I got hold of a few mining shares, which promise to pay well now, for almost nothing; and if they turn up trumps, I'd feel greatly tempted to throw over the Company and start afresh."

He hurriedly scribbled a little note, and Millicent turned away with a smile that was not far from a sigh. She had returned from England in a repentant mood, and her husband, whose affairs had gone smoothly, was almost considerate, so that, following a reconciliation, there were times when she cherished an uncertain hope that they might struggle back to their former level. It was on one of the occasions when their relations were not altogether inharmonious that she had promised to give him a draft to redeem the loan Director Shackleby held like a whip lash over him. Had Leslie been a bolder man, it is possible that his wife's aspirations might have been realized, for Millicent was not impervious to good influences.

Unfortunately for her, however, a free-spoken man called Shackleby, who said that he had been sent by his colleagues who managed the Industrial Enterprise Company, called upon Thurston and Savine together in their city offices. He came straight to the point after the fashion of Western business men.

"Julius Savine has rather too big a stake in the Orchard Valley for any one man," he said. "It's ancient history that if, as usual with such concerns as ours, we hadn't been a day or two too slow, we would have held the concessions instead of him. Neither need I tell you about the mineral indications in both the reefs and alluvial. Now we saw our way to rake a good many dollars out of that valley, but when Savine got in ahead we just sat tight and watched him, ready to act if he found the undertaking too big for him. It seems to me that has happened, which explains my visit to-day. We might be open to buy some of those conditional lands from you."

"They may never be ours to sell, though I hope for the contrary,"

Geoffrey replied.

"Exactly," said the other. "That is why we're only ready to offer you out-district virgin forest value for the portions colored blue in this plan. In other words, we speculate by advancing you money on very uncertain security."

Geoffrey laughed after a glance at the plan. "You have a pretty taste!

After giving you all the best for a t.i.the of its future value, where do we come in?"

"On the rest," declared Shackleby, coolly. "We would pay down the money now, and advance you enough on interest to place you beyond all risks in completing operations. Though you might get more for the land, without this a.s.sistance, you might get nothing, and it will be a pretty heavy check. I suppose I needn't say it was not until lately that we decided to meet you this way."

"By your leave!" broke in Thomas Savine, who had been scribbling figures on a sc.r.a.p of paper, which he pa.s.sed to Geoffrey. It bore a few lines scrawled across the foot of it: "Value absurdly low, but it might be a good way to hedge against total loss, and we could level up the average on the rest. What do you think?"

Geoffrey grasped a pen, and the paper went back with the brief answer, "That it would be a willful sacrifice of Miss Savine's future."

"Suppose we refuse?" he asked, and Shackleby stroked his mustache meditatively before he made answer:

"Don't you think that would be foolish? You see, we were not unanimous by a long way on this policy, and several of our leaders agree with me that we had better stick to our former one. It's a big scheme, and accidents will happen, however careful one may be. Then there's the risk of new conditions being imposed upon you by the authorities.

Besides, you have a time limit to finish in, and mightn't do it, especially without the a.s.sistance we could in several ways render you.

You can't have a great many dollars left either--see?"

"I do," said Geoffrey, with an ominous glitter in his eyes. "You needn't speak more plainly. Accidents, no doubt of the kind you refer to, have happened already. They have not, however, stopped us yet, and are not going to. I, of course, appreciate your delicate reference to your former policy; I conclude it was your policy individually. I don't like threats, even veiled ones, and n.o.body ever succeeded in coercing me. Accordingly, when we have drained it, we'll sell you all the land you want at its market value. You can't have an acre at anything like the price you offer now."

"That's your ultimatum. Yes? Then I'm only wasting time, and hope you won't be sorry," returned Shackleby. When he went out Geoffrey turned to Thomas Savine.

"A declared enemy is preferable to a treacherous ally," he observed dryly. "That man would never have kept faith with us."

"I don't know," was the answer. "Of course, he's crooked, but he has his qualities. Anyway, I'd sooner trust him than the invertebrate crawler, Leslie."

A day or two later Shackleby called upon Leslie in his offices and with evident surprise received the check Millicent had given to her husband.

"I wasn't in any hurry. Have some of your t.i.tled relatives in the old country left you a fortune?" he inquired ironically.

"No," was the answer. "My folks are mostly distinctly poor commoners.

I, well--I have been rather fortunate lately."

"Here's your receipt," said Shackleby, with an embarra.s.sing stare, adding when Leslie, after examining it carefully, thrust the paper into the glowing stove, "Careful man! n.o.body is going to get ahead of you, but can't you see that blame paper couldn't have made a cent's worth of difference between you and me. Well, if you still value your connection with the Company, I have something to tell you. That infernal idiot Thurston won't hear of making terms, and, as you know, there's a fortune waiting if we can corral the valley."

"I can see the desirability, but not the means of accomplishing it,"

replied Leslie.

"No!" and the speaker glanced at him scornfully. "Well, Thurston must finish by next summer, or his conditional grants are subject to revision, while it's quite plain he can only work in the canon in winter. Something in the accident line has got to happen."

"It failed before." Shackleby laughed.

"What's the matter with trying again, and keeping on trying? I've got influence enough to double your salary if Thurston doesn't get through.

It will be tolerably easy, for this time I don't count on trusting too much to you. I'll send you along a man and you'll just make a bet with him--we'll fix the odds presently and they'll be heavy against us--that Thurston successfully completes the job in the canon. The other man bets he doesn't. When it appears judicious we'll contrive something to draw Thurston away for a night or two."

"But if you know the man, and it's so easy, why not make the bet yourself?" Shackleby smiled pleasantly.

"Because I'm not secretary hoping to get my salary doubled and a land bonus. There are other reasons, but I don't want to hurt your feelings any more than I wish to lacerate those of my worthy colleagues.

They'll ask no questions and only pa.s.s a resolution thanking you for your zealous services. Nothing is going to slip up the wrong way, but if it did you could only lose your salary, and I'd see you safe on the way to Mexico with say enough to start a store, and you would be no worse off than before, because I figure you'd lose the berth unless you chip in with me."

Leslie realized that this might well be so, but he made a last attempt.

"Suppose in desperation I turned round on you?"

"I'd strike you for defamation and conspiracy, publish certain facts in your previous record, and n.o.body would believe you, or dare to say so.

Besides, you haven't got grit enough in you by a long way, and that's why I'm taking your consent for granted. By the way, I forgot to mention that confounded Britisher raked an extra hundred dollars out of me. Said I'd got to pay for his traveling and hotel expenses. I'm not charging you, Leslie, and you ought to feel grateful to me."

CHAPTER XXIV

AN UNEXPECTED ALLY

Winter was drawing towards its close at last, when, on the evening of a day in which the result of a heavy blasting charge had exceeded his utmost expectations, Geoffrey Thurston stood beside his foreman in his workmen's mess shanty. Tin lamps hung from the beams blackened with smoke, and st.u.r.dy men were finishing their six o'clock supper beneath them. The men were the pick of the province, for, until tempted by the contractor's high wages, most of them had been engaged in laying the foundations of its future greatness by wresting new s.p.a.ces for corn and cattle from the forest. They ate, as they worked, heroically. The supper was varied and bountiful, for Geoffrey, who was conscious of a thrill of pride as he glanced down the long rows of weather-beaten faces, fed his workmen well. They had served him faithfully through howling gale and long black night, under scorching sun and bitter frost, and now that the result of that day's operations had brought the end of the work in sight, there was satisfaction in the knowledge that he had led such men.

"They're a fine crowd, Tom, and I'll be sorry to part with them," he said. "It's hard to believe, after all we have struggled with, that less than three weeks will see us through, but I'd give many dollars for every hour we can reduce the time by. Send for a keg of the hardest cider and I'll tell them so."

There was applause when the keg was lifted to the table with its head knocked in. Geoffrey, who had filled a tin dipper, said: "Here's my best thanks for the way you have backed me, boys. Since they carried the railroad across Beaver Creek, few men in the province have grappled as you have with a task like this; but it's sometimes just possible to go a little better than what looks like one's best, and I'm asking as a favor from all of you that you will redouble your efforts. I estimate that we'll finish this tough section in eighteen days from now, but I want the work done in less time, and accordingly I'll promise a bonus to every man if we can fire the last big shot a fortnight from to-day."

"Stan' by!" shouted a big section foreman, as he hove himself upright.

"Fill every can up an' wait until I've finished. Now, Mr. Thurston, I'm talking for the rest. You've paid us good wages, an' we've earned them, every cent, though that wasn't much to our credit, for Tom from Mattawa saw we did. Still, even dollars won't buy everything, and what you can't pay us for we're ready to give. If flesh an' blood can do it, a fortnight will see us through, an' the next contract you take, if it's to wipe out the coast range or run off the Pacific, we're coming along with you. I've nailed you to the bargain, boys, an' here's--The Boss, victorious, an' to ---- with his bonus!"

The long shanty rang to the roar that followed, and, when it died away, Geoffrey, who set down his can, turned to his foreman.

"Who is the little man next to Walla Jake?" he asked.

"An old partner of his from Oregon. Came in one day when you were away, and, as Jake allowed he was a square man, I took him on. Found him worth his money, and fancied I'd told you."