PART II (continued 2)

Gregory’s face never betrayed him, particularly when he kept his eyelids down, and, as he shook hands with Ora in the dining-room he told her he was glad to see her again as casually as if his hand had not tingled to crush hers. He talked with Mrs. Cameron, however, as long as possible, but when her attention was claimed by the man on her right, he was obliged to turn to Ora. By this time his blood was still. Eating is commonplace work, and talking the inevitable platitudes of a dinner’s earlier courses will steady the most riotous pulses.

Ora smiled impersonally; her eyes might have beheld the husband of her friend for the first time.

“I am so glad to be able to ask you something about my mine,” she said. “Ida tells me that you have reopened it.”

“Yes, they are already through the fault and driving for the vein. There happened to be a good man here looking for a job when I got Mark’s telegram, a young engineer from the East, named Raymond. The miners are good capable men, too, and as Osborne and Douglas installed a compressor, the work should be pretty quick. I fancy you’ll recover the vein in a week or two.”

“I wonder if I shall? Mark thinks you infallible, but it seems too good to be true.”

“The vein is there, about a hundred feet down, but how rich it is I do not venture to predict.”

“Well, never mind,” Ora smiled happily. “I shall have the fun of looking for it, and I want to be with the men when they find it.”

“Oh—Ah—It really would be better for you to give up that idea of going out there to stay——”

“I thought I would give to you the opportunity to say that at once! Do go on and relieve your mind.”

“It is neither safe nor desirable,” he said sulkily. “I may have a row on my hands any minute. Your men and my men are a decent lot, but the Apex have employed a lot of scum so ignorant that there is no knowing what they may do in a crisis—in the hope of currying favour with their superiors. They would merely be made scapegoats or—canned—I beg pardon, fired—but they don’t know that, and they’re as hard a lot as Europe ever kicked on to our dump heap. Better stay here for the present.”

“I’ve sent out all the furniture for the bungalow, and Custer and a Chinaman to put it in order. I suppose my engineer can camp in the other cottage until it is finished. That is quite close to mine, I understand.”

“Oh, of course—but why not stay at my ranch house——”

“That is too far from the scene of operations. Please don’t bother about me. I should hate to think I was on your mind—you have enough! I shall be well protected, and I’ve even bought an automatic. I suppose being a born Westerner I should call it a gun. But it’s such a little one. I shall carry it always——”

“Yes, promise that.”

“I’ve even had a little bag made, like those they wore years ago, to fasten to my belt, and I shall keep it in that.”

“Very well.” He dismissed the subject. “I—ah—there’s something I heard today, but perhaps I should not speak of it. Only Mark is such an old friend of mine——”

“I suppose you saw Mr. Luning and he told you that we are to separate.”

“Yes, that is it.”

“I intend to live in Europe: I suppose you think that a callous reason.”

“It’s as good as most reasons for divorce in this country. When is Mark coming back?”

“Not for two months. Nothing will be done until then. I want to have my mining experience first and I shall leave Montana as soon as the papers are served.”

“Ah!”

Her partner claimed her at the moment and, his own still being occupied, he observed her furtively. He thought that she too looked older, but not because advantages had improved her; rather—he groped for the words that would give definiteness to his impression—as if some experience had saddened her. She had a softer expression. The blood rushed to his head and he almost choked with jealousy, his intuitions carrying him straight to the truth. “By God! She has loved some man,” he thought. Then he set his teeth. So much the better.

But when she turned to him again, he said impulsively, although his tones were light:

“You never did fit this Western life of ours. Of course you have found a more civilised mate in Europe?”

“You are all wrong,” she said gaily. “My only love at present is my mine. My mine! You should understand if anybody can.”

“Oh, yes, I understand that magnet. But I naturally thought——”

“What everybody else will think when the news is out. But I am astonished that you should jump at anything so commonplace.” Her heart was hammering under the concentrated intensity of his gaze; and as if he realised suddenly that he might be betraying himself he said sarcastically:

“As there are—I was told today—no less than six divorces pending in this set which my wife has the honour to entertain tonight, and as all are to intermarry, so to speak, when liberated, my conclusion in your case was probably due to the force of suggestion.”

“Well, I forgive you if you promise to believe none of the absurd stories you are sure to hear. I am in love with freedom. Now tell me what you think of Ida? Isn’t she wonderful?”

Gregory looked down the table at his wife sitting between the two most important men in Butte and entertaining both with animated dignity. She met his eyes and smiled brilliantly. She knew that he was proud of her; she had accomplished the second manœuvre in her flank attack: her first had been to put him at his ease.

“Yes,” he said to Ora. “She is. It is almost beyond belief. And she is your handiwork!” The two might have been life-long intimates, and Ida a mere kinswoman of both, so little did the oddity of this discussion occur to Gregory at least.

“And in a way my present to you.” Ora spoke with a charming graciousness. “Mark had given me a tremendous idea of your abilities. The day I met Ida I saw her possibilities, and I made up my mind then and there that when the world claimed you your wife should be not only an inspiration but equipped to render you the practical and social help that every rising man needs. Isn’t it splendid to think that she will always sit at the head of your table?”

Gregory was staring hard at her again. “You did that deliberately?” he asked.

“Yes. Deliberately. Ida is so clever that she was bound to develop with your rising fortunes, particularly if you sent her to Europe. But it would have taken longer. I couldn’t wait. My father inspired me with the deepest admiration and respect for our Western men. I had made up my mind that you were born into the front rank, and I wanted, as a Western woman, and my father’s daughter, to do something to help you. Tell me that you are satisfied and that you are as proud of Ida as she is of you—that—that—you simply adore her.” She did not flinch, and looked him straight in the eyes, her own full of young, almost gushing, enthusiasm. Her heart had almost stopped beating.

“I certainly am proud of her, and grateful to you. No doubt she will be very helpful if I am forced into politics to conserve my interests.” His tones were flat. He had come to his senses, and he was too loyal to hint that he no longer loved his wife: but Ora’s face was suddenly flooded with a lovely colour, and her eyes looked like grey mist through which the sun was bursting. She asked him,

“Aren’t you going to stay with us for a few days! We’d love to have you?”

“I take the 6.10 for Pony in the morning. If I disappear before the others it will be to snatch a few hours’ sleep in that gorgeous four-poster in my room. After living in two rooms for so long I am oppressed with all this magnificence——”

“Two rooms!” Ora’s voice rang out like an excited child’s. Gregory, marvelling at the quick transitions of her sex, thought he had never seen anyone look so happy. The gentle melancholy that had roused his jealousy was obliterated. “Two rooms!”

“There is another shack just beyond where my Chinaman cooks for me, and bunks, but I have only a bedroom and office—and a bathroom of sorts. Even my secretary sleeps at the ranch house.”

“You dear innocent millionaire. No doubt the proletariat, reading of your sudden wealth, and cursing you, pictures you wallowing in luxury. Well, you shall come and sit sometimes in my comfortable living-room. It is time you relearned the a, b, c, of comfort—before you relapse into the pioneer.”

“Your bungalow looks as if it could be made very homelike.” He spoke with unconscious wistfulness, and she raised friendly and impersonal eyes to his.

“You shall see. I have what the French call the gift of installation, and I have sent out nice things. I shall make tea for you when you come to the surface at the end of the afternoon shift, and you shall sit in the deepest of my chairs.”

“It sounds like heaven,” said Gregory, who despised tea.

Professor Becke, who had taken her in, and Mrs. Cameron simultaneously addressed their temporary partners, and Gregory was now to listen to an account, both spirited and kindly, of the admiration his wife had excited in her native town. Mrs. Cameron suspected the breach, in spite of the clever acting of both, and made up her mind to do what she could to bridge it. She had not an inkling of the cause, for, like Ida, she knew nothing of that fateful hour on the steps of the School of Mines; but as there was no gossip abroad about either Gregory or his wife, she inferred that it was one of those misunderstandings that so often separate young couples, always prone to take themselves too seriously. She knew that Gregory would value her praise; he not only had been fond of her as a schoolboy, when he spent an occasional Saturday with her son, but he knew that her experience of the world was very wide. She was a woman whom long years of wealth had enabled to travel extensively, she visited intimately at some of the greatest country homes in Europe, and she had her own position in New York. She subtly made Gregory feel prouder still of Ida, and then said teasingly:

“It is well that you have her devotion. I know of three men that are quite off their heads about her——”

“Ah? Who are they?” A sultan may weary of his sultana, but his sultana she is all the same.

“That I’ll not tell you. Even your wife could not, I fancy. I’ve never seen a woman treat men with a more careless impartiality. What a relief—with all these divorces pending. Merely a shuffling of cards, too, I understand. It is disgusting. I asked your wife as a personal favour to me to invite none of them tonight. Butte either has long orgies of respectability or goes quite off her head.”

“My wife is singularly indifferent to men for a beautiful woman,” replied Gregory, comfortably ignorant of his beautiful wife’s depredations abroad. “Nor is she likely to countenance divorce. She has a good deal of her old New England mother in her.” He had a haughty contempt for explanations as a rule, but his quick instinct had caught the significance of his companion’s remarks; knowing that Ida must wish to stand well with this amiable but rigid arbiter of Butte’s court of last resort, he added:

“I am sorry not to be in Butte oftener, and give her what little assistance a man may, but it is all I can do to leave the mine for a few hours every week or two.”

“That is the fate of too many of our American women married to our too busy American men. But—well—Gregory—I have married sons and daughters, and I am an old friend of yours. Young wives must not be neglected, and resentment eats like a cancer until women are old enough to be philosophical. Just think that over.” And before he could answer Ida gave the signal and the men were left alone.

VIII

AS the women dispersed about the long drawing-room Ora laid her arm lightly round the waist of Ida, who was standing for the moment apart.

“Your dinner is a tremendous success, my dear,” she said, “and so are you. That gown! It makes mine look so crude. I wish I had worn white as I intended until the last minute. How splendidly everything went off. Not a detail to criticise, and every woman has worn something new from New York or Paris. But you—well, Ida, you are always beautiful, of course, but tonight you are something more than lovely.”

“Oh, am I?” Ida gave a little gasp, forgetting her passing astonishment at so much tribute from Ora at once. “Well, I ought to be. I never felt quite like this in all my life. Geewhil—no, I’m too happy even for slang. I wish I could sing.”

Ora sighed. “I’ve always known you would get everything you wanted, and I can guess just how you feel tonight. You are a complete success. How many people ever are able to say that?”

“Yes, I feel as if I owned the earth!” But her brows met in a puzzled frown. “I never felt, though, as if even the conquest of Butte would all but send me off my head. I never feel very much excited about any old thing; it’s not my make; but I’ve got a sort of shiver inside of me, and a watery feeling in the heart region. If that chef had spoilt the dinner I’d have gone out and wrung his neck.”

“Well, nothing can go wrong now. The worst is over, and no dinner was ever more delicious. Why don’t you let them dance? I know that Mrs. O’Hara plays.”

“Good idea! I’ll ring this minute for a few of those extra near-waiters to take out the rugs and move the furniture.”

Two of the younger women, who had returned not long since from San Francisco, were showing their scandalised friends the turkey-trot when the men came down the hall from the dining-room. Ida drew Gregory aside.

“Tell me,” she asked, with an eager almost childish note in her voice new to him. “Did it go off well? Am I all I ought to be after all the money you have spent on me? Do I look nice in my fine clothes?”

Gregory patted her on the shoulder. “I know little about such things,” he said kindly, “but it outclassed all the banquets I’ve been obliged to attend in the last six or eight months. I felt quite proud that it was in my own house—yours, to be literal—and Mrs. Blake assured me that she had never seen anything better done.”

“Ora is an angel, and without her—but you know all that. Tell me—well, Gregory, I want a good old-fashioned compliment!”

His voice lost its bantering tone and became formal with gallantry: “You are, as ever, the handsomest woman in Montana. I shouldn’t wonder a bit if those New York reporters were right and that you are the handsomest woman in America.”

Ida looked for a long moment into his eyes. Again her brows met in a puzzled frown, this time because her singular lightness of spirit had fled abruptly. She was too proud, too far developed beyond the old Ida, to put forth the arts of the siren until they were alone; but she asked softly, and again with that almost childish naïveté:

“Do you really admire me?”

“You are all right,” he said with a heartiness that masked a sudden misgiving. “I must come in and take you to the theatre the next time a good show comes to town. Let me know. I’ll gratify my vanity by sitting beside you in a box——”

“There’s a play tomorrow night. Stay over!”

“I’m sorry. I don’t dare. Apex is sinking for all she’s worth. We may have a set-to any minute. It was a risk even to come away for a night.”

“Oh, do let me go out, and down into the mine——”

“I should think not. And do your best to keep Mrs. Blake in Butte for at least a week.”

“Well, let me go out when the danger is over. I long to see chalcopyrite in the vein. I saw some beautiful specimens at the School of Mines the other day. It looks like pure gold.”

He looked at her in amazement. “What on earth do you know about ores? Did you include Freiberg in your itinerary?”

“This is Butte, remember. I no sooner returned than I realised how interesting she was.”

“Ah, well, when this affair is settled, come out and stay with Mrs. Blake and I’ll take you down. I’ve no place to put you up. Even the ranch house is full. Mrs. Blake’s manager and foreman are boarding there at present, and Oakley also puts up my secretary——”

“And those crops Oakley put in with such enthusiasm?” cried Ida with a sudden inspiration, and racking her memory. “Did they turn out as he expected? Was there a drought—in—in—those states?”

“What a memory you have! Yes, Oakley is doing wonders, and the drought arrived as per schedule. He would scorn to put the ranch under the ditch, although that is my long suit at present.”

“I suppose Circle-G Ranch looks like Holland by this time.”

“Not quite yet! But the work is progressing splendidly, all except——” He paused. It had never been his habit to talk to her, and the complicated details of business he regarded as beyond the intelligent apprehension of any woman. But as Ida moved closer to him with wide-open eyes she looked intelligent enough to understand anything, and a letter received that morning had been on his mind ever since. “There is some trouble about the railroad,” he said. “The Land Company was to build it, but either doesn’t want the bother or really has lost a lot of money, as it claims. I placed a deed in escrow which pledges me to build it if the Land Company failed to keep its agreement; and the seed houses, which bought several large blocks of land, and a number of private settlers are demanding that the railroad be begun—it was to be finished at the end of a year——”

Ida saw her opportunity and grasped it. “We both must do our duty, and not monopolise each other,” she said hurriedly. “But tell me all about it after they have gone. Now, go and dance with Kitty Collier. She’s the best-looking woman in Butte. I can’t dance in this harness, but I’ll talk English politics with my portlier guests.” As he smiled and moved toward the music, she laid her hand lightly on his arm. “I want to thank you for coming tonight, Gregory,” she said. “It means a great deal to me socially. Besides, it is good to see you again.” And this time she looked very sweet; but there was a slight aloofness in her manner, as if to admonish him that, although he was forgiven, there was still a breach which it was for him to close. Then she added lightly: “Well, we’ll talk it all over later. Go, now, and dance.”

Gregory stood by the front door talking to two of the men, whose wives had walked on; their homes were but a door or two away. Ida ran up the stairs to Ora’s room, where they unhooked each other.

“You look tired,” said Ida, sympathetically.

“Oh, I am tired,” replied Ora, her arms hanging. “Tired. Tired.”

“It’s a long while since you danced like that. Just drop into bed. Lend me a scarf, will you?”

She covered her opened gown with the lace and walked slowly over to her room. Then she suddenly turned back to the head of the stairs. The three men were still talking below.

“Gregory,” she called, and her voice was very sweet.

“Yes?”

“Lock up, will you? The servants have gone to bed.”

“I will.”

“Don’t forget,” and omitting to add a good-night, she went swiftly to her room, changed her formal evening gown for a soft combination of yellow silk and lace that made her look like a tulip in a primrose bed, let down the black masses of her hair, and threw herself into a deep chair. But there was no repose in her attitude. More than once her body stiffened and she raised her head. Pride and shrewdness forbade her to leave her door open, and it would be impossible to hear that light panther-like tread on the heavy carpet of the stair. The front door might have closed while she was changing in the dressing-room.

Suddenly she heard it slam. Nervous as she was she smiled reminiscently. Gregory might be soft of foot, but otherwise he was as noisy as most men. Then the smile froze until her lips were distended in a grin. Another door had slammed. Gregory was in his own room.

After a few moments she became aware that her body was rigid and that she was grasping the arms of her chair. She rose with an exclamation of impatience, but stood with her head bent, listening intently. Suddenly she swayed a little, once more flooded with that sense of excited gladness with which guests and chefs had had naught to do: she thought she heard a door open softly, a light footfall. But her straining ear-drums had deceived her. The house was as still as a mausoleum. She pressed her hands against her breast in the gesture the stage has borrowed from life; her heart felt as if swimming against an undertow.

Then she began pacing up and down. After her habit she tried to arrange her thoughts by putting them into words, and, as people still do off the stage, muttered them aloud.

“My God! Do I care as much as that? Do I really care? No! No! No! Any woman of pride, let alone vanity, would make up her mind to bring her husband back—especially if she could make him as proud of her as I made him of me tonight. And when he still thinks me beautiful. What woman wouldn’t? Even if she didn’t have an ounce of any kind of feeling for him? Men are only interesting when they forget about us in that purely masculine world where women are warned off the grass. To lure them back—that is the spice of life in this country. And if one doesn’t succeed the first time—he may be so tired and sleepy that he’s forgotten about me—or shy, afraid I’d laugh at him—the world does not come to an end tonight—What an idiot I am! I made him admire me more than ever, astonished him—why am I not satisfied for the present?—It can’t be that I care—that I long for him to come—Good God! I’d rather be dead than that!”

But she went to the door and, laying her ear against it, listened until she became aware that her lungs were bursting with imprisoned breath. Then she sank into a chair trembling, her eyes filled with fear. A moment more and she flung her arms over the table and dropped her face upon them and broke into heavy weeping.

IX

ORA looked round the large living-room of her bungalow with a deep sense of content. The walls were covered with a material coarse in weave and of a red warm but not too bright. The colour was repeated in the divan and chairs, melting softly into browns that harmonised with the heavy beams of the ceiling. A few Navajo rugs covered the floor. Above the divan of many cushions was a bookshelf crowded with the new fiction of two continents. Several shelves, built like a bookcase, occupied a corner and were furnished more ponderously. In the middle of the room a large table was half covered with the best periodicals of the day, although there was room for a large lamp with a red shade and a vase filled with wild flowers. Down at the far end of the room, which was about thirty feet long, and opposite the kitchen, were the dining-table and a small sideboard. The main door opened upon a verandah, and one beside the fireplace into a narrow hall, giving privacy to the bedrooms. Ora had no atavistic yearnings for the life of the pioneer; she might feel as much at home in a bungalow as in a palace, but elementals, save when pictorially valuable, like overhead beams, were rigidly excluded.

Her hands clasped behind her, she drifted up and down the long room, her mode of ambulation expressing the state of her mind. Quick and final as she could be in decision, if necessity spurred, the deeper sensuousness in her nature impelled her to drift whenever circumstances would permit. For two months she intended to drift—or gamble! She had not come out here further to alienate the affections of her friend’s husband, and those old tumultuous dreams were still crowded in some remote brain cell with seals on the door. She had even told herself in so many words that she had no desire for anything so terrific as their complete materialisation. She had plumbed the depth and intensity of life in her imagination. Let that suffice. And reality was not so much to be feared because of the wreck it might make of her life as because it was reasonably sure to leave a corpse in her memory, instead of that ever burning soul of past delights.

But she had come out to her mine to enjoy the constant companionship of Gregory Compton before she left her country for ever and married a European. That much she owed to the extraordinary imaginative experience in which they had been one. If she could spend long hours with him, make him as eager for her companionship as she was for his, forget his mine now and then, feel that mysterious and satisfying bond of the spirit, she would ask no more, not even an admission of love when they parted.

When a woman goes on a still hunt for a man’s soul she is far more dangerous than the obvious siren, for her self-delusion is complete, her guards are down, her wiles disarming. Ora had had too little practical experience of men to be prepared to admit, in spite of her abstract knowledge of life, that there has been but one foundation of love since the world began, and never will be another till life on this planet ends, whatever may be the starry mysteries of the spheres. But while she was (spasmodically) too honest to deny even her own sex encumbrance, she believed, like many other, particularly American women of narrow experience, that it had been politely emasculated by the higher civilisation, was merely synonymous with poetry, romance, and sentiment. This convention was imported to the New World by England’s middle-class and became a convenient national superstition. It is on the wane.

That Gregory, granted she were successful in capturing his soul, might desire to contribute the rest of himself to the spoils, now that she no longer was the wife of his friend, let loose those subversive passions she had divined the night of their meeting and dared to recognise in the realm of imagination, she would have refused to admit had the possibility occurred to her. She was out for the ideal, and not yet had she learned to take her imagination in hand like a refractory child. Moreover, she had an imperious will, gracefully as she concealed it. This last year of freedom and wealth and feminine triumphs had tempered that will into a pliable and dangerous weapon. What she wanted she would have. As she planned a thing so should it work out. But the details—ah, they were veiled in the future, and from their mysteries came this reflex vibration, this pleasant sense of drifting, of wondering how it would all begin and what would happen next.

In a sense it had begun. Gregory had called two days before to ask if she were comfortable. He was in his overalls (purposely), and had refused at first to sit down, but finally had succumbed to the deepest of the chairs before the log fire. He had finished by remaining for supper, and again had occupied the chair until eleven o’clock. Neither had suspected the other’s secret passion, for love before union, being nine parts imagination, needs solitude for indulgence, and is capable, moreover, of long and satisfying quietudes if fed with externals. There was sheer delight in sitting together by that warm intimate fire, at the dining-table at the end of the long shadowy room, in feeling cut off from the world on the edge of that rough mountain camp, in listening to the soughing of the pines during the silences. That both were on their guard lest the other take fright and the experience be impossible of repetition but exaggerated the atmosphere of friendliness, of almost sexless comradeship. Gregory betrayed one only of his reflections: he admitted to himself what Ora subtly compelled him to admit, and had no difficulty in divining, that the companionship of woman was a blessed thing, and that he had been the loneliest of men.

Their talk was mainly of ores! She was permitted to learn how little else interested him in comparison with the enthralling inside of Montana. But he told her also the legends of the great copper mines on Lake Superior, so old that copper was found pure, looking much like the smelted product from the copper ores of the later geological formations of the Rocky Mountains. These vast mines, particularly that on Isle Royal, bore unmistakable signs of having been worked systematically by a prehistoric people experienced in mining; presumably by the Atlantans, who, after their own mines were worked out and they still demanded “orichalcum” for their monuments and bronze for their implements, went annually in ships for the metal. That there had been a self-supporting mining colony on Isle Royal was indicated by certain agricultural remains.

Gregory and Ora had amused themselves reconstructing that old time when the metal island was as lively as today, and considerably more picturesque—owing to the alternative of skins for muck-spattered overalls; an underground chapter of the Niebelungenlied, its gnomes toiling down in those two miles of workings, stoping out less in a hundred years than the methods of today force a mine to yield in one. How they must have swarmed to the surface, regardless of discipline, at the first signal of the approaching ships, their one link with a world that was not all water and forest and underground cavern. By what tortuous way did those archaic ships travel from the Atlantic to the northwest corner of that vast inland sheet; unless, indeed, which is likely, subsequent upheavals have destroyed a waterway which may have connected sea and lake prior to 10000 B.C.[B] How many of those old ships lie in the bed of Lake Superior, laden with rude nuggets of copper, pounded from the gangue, or, who knows? smelted by a lost art into sheets and blocks? Archaic ships rode high, and no doubt those from Atlantis were overladen; for what has kept Atlantis in the realm of myth so long save the unscientific legend that she perished of greed and its vicious offspring? What archaic mysteries may not the terrible storms of that great north lake yet uncover? What strange variety of copper, washed and bitten by the waters of twelve thousand years, for which the enraptured geologist must find a new name? Who knows?—the bed of Lake Superior may be one unbroken floor of malachite; and the North American Indian of that region the descendant of those ancient miners, abandoned and forgotten when Atlantis plunged to the bottom of the sea.

It was Ora who advanced these last frivolous theories, and—the clock striking eleven—Gregory sprang to his feet.

“Likely as any,” he said. “All theories change about as often as it is time to get out a new edition of an encyclopædia, or develop a ‘new school’ which makes its reputation by the short cut of upsetting the solemn conclusions of its predecessors. I’m going down into the mine.” He bolted out with no further ceremony, but Ora was long since accustomed to the manners of Western men. She went to bed feeling that sadness had gone out of the world.

She had not seen him since. Nor had anything new and interesting happened. Her manager, Raymond, refused to take her down in the mine, alleging that when Apex broke into the workings of Perch of the Devil, there was sure to be a fight, and the bohunks would retreat, not up their own shaft but through the tunnels of the Primo mine. The young man was manifestly distressed to refuse any boon to so charming a woman, and he and his foreman had moved at once into the half-finished cottage, but he heartily wished her back in Butte, nevertheless. The best of miners love a fight, and it would be impossible to protect her from flying bullets if the row was continued above ground. Ora merely had laughed when he begged her to return or to remain within doors, but had promised to be prudent and flourished her automatic .25.

X

SHE glanced at the clock. It was half-past three. She knew that Gregory frequently went below in the morning, and had half expected that he would cross over to her hill for a moment when he came up at three o’clock. The drifting mood vanished. She decided that two days were enough for feminine passivity and went to her bedroom and changed her pretty house frock for a stout out-of-doors’ costume of forest green tweed: as she had no mind to look either the outworn Western heroine of romance, or a fright, she had omitted khaki from her mountain wardrobe. She tied a light green veil round her head, put on a pair of loose chamois gloves, selected a green parasol lined with pink, and went out to give the fates a gentle shove.

Hitherto she had so far yielded to the solicitude of her manager as to take her walks through the pine woods above her bungalow, but today she marched deliberately through her grove and stood for several moments on the edge of the little bluff above the tableland on which her claim was located. It was her first prolonged look at the three mining camps, for she had arrived at night. She had driven out occasionally to mining camps with her father, once or twice with Mark; the scene was both typical and picturesquely ugly. In or near the centre of each claim was the shaft house; fifty feet beyond—the distance prescribed by law to prevent overhead fires from communicating with underground timbers—were the buildings containing the hoisting machinery and the compressed air plant. Scattered about were the shacks of the miners, the long bunk- and mess-houses, blacksmith and carpenter shops. Just below the Apex claim, and on Government land, an enterprising publican had established himself. On all sides were other claims of recent location, for there had been the inevitable rush.

The rude buildings were grey and weather-beaten, and all traces of the gentle spring verdure had disappeared. About the collar of each shaft was an immense dump heap, waste rock brought up from the depths, and the highest of these was on Perch of the Devil. Near each were the ore bins, but these for the most part were empty, and, save on the De Smet hill, there was a notable absence of “double-sixes.” The Primo vein had not been recovered, Apex had not yet touched bottom; Gregory Compton, for reasons best known to himself, had changed his original plan and was merely uncovering his new vein, taking out as little of its ore as possible. His bins were furnished with ore from the second level of his mine, where work had proceeded steadily on the original vein.

The men off shift were standing about in groups as they did in Butte, or passing in and out of the saloon. And the racket was deafening: the roar of the machinery in the hoisting and compressor houses, the crash of rock dumped from the buckets or skips, the ringing of hammer on anvil. The scene was not beautiful but it was alive! One could fancy the thrill of the hidden metals, knowing that their hour, after vast geological ages of waiting, was come; that, like mortals, they were to agonise in the crucible of life and achieve their ultimate destiny.

Ora walked through the grove until she was beyond the long mess-house at the back of her claim, climbed over the abrupt rise of Apex—which, combined with the hardness of the rock, had made its task so long—and, ascertaining that the larger buildings hid her, crawled under the De Smet fence, and drew a long breath as she set her feet squarely on the famous Perch of the Devil. Here the buildings, large and small, were scattered up to the brow of the hill and over on the other side. It had, in fact, something of the appearance of a growing village with irregular streets; and before several of the cabins children were playing, or women took their Monday washing from the line. The fronts of some of these cottages were painted white, and here and there flowers grew in boxes. There were even a reading-room and a large “general store.” Altogether Perch of the Devil looked as if it might grow larger, and more solid and permanent of aspect, with the years.

Ora walked through the crooked streets on the steep hillside until she reached the deep chamber into which had leached the acids of the centuries to enrich the ores, and incidentally Gregory Compton. Thousands of tons of dump made a hill in itself and shut off the view to the south, but below were the acres of waving wheat, the alfalfa with its purple flower, the sprouting flax, the winding creek that was often dry but sometimes wet, the brush sheds for the cattle, the substantial farm buildings. The broad peaceful expanse looked as if even a winter wind had never shaken it, so entirely did it seem dissociated from the frantic energies of its northeast corner. And still beyond was perfect beauty: the massive pine-covered mountains, rising tier above tier, ridges of the great Rockies, far away and up to the sky-cutting line, glittering with eternal snows. For a few moments Ora forgot the raucous noises about her, Nature delivering herself of her precious children with loud protesting pains. Then she turned suddenly and looked upward.

Gregory had just stepped from his cabin. For a moment he did not see her, but stood staring, his hands in his pockets, at the distant mountains. He wore his favourite overalls and a battered cap on the back of his head; but he looked so remote in spirit from that materialising costume that Ora watched him with a sensation of helpless jealousy. Not for a moment could she delude herself that he was thinking of her. He looked like a seer.

“Can you see right into the heart of those mountains?” she asked lightly, as she walked up the hill toward him. “You looked as if your imagination were ‘blocking out’ thousands of tons of gold quartz.”

He started and coloured, but smiled with a sudden pleasure at the charming picture in the foreground. “Something like that. This mine is all right, and now that I’ve got over my disappointment, I have a feeling for it that I guess I’ll never have for another mine—something like the affection for one’s first born! But all the same I intend to have a gold mine one of these days. Have you been admiring my view?”

He had walked down and joined her.

“Yes, but that is not what I came over here for. Nor is it what I came out to the mines for. I brought a small library, but I find I am not in the humour for books. I want to be doing something myself. Mr. Raymond won’t take me down into my mine. I want to go down into yours—now.”

He hesitated a moment. “Well—why not? Apex is not working this afternoon—something the matter with their compressor. They sounded pretty close to our workings this morning, but the men quit about one o’clock, and as they didn’t blast it was probably because the holes weren’t deep enough. I’ve just been told that they can’t get to work again before tomorrow. But you look much too fine!”

“Everything cleans; and I’ll leave my veil and parasol in the shaft house.”

“All right,” he said abruptly. “Come along.”

When they were in the shaft house he asked, “Will you go down in the skip or by the ladder?”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly do anything so ignominious as to go down in a bucket, and I’m very agile. How far is it?”

“A hundred feet. I shall only take you to the first level.”

Ora peered down into the black and slanting and apparently bottomless well. A ladder was built flat against one side. A skip full of ore was banging against the sides of the other compartment on its way up. She looked again at the ladder, shuddered, and set her teeth.

Gregory put two candles in his pocket, inserted his long limber body into the narrow aperture and ran down sideways.

“Oh!” gasped Ora. “I can’t do that. Please wait. I—I think I’d better go down backward.”

“By all means. Sit down and turn round. I’ll catch hold of one of your feet and put it on a rung. The rest will be easy.”

Ora followed these instructions gingerly, concluding that the skip would have been more dignified. Then she forgot dignity and only wondered if her bones had gone out of her: she had rolled over on her equatorial zone and was kicking helplessly in the void. But as Gregory caught her feet and planted them safely she set her teeth once more and summoned her pride.

“Glad you have on stout boots,” he said, practically. “We’ve not enough water in the mine for pumps, but it’s a little damp underfoot. Wait a minute while I light a candle.” He struck a match and performed this feat; how, Ora could not even guess; but she glanced down sideways and saw that he was holding the lighted candle up at arm’s length.

“Come on,” he said. “You mustn’t be frightened.”

“I’m not a bit frightened, but don’t go too fast.”

Gregory, who was running down the ladder, moderated his pace, and sent up an occasional word of cheer. Suddenly Ora heard a horrid noise below like the crash and roar of an express train. “Has the mine fallen in?” she gasped.

“Hope not. That’s the tram with ore and rock for the skip. By and by we’ll use the waste rock to fill up the stopes with, but we’re only blocking out at present.”

“How frightfully interesting mining is—in all its details!” Ora’s hands were smarting, and every part of her, not excluding her imagination, felt as if on the rack. “That noise is over!”

“Did I hear you say ‘Thank heaven’?”

“Of course not. How much farther is it? Haven’t we passed the first level?”

“If we had I should be carrying you. Only about twenty feet more.”

And a few moments later, with the deepest sigh of relief she had ever drawn, she was standing in the small station beside the shaft.

“It’s hard work the first time,” he said sympathetically. “But you’ll soon get used to it.”

“How dark it is!”

“I’ll put in electricity when my troubles with Amalgamated are over.” He lit another candle and handed it to her. “Be careful of your frock.”

The ore car was rumbling away in the distance. Gregory followed the sound down the tunnel and Ora kept close at his heels. “I suppose we’ll see something after a while?” she ventured. “I can’t see even you now, only your candle.”

“We’ll soon be out of this,” he said cheerfully. “You see, we’ve had to walk under the chamber from which I took that great deposit of carbonates, and then some——” He paused a moment, but not before he had turned acutely to the left. “This is where I lost the vein. We are in the fault now. How would you like to be in an earthquake that broke a vein in two and hurled one end——” His voice was lost in the rattling roar of the compressed air drills, although there was nothing to be seen until they reached another little station and faced a wider drift on the right, some twelve feet long. Candles were flaring from the miners’ candlesticks, whose long points were thrust into stulls or the softer part of the rock, and four men were manipulating two of the cumbersome air drills which stood on tripods. Gregory made a sign to the shift boss, who shut off a valve, and the din stopped abruptly.

“Now,” said Gregory. “This is what you have come for.” He moved his candle along the brassy glitter of chalcopyrite in the vein, steadying her with his arm, for the floor was uneven and littered.

Ora trembled. She forgot the arm about her; it felt like mere steel for that matter; she was in one of the magic caverns of her dreams and she thrilled to the magnet of the ores. “It looks like pure gold,” she whispered.

“So it is in a sense, and far more beautiful to look at in the vein.” They had been standing near the opening of the drift. He guided her down toward the farther end; the miners made way for them and went out to the station nothing loath; owing their lives to what has cost many a man his life and more, the caprice of a woman.

“I want to show you how the holes look before we put the sticks of powder in,” Gregory began, as he waved his candle once more aloft, this time over a less dazzling surface. He stopped abruptly. She felt his body stiffen. Then, as he whirled her about, he screamed to the men:

“Get out! Run!”

Ora had the sensation of being swept along by a bar of steel burrowing into the flesh of her waist. But in another instant she had lost all sense of her body. There was a shock as if something had hit the hill at its foundations, a dull roar, and then the crash of falling rock behind them.

The men were all ahead. Ora dimly could see them running like rabbits up the fault drift. Then she became conscious of the stifling sickening smell of powder and a bursting sensation in her head. No one paused for a second, nor drew breath until all had turned the corner and were in the main level. For a space nothing was heard but the hoarse effort to refill tormented lungs. The men leaned against the walls of the tunnel. Ora leaned against Gregory. All sense of fear had departed out of her. She had had her baptism of fire and doubted if she ever should be capable of the sensation of fear again.

The silence lasted but a moment. Out of the intense darkness flew oaths like red-hot rocks from boiling craters.

“Shut up!” said Gregory sharply. “There’s a lady here. And light up if you have any extra candles. I’ve dropped mine. We must find out if anybody is missing.”

“I held on to mine,” said Ora proudly. Gregory lit it, and the shift boss counted his men. “All here, sir; but by jink, it was a narrow squeak. The—the—the——”

“Never mind—who’s this?” A man was running toward them from the direction of the shaft.

“It’s me, sir.” Gregory recognised Mann’s voice. “I’ve just got on to what they were up to. There wasn’t a blamed thing the matter with the compressor. They just meant to catch us off guard—anybody hurt?”

“All right. How did you find out?”

“I suspicioned something crooked, so I got one of those damned bohunks drunk and bribed him. They’d put in the sticks before they quit, pretending the compressor had gone wrong and they couldn’t finish drilling. I suppose they sneaked back while I was getting the story, and lit the fuses.”

“You’ll let us get back at ’em, boss?” demanded the men.

“Oh, yes,” said Gregory, in a voice of deadly irony. “We’ll get back at them.”

He was holding the candle. Ora saw him bend his head forward in the attitude so characteristic of him. But he raised it in a moment.

“Go up, every one of you,” he said, “and down to the saloon. Talk about what happened, but assume that it was an accident. Any fighting above ground and you’ll be canned. Say that there’s a big cave-in and we’re obliged to quit work on this level for the present. See that that spreads all over Apex camp. Say that I’ve given you the rest of the shift off. Come down as soon as you’ve had your drink and said your say. Jerry”—to the shift boss—“you watch the Apex shaft house. I don’t figure that they’ll go down under an hour, on account of the smoke, but if they do just drop below. I’ll wait for you here. And before you come,” he added grimly, “go over to the compressor house and tell them to turn the steam on the air line.”

“Hooray!” The shouting of the men made almost as much noise in the tunnel as the recent explosion. “That’s the ticket, boss. Oh, we won’t do a thing to them!”

“Get out of this,” said the shift boss. “Don’t take more than one drink; and hold on to your tempers, or there’ll be no fun below.”

A moment later Gregory and Ora were alone in the tunnel.

XI

“HOW did you guess?” asked Ora.

“I didn’t guess. I saw a drill hole just beyond where my men were working. I also did a little quick deduction. Miners blast just before they go off shift. The afternoon change of shift is at three o’clock. As I told you I had seen the Apex men come up about one o’clock when their compressor stopped. That hole not only told me that they were closer than we had thought, but that they were up to devilment. I guessed that they had timed to blast just before we were ready to drill at that point. Were you very much frightened?”

“I didn’t like it.” Ora knew that bravery in woman makes no appeal to the lordly male. “But I hardly had time to think; and after all you left me nothing to do.”

“Well, you were game and didn’t scream or cry,” he conceded handsomely. “Let’s light up.”

They had walked as far as the station at the foot of the shaft. Gregory unlocked the door of a small cupboard, found two candles and inserted them in miners’ candlesticks that were stabbed into the walls. They flickered in the draft as a skip rattled up from the second level, but relieved the oppressive darkness.

“Why, your hair is down!” exclaimed Gregory.

Ora put up a hand. “So it is! Well—I am sure I never should know if my hair fell down at a good play, and ours was live drama. I’ll braid it and put on my veil up above.”

He watched her for a moment as she sat on a box braiding her long fair hair, vaguely recalling the legend of the Lorelei. He noticed that her eyes as she peered up at him looked green in that uncertain light. But in a moment his thoughts wandered from her. He folded his arms and stared downward.

Ora leaned back against the wall. She saw that he had forgotten her, but had made up her mind to accept him as he was; she had no more desire to dictate his moods than to read in advance the book of the next two months. There was the same pleasurably painful vibration in her nerves as on the night when she had piled stake upon stake at Monte Carlo. From that scene her thoughts travelled naturally to Valdobia and she suddenly laughed aloud.

“What are you laughing at?” demanded Gregory suspiciously.

“I was trying to imagine that we were imprisoned in the underground dungeon of an Italian palace in the middle ages.”

“Hard work, I should think. Although if we had a cave-in I guess the results would be about the same.”

“And you? Were you seeing your minerals winking three thousand feet below?”

He laughed then, and sat beside her. “At all events the mystery down there is more romantic than your mediæval dungeons—and so will the great underground caverns be when the ores have been taken out.”

“Pity the caverns—stopes!—have to be filled up with débris to prevent the mine caving in,” said Ora flippantly. “I went underground in Butte last week—to the eighteenth level of the Leonard. Nothing but endless streets and cross-alleys, all numbered——”

“And you didn’t find that interesting?” he asked indignantly. “To be a third of a mile below the surface of the earth and find it laid out like a city, with streets and rooms, and stations ten times as large as this, and lighted with electricity?”

“Yes, but the knowledge that you have a third of a mile of those streets and rooms—seventeen levels of them—on top of you, supported only by waste rock in the stopes, and timbers that are always snapping in two from the terrific pressure—timbermen working at every turn—‘Save YOURSELF’ the first thing you see when you leave that cage—Oh, well, I felt there was quite enough romance on top of the earth.”

“I am deeply disappointed in you. You told me once—why, even lately——”

“Oh, I haven’t changed the least little bit. Nothing in life,” and she looked at him with laughing eyes, “interests me as much at present as these two mines. But I am thankful that we are still within a reasonable distance of the surface. I am quite content to screw up my eyes and wander in fancy among the primary deposits close to the central fires. If I had a mine like yours, full of the beautiful copper ores instead of that hideous pyroxenite of mine, I should leave a glittering layer in every stope, support the roof with polished stone columns, light with hidden electric bulbs, and wander from one to the other imagining myself in Aladdin’s palace.”

“A fine practical miner you would make. It’s lucky that your mine is pyroxenite, not quartz. That is if you want to live in Europe.—Do you?”

“Of course. What have I in this part of the world? A mine cannot satisfy a woman for ever. I suppose you wouldn’t care if you never saw a woman again!”

“Oh!” He was looking hard at her.

“What else were you thinking of just now?” asked Ora, with that perverse desire to be superficial which so often possesses American women in decisive moments.

He sighed impatiently. “I’ve got a big job on my hands, one that will take me away from here more or less. Did Mark tell you of a land deal I put through?”

“I should think so!”

“Well, I’ve got to build that railroad. Apex will close down when it finds I won’t let its men work underground. Amalgamated’s next move will be to bring suit for apex rights, and get out an injunction to enjoin me from working on that vein until the case is decided. As soon as I have driven them out now, however, I must get to work on the railroad—find my engineers—Oh, there are too many details to bother you with. But it means that I must spend a good deal of time in Butte until the thing is started——”

“How delighted Ida will be!” interrupted Ora softly. “And that house will be so comfortable after your cabin.”

For a moment he did not speak. Nor did his face betray him; but she fancied that his muscles stiffened. He replied suavely: “I should have gone on to say that it is more likely I shall have to attend to the matter in Helena. That is the centre of the land interest. It is doubtful if I could find the sort of men I want in Butte.”

“Have you any other land schemes on hand?”

“Not at present.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well—when I have taken a couple more millions out of this hill I shall begin to buy land, put it under the ditch, build the short railroads that may be necessary, and sell to small farmers—in other words push along the colonisation of this state. I believe you gave me that idea—the night we talked Butte—the first time, I mean.”

“I thought you had forgotten that night altogether.”

“Forgotten it!” Ora’s heart stood still at the explicit vibration in his well-ordered voice. She leaned back and closed her eyes. He had loved her all these months, dreamed of her as she had dreamed of him. Her first sensation of wonder and delight was succeeded by a faint disappointment.

She had the instinct of the born huntress, although she was far too highly civilised to have recognised it before. She wondered if his capitulation meant her own deliverance, too ignorant in the ways of love to guess that whether this were a passing or a permanent phase depended on the man.

While Gregory hurried on to tell her of all he should be able to do for Montana with the millions at present locked in the vaults of his hill, she had a full moment of honesty, and confessed that she had come out here to make Gregory Compton love her. And he did! It was a mighty personality to conquer; and the victory had been won long since! But the disappointment passed in a cynical smile. That he had no intention of declaring himself her lover was as patent as his inhuman power of self-control. Here were barricades to storm if barricades she wanted? What difference? And did she?

He sprang to his feet and stood at the foot of the shaft, looking up.

“They’re coming down,” he said.

Joshua Mann emerged a moment later.

“Apex bunch being rounded up to go below,” he said. “Our men are on the way.”

“Steam on the air line?”

“You bet!”

“Let’s get to work.” He turned to Ora. “Stay here till I come back,” he said peremptorily. “I can’t take you up in the skip now.”

“I am quite comfortable,” said Ora, coolly. “How many men will come down?”

“Five.” And he and Mann disappeared into the tunnel.

Ora waited until the other men had descended one by one and run into the blackness. Then she dislodged one of the candlesticks from the wall and ran after them. When she reached the fault drift she thrust the long point of the candlestick into a stull before turning the corner. Then she crept toward the station, from which she could witness the punishment about to be inflicted upon the Apex men, whatever it might be.

There was a glimmer of light in the new drift. Ora saw the men binding a piece of hose to the same length of pipe. They attached the hose to the air line and held it just inside the ragged hole some twelve feet above.

There was a distant murmur of voices overhead and to the right. The solitary candle was extinguished. The murmur of voices in the drift which led from Apex shaft along the continuation of the Primo vein grew louder. Men were laughing. One man was giving orders. It appeared that they were to let themselves down and go systematically to work on the Perch vein, which was now driving under the Apex claim.

Ora heard a sharp whispered word: “Now!” and barely recognised Gregory’s voice. A second later and she was deafened by the roar and hiss of escaping steam, mingled with shrieks of agony above, and fiendish cat-calls and jeers below, all expressed in the spectacular profanity of the mining camp. The episode was over in a moment. The Apex men tumbled over one another in their anxiety to leave the scene, and those manifestly disabled—Ora could hear them gasping horribly as the steam was turned off abruptly—were dragged away. She felt her own way rapidly along the fault drift, snatched her candlestick from the wall as she turned the corner, and scampered back to the shaft station. When the men arrived she was sitting demurely on the box. Gregory evidently had telephoned from the other station, for the skip came rattling down just before his appearance at the head of his laughing, cursing column.

“Did it go off well?” asked Ora.

“Did it?” cried Mann, tossing his cap in the air.

“They’re settled for the moment,” said Gregory. “They’ll come back at us later with steam on their own air line, and slacked lime; but we’ll be ready for them. They stand no show.”

Two of the men had been left on watch. Gregory lifted Ora into the skip. He and Mann stood on the edge. A second more and Ora was holding her breath as they were hurtled upward at express speed, the metal car banging from side to side of the shaft. In something under three-quarters of a minute Gregory helped her to alight in the shaft house, while the skip descended for the miners.

“Well,” he said, smiling, as she lifted her braid to the top of her head and wound the veil about it, “have you supped full of sensations for one day?”

“The last was the worst! And I do mean the skip. Now that we are where you cannot beat me I will confess that I followed you and saw your neat little mediæval revenge from the station——”

“Hush!” Gregory glanced about apprehensively, and drew her outside. “You mustn’t tell anyone else that. You don’t want to be summoned to the witness stand, I suppose?”

Ora gasped. “I never thought of that.”

“When will women let men do their thinking?” Gregory looked the primeval male as he scowled down at her. Nor did he mitigate her alarms with the information that underground battles seldom were continued in the courts. “Now, I am going to take you to your cottage, and I want you to stay there until the trouble is over. The men are bound to get drunk and fight. Better go to Butte——”

“I won’t.”

“Very well, then, stay in your house.”

“And be bored to death? Besides. I need exercise. I’ll roam all over the place unless you promise to come to supper every night and then take me for a walk in the woods.”

His eyes flickered. “Perhaps your engineer——”

“He’s a mere child. I hate boys. And I must have exercise.”

He looked at her with apparent stolidity for another moment, but she knew that he was investigating her expressive orbs. They expressed nothing that could be construed as flirtation, coquetry, or personal interest in himself. He saw himself mirrored there merely as the friend of her husband and the husband of her friend. “Very well,” he said curtly and swung on his heel. “I suppose I must look out for you. Come along.”

XII

GREGORY had worn a clean suit of overalls into the mine. He was now spattered from head to foot, including his face and hands, but he swung along beside Ora with an unconsciousness of his disreputable appearance that was quite superb. All the miners of the three camps’ off shift were gathered about the saloon. As Gregory appeared the greater number of these men cheered wildly, but the “dark men,” who stood apart, maintained an ominous silence.

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll take a shot at you some night?” asked Ora. “How they must hate you!”

“You don’t go into any business nowadays and put it over without running the risk of being shot by some sort of down-and-outer. What’s the sense in worrying? Unless I’m much mistaken we’ll be rid of that scum inside of twenty-four hours.”

And he was right. There was another battle underground, in which more of the Apex men were scalded, and the Perch men unhurt. Then the Apex men refused to work, and the mine closed. Gregory was shot at on the following night, and Joshua Mann was slightly wounded. Both the Perch and Primo men tumbled out of bed, hunted down the offenders, and chased them into Pony, riddling the air with shot and rending it with bloodthirsty yells. It would be some time before Apex would be able to hire miners of any nationality willing to trust themselves between the two belligerent camps. But bohunks—more recent importations—would return in the future, if any. These ignorant and friendless South Europeans can be killed for about two hundred dollars apiece, whereas it costs several thousands to kill an American, Cornishman, or Irishman, as he leaves behind him an equally intelligent family or friends. It was unlikely, in any case, that high class miners would “take a job” in the predatory Apex. They not only liked Gregory Compton because he was his own manager and worshipped by his miners, but because he possessed in overflowing measure the two qualities that the American in his heart of hearts respects most, luck and bluff.

Amalgamated immediately brought suit against Gregory Compton, charging not only that the faulted vein apexed in their claim, but that his original patent was agricultural and gave him no lateral rights in mining; furthermore, that a patented claim could not be repatented. This was a fine legal point and could impoverish several generations before it was decided.

Gregory paid no attention to this suit beyond issuing an invitation through the press to eight of the leading geologists of the United States and Canada to come to Montana at his expense and make a personal inspection of the two veins. If they did not agree that the vein on which he had been working, containing a shoot of chalcopyrite six feet wide, and of the highest grade, was the original vein, and the Primo-Apex a mere stringer, or at most a fork from his, he would let the suit go by default. The geologists promptly accepted, and it was agreed that they should all arrive in Butte on the second of June.

Once more Gregory Compton had scored. Scientific men are normally honest, although the great fees offered to geologists frequently infuse their judgment with that malleable quality peculiar to the lawyer under the subtle influence of his brief. But these men, all of high repute, would be too afraid of one another, and of the merciless newspaper men that would accompany them, to deliver aught but a just verdict. Gregory knew that Amalgamated was profoundly disconcerted, and that in the face of public opinion it was improbable that the suit ever would be brought into court. But they could devil him meanwhile, and he was enjoined from working on the recovered vein until the case should be decided. He accepted the injunction without protest and transferred the miners, whom he had kept hard at work blocking out until the last minute, down to the second level of the mine.

“They’ll get a jolt from that quarter, too,” said Gregory to Ora, and he was not referring to the miners. “They’ll go on fighting me for years, no doubt, but I’ll spring some sort of a facer on them every time. They may have more money, but I have enough.”

“You never feel afraid they may beat you in the end?”

“Beat me?” Gregory’s eyes glittered. “Not unless they bore a hole in my skull and introduce a microbe that will devour my brains. I can get ahead of them in more ways than one. Long before all the ore on the second level is stoped out I shall be in a position to put up my own reduction works if they freeze me out of Anaconda or Great Falls. If I ever go into politics it will be to fight for a state smelter.”

Ora looked at him speculatively. He was walking up and down her living-room with a swift gliding motion peculiar to him in certain moods; his head was a little bent as if his narrow concentrated gaze were following a trail.

“I believe you love the fight as much as any part of it,” she said.

“I do. And as soon as I’ve taken out money enough I’m going to buy a big tract of land, irrigate it, plant it in beets, put up a sugar refinery and fight the Havemeyer trust.”

“Why don’t you form a company, buy your beet land, and put up the factory now? You could raise all the money you wanted.”

“No companies or partners for me,” he said curtly. “What I’ll do I’ll do alone. I want no man’s help and no man’s money. And I certainly want no other man’s ideas interfering with mine.”

Ora sighed. He had been away for a week on his railroad and land business, and during this, their first meeting since his return, he had talked of nothing save his mine and the new possibilities of Circle-G Ranch. Investigation of the soil and timber values of the 35,000 acres which he had originally hypothecated as a guarantee that the railroad should be built, but which perforce had reverted to him when the Land Selling Company had failed to keep this part of their contract, would be worth, after proper transportation facilities were insured, not less than twenty-five dollars an acre. A member of the Land Selling Company whom he had taken with him had been convinced of this, and that the soil was peculiarly adapted to the raising of apples by intensive culture. As soon as the railroad was built there would be no difficulty in selling the timber and the rest of the land, and the Company had agreed to buy it. His profits would be $875,000, and the railroad would cost but $300,000.

No wonder, thought Ora, that a man with a business brain of that calibre had little place in it for woman. True, he had called her up once from Helena, evidently seized with a sudden desire to hear her voice, but he had been interrupted; and the only tangible result had been to keep her in such a fever of expectancy that she barely had left the house lest he call her up again and she miss him. He did not, and her nerves had become so ragged that she almost had hated him and obeyed the impulse to pack her trunks and flee to Europe. He had come to see her within an hour of his return, but, beyond his rare delightful smile and a hard pressure of the hand, he had manifestly been too absorbed to feel any personal appeal beyond her always welcome companionship.

And the next morning he telephoned that he was leaving for Butte. Ida had reminded him of his promise to appear in public with her. Mary Garden was to sing that night and she had taken a box. He had grumbled but finally agreed to go, as he had business in Butte which might as well be transacted that afternoon. Ida thanked him politely and promised him an interesting party at dinner. Then she called up Ora and invited her, but Ora declined on the plea of good taste; the story of her impending divorce was common property, and it was hardly decent for her to appear in public.

XIII

REACTION, after the emotional recognition of the subtle but certain change that had been wrought in her unsuspected depths, had filled Ida for many hours with a sullen rage against Gregory Compton and herself. But in a day or two the buoyancy of youth and the common sense, of which she possessed an uncommon store, asserted themselves, and, while devoting her time to the small daily distractions of society, her determination to win back her husband never waned for a moment. She knew that she must play the waiting game, keep a sharp eye out for the blessed opportunity and pounce upon it, but make no attempt to “rush things.”

The day after the Apex mine closed down, she rang him up and offered her congratulations, told him something of the excitement in Butte, then rang off before he began to feel detained. As he passed through Butte later, on his way to Helena, he could do no less than call on her, and, to his relief and her secret rage, he found several pleasant people taking tea in the library. But she showed her pride in him so frankly that he could not but be flattered, and talked so intelligently of the undoubted sequel of the battle underground that he forgot her guests and addressed his conversation to her. She drew him on to describe that grim but picturesque episode underground, and he would have been less than man had he failed to be sensible of the rise of his chest while surrounded by a breathless circle of charming women. When they were about to withdraw tactfully and leave him alone with his wife, he glanced at his watch, bade them all a hasty good-bye and bolted out to catch his train. Ida once more had been able to exhibit to her little world an evidence of the pleasant understanding between herself and her busy husband, and got what consolation out of this fact that she could.

“I can wait,” she thought grimly. “I can wait! I guess patience is my one all-wool-and-a-yard-wide virtue. I’ll wait!”

She gave several small dinners and a dancing party, devoted to the new excitement of “ragging,” in which no one became more proficient than herself. She “went” harder than ever, and even joined the more extreme younger set (elegantly known as “The Bunch”) one night in a progress among the road houses of The Flat, and danced in the ballroom of the Five Mile House until dawn. But she had no real taste for this side of life; and did penance by visiting the Poor Farm and several other charities under the wing of Mrs. Cameron. Her popularity on all sides was unchallenged, and not only was she firmly established in the city of her heart, but Mrs. Cameron had offered to take a house with her in New York for the following winter if she cared to mount still higher. She was gratified and grateful, but she was filled with that desperate loneliness that only a man can banish.

On the night of the opera she wore black velvet unrelieved and never had looked handsomer. The neck of the apparently inseverable gown was cut square, and her beautiful arms were exposed as far to the top as fashion permitted; she wore her hair banded closely about her head, and, at the base of her throat, a barbaric necklace of dull red and blue stones that she had picked up in an antiquity shop in Munich. As she sat in her box between Mrs. Cameron and Mrs. Collier, one of the handsomest and best dressed of the younger women of Butte, Gregory, who sat behind and facing the house, saw that during the first entr’acte the audience levelled its glasses at her constantly, and that, indisputably, she divided the honours of the night with the prima donna.

He looked at her more than once himself, her classic beauty, or the classic effect she made it produce, appealing to his æsthetic sense as beauty in any form always did. He wondered a little that it should so have lost its once irresistible appeal to his senses, wondered again if he could not still have loved her well enough to live with had Ora never entered his life. Certainly he was very proud of her, and her conversation as well as her personality interested him. He respected her profoundly for what she had achieved, giving her full credit for the revolution in appearance, manners, and speech, in spite of her exceptional opportunities. Then he forgot her as his thoughts wandered to Ora, whom he saw sitting alone in her warm shadowy room, in which he had come to feel so much at home. As he always went to her when he was tired, after a day filled with excitement or hard physical labour, he experienced only peace and content in her nearness; but when away, as tonight, and with the music of Thaïs singing into his keen responsive nerves, he was filled with an inexpressible longing.

He was roused by a faint exclamation from Ida. She was leaning forward. A moment later a man, whom he had never seen before and who looked like an Englishman of distinction, silently entered the box. Ida left her chair, and gave him both her hands in greeting, then went with him out into the passageway where their conversation would not interfere with her guests’ enjoyment of the music.

Gregory felt very much like any other husband at that moment. He was conscious of no sting of jealousy, or stab of doubt, but he did not like it. He also received a distinct impression that his rights of proprietorship were menaced. Moreover, he was so invaded by mere curiosity that it was with difficulty he refrained from gratifying it at once. But, although he belonged to the type of Western man who would shoot the filcher of his woman without an instant’s consideration, he was the last man in the world to make a fool of himself.

Ida tried his patience but a few moments. As soon as the curtain fell she re-entered the box and presented the stranger as Lord John Mowbray, who had arrived by the evening train and sought the opera house as a relief from the hotel. She did not add that he had telephoned at once to her house and followed her as quickly as he could change his clothes.

The husband was the last to be made known to the distinguished stranger, and in spite of Mowbray’s ability to look vacuous, and Gregory’s to look like a graven image, neither could repress a spark under his lowered lids. Mowbray reared his haughty crest at once and turned away. Like many young Englishman he blushed easily, and he was by no means the first man to feel uncomfortable under the eyes of Gregory Compton. He felt the colour rising to his white forehead, and was not sorry to present his splendid back and length of limb to that searching gaze.

He sat close to Ida during the last act, and then the party went to her house to supper, there being no restaurant worthy the name in Butte. Gregory detained Ida at the door after the other had entered.

“Good night,” he said. “Luning promised to wait for me at his office. I shall talk to him until it is time to catch the train for Pony.”

“Oh, I am so sorry,” said Ida politely, and smiling charmingly. “So will the others be. And I wanted you to talk to Lord John. His brother has a ranch in Wyoming, and he has come here on some mining business. I am so glad to see him again. The men here are—well, they are all right, but quite absorbed in one thing only—whatever their profession or business happens to be. Lord John knows a little about everything. I am sure you would like him. Do ask me to take him out to the mine. He is a friend of Ora’s, too. She will ask us if you don’t.”

“Come whenever you like. If I’m not there my foreman will show you round. Good night.” And he was off. Ida, feeling that Mowbray’s arrival had been timed by Providence, went in to her guests.

XIV

“WHO is this Mowbray?” Gregory asked Ora abruptly on the following evening. He was in Ora’s living-room, his long legs stretched out to the fire.

Ora, who was working on a small piece of embroidery in a frame, superlatively feminine, enveloped in a tea gown imponderable and white, looked up in surprise. They had been sitting together for an hour or more and their conversation had been wholly of his plans to entertain his party of geologists, and the attention this sensational flank attack had attracted throughout the country.

“Is Lord John here?”

“Yes. Came into the box last night. Handsome chap.”

“Mowbray is a dear. We saw a great deal of him, and he bought our tickets and helped us off generally, when we were so upset over your cable.”

“Ah! Tame cat? General utility man?”

“Hardly! He’s full of life and a charming companion.”

“Hm.”

There was another silence and then he asked abruptly: “Is he in love with Ida?”

This time Ora dropped her work and sat up rigidly; her hands turned cold. There was a peculiar alteration of pitch in Gregory’s voice that might register jealousy in a hypersensitive ear. And when his face looked most like a bronze reproduction of itself, his friends deduced that he was masking emotion.

Ora’s brain always worked swiftly. Was it possible that by subtle manipulation she could reunite this man and her friend? That he loved herself she no longer doubted, but it was equally doubtful if he would ever confess it; on the cards that if he did he never would see her again. If she left the country after adroitly re-awakening his interest in Ida and playing on his vanity and jealousy, would not reaction, the desire for consolation and companionship, carry him straight to the wife whose beauty and magnetism had once, and not so long ago, aroused all the ardours of his manhood? Ida was far more beautiful now, and quite capable of holding any man. Ora did not for a moment believe that Ida loved her husband, or never would she herself have returned to Butte; but she had divined her mortification, her wounded pride; and as a young and beautiful woman Ida needed and was entitled to the protection of her husband.

Was this her moment? Her great opportunity? Her bosom heaved, her breath came short. Almost she experienced the subtle delights of renunciation, of sacrifice, of the martyrdom of woman. It would be a great rôle to play, a great memory. And after all she had Valdobia. It was this last irresistible reflection that gave her soaring spirit a sharp tumble and she laughed aloud.

Gregory turned his head and smiled as he met the cynical amusement in her eyes. “What is it?”

“I was merely commiserating poor Mowbray. Of course he is more or less épris; but Ida—she hasn’t it in her to love any man.”

“That is the conclusion I arrived at long ago. But it looked as if he had followed her here, and I don’t care for that sort of talk.”

“He had planned to visit his brother in Wyoming before we met him in Genoa. Don’t worry. Ida never will let any man compromise her. She’ll parade her son of a duke for the benefit of Butte, but if he shows signs of getting out of hand she’ll pack him off.”

“Yes, Ida is too ambitious to compromise herself.”

And then another little arrow flew into Ora’s brain. Her hands trembled, but she clenched them in her lap. “Gregory,” she said steadily, “as you and Ida no longer love each other, why don’t you suggest a divorce? She could marry Mowbray and have a big position in London—his brother is almost sure not to marry—is a wreck—Ida would be quite in her element as a duchess—and you—you would be free—if you ever wanted to marry again.”

When nature has given a man a dark skin and he has permitted it to accumulate yearly coats of tan, it is difficult for him to turn white under the stress of emotion; but Gregory achieved this phenomenon as he realised abruptly what freedom might mean to him. He stood up and leaned his back against the high chimneypiece, thrusting his hands into his pockets; he had long nervous fingers which sometimes betrayed him when his face was set.

“Ida would never consent to a divorce,” he said heavily. “She’s got all sorts of old-fashioned American ideals. The West has the reputation for being lawless, and it’s got more Puritans to the square inch than are left in New England. Ida’s one of them.”

“She may have acquired more liberal ideas in Europe.”

“She told me that she didn’t care if she never saw Europe again. Last night I had quite a long talk with her before the others came in for dinner. She said she thought it the duty of Western women—particularly the women of the newer Northwest—to live in their native state and only go away occasionally in order to bring something back to it. She intimated that you put that idea into her head when you two first met.”

“Oh, yes, I believe that to be right, whatever I may do, myself.”

“What is your idea in going to Europe to live? You are just the sort of woman the West needs.” He bit out his words in the effort to be calm and casual.

“I don’t feel that I have any place here.”

Gregory started on a restless walk up and down the room.

“Look at here,” he shot out finally, “are you—I haven’t said anything about it—but—of course I’ve wanted to—are you determined to leave Mark? He’s one of the best fellows in the world. I hate to see him thrown down. You—you—I think you should reconsider.”

“I had done all my considering before I spoke to Mark. I am doing him the greatest possible kindness. He needs another sort of woman altogether to make him happy. And I? Have I not my right to happiness? Do you think I could find it with Mark?”

“No!” The word exploded. “And you—shall you marry again?”

“I don’t know.” Ora spoke in a strangled voice. New possibilities were shaking her to her foundations. For a moment the perverse imp in the purely feminine section of her brain counselled her to run away as ever from the serious mood in man, to play with great issues and then dodge them. But she brushed the prompting aside with frantic haste and summoned her courage. If this was happiness coming to her grasp she would seize it.

Gregory came swiftly back from the farther end of the room and stood before her. He had set the muscles of the lower part of his face so tightly that he could hardly open his mouth, but his narrow eyes were blazing. “If Ida would give me my freedom,” he said, “I should want to marry you. Do you understand?”

Ora stood up. Her white face was so radiant that Gregory fell back. “You love me?” he asked.

“Yes.—Oh, yes——”

“You would marry me?”

“Yes!”

Gregory stared at her, wondering if she really were suffused with white fire. Her hands fluttered toward him, and his own face was suddenly relaxed, unmasked. Ora’s lips parted and she bent forward. She knew then why men and women sacrificed the world when they found their predestined mates. Here was the one man who could give her primal joy, suffocate her intellect. And the knowledge that she was capable of such passion and of the sacrifices it might involve gave her far more satisfaction than her former brief mood of renunciation.

She made another step forward, but Gregory was at the door. “Talk to Ida!” he said harshly. “I leave it to you. Go to see her tomorrow. You can do anything with her. You must!”

And he was out of the house. He left the door open and Ora could hear his light running footsteps.

XV

ON the following morning Gregory, who had spent the night in the mine and had just come up to the cabin, heard his telephone ring as he was about to take his bath and go to bed. His first impulse was to ignore the summons, but, his business instinct prevailing, he went into the office and unhooked the receiver.

“Well?” he asked, in a voice both flat and uninviting.

“It is Ida. How tired your voice sounds. I won’t keep you a minute. I have a plan to suggest. Why not let me put up those geologists? Mrs. Cameron has asked me to stay with her and will come over and help me entertain them at meals. It will not only save you a fearful hotel bill but keep them from wandering into the wrong fold.”

“Good idea!” Gregory’s voice was more animated.

“I’ll get Professor Becke to take them down into one of the big mines here, take them out myself to yours, amuse them between times with the prettiest women in town—in short stick to them closer than a brother.”

“Good! You are the right sort. I’ll meet them at the train—on the night of the second, it is—and take them right up to your house. It’s putting you to a lot——”

“Not a bit. It will be immense fun. Good-bye.”

On that same morning Ora went to Butte. She had telephoned to Ida, and Mowbray met her at the train with the limousine.

“Mrs. Compton had to go to some charity meeting or other,” he said, as they shook hands warmly. “I am to drive you about for an hour.”

This was better fortune than Ora, who possessed little of Ida’s patience and talent for the waiting game, had dared to anticipate.

“How jolly!” Her face lost its traces of a sleepless night as it flashed with hope and enthusiasm. “And after that dreadful train! Drive to the Gardens,” she said to the chauffeur.

She pointed out Anaconda Hill as they passed under that famous portal, and the shaft houses of other mines, suggesting that he go down with the geologists when they made the inevitable descent. “But you will find your visit to Mr. Compton’s mine more satisfactory,” she added lightly. “You will see more ore in the vein. How do you like him?”

Mowbray growled something in his thick inarticulate English voice, and Ora grasped her opportunity. She turned to him with the uncompromising directness her sinuous mind knew so well how to assume.

“Take me into your confidence,” she said peremptorily. “I can help you. At all events keep you from making any mistakes with Ida. She is what is called a difficult proposition. Are you in love with her?”

Mowbray turned a deep brick-red and frowned, but he answered intelligibly: “You know jolly well I am.”

“Then let me tell you that there is only one way you can get her. Ida is moral to the marrow of her bones. You might make her love you, for she and her husband are practically separated, but you can get her only by persuading her to divorce Mr. Compton.”

“I’ve thought of that. Of course I’d rather marry her. I’m a decent sort myself—hate skulking—and lying—she’s the last woman I’d want to compromise. But I’m so beastly poor. I’ve only twelve hundred pounds a year.”

“And she has forty thousand pounds now of her own. You need not hesitate to spend the capital, for Mr. Compton is most generous, and is sure to give her much more. He is bound to be a multimillionaire—it is only a question of a few years.”

“Does he want his own freedom?”

“I am not in his confidence. But as they no longer care for each other and have agreed to live apart—merely showing themselves together in public occasionally to avoid gossip—it is natural to suppose that he would be indifferent, at least. He cannot be more than thirty, and will be sure to want his freedom sooner or later.”

“This is splendid of you!” cried the Englishman gratefully. “She’s not happy. I know that, and now I shall know just what to do.”

“Sympathise with her. Make yourself necessary—make her feel the neglected wife, and what a devoted husband would mean. You have the game in your own hands, and I will help you.”

XVI

ORA discerned certain changes in Ida as the three reunited friends, with so many pleasant memories in common, talked gaily at luncheon. It was not only that she was a trifle thinner but there were shadows in her eyes that gave them troubled depths. The curves of her mouth also were less assured, and her strong, rather large, but beautiful hands had a restless movement. Ora, whose imagination was always ready to spring from the leash and visualise a desired conclusion, pictured Ida, if not already in love with this good-looking and delightful Englishman, as circling close; neglected and mortified, she longed for the opportunity to live her life with him; in short was champing the bit.

Ora led the conversation—no great adroitness was necessary—to the many divorces pending in Butte at the moment. Ida sniffed. Ora asserted gaily that they were merely a casual result of an era of universal progress and individualism; one of the commonplaces of modern life that hardly called for comment. “You are so up to date in everything else, my dear,” she concluded, “that I wonder you cling to such old middle-class prejudices.”

“I guess there are a few conservatives and brakes left in this country,” said Ida, drily. “I may look back with horror at the time when I chewed gum and walked out of a restaurant with a toothpick in my mouth, but Ma hammered most of my good old-fashioned prejudices into my back with the broom-handle, and I’m no more likely to forget her opinion of divorce—the poor get it sometimes as well as the rich—than the bastings I got if I played hookey from school, or sneaked out after dark alone with a beau.”

“My mother was exactly the same,” said Ora, with that charming spontaneity which so often robbed her words of the subtle insult of condescension, or the more cryptic of irony. “If I hadn’t happened to be a book-worm and had indulged in clandestine love affairs I should have been shut up on bread and water. And she had all a Southern woman’s horror of divorce. But, dear Ida! That was in the dark ages. We live in the most enlightened and individualistic era of the world’s history. I have kept my eyes and ears open ever since. Nor do I believe for a moment that we are getting any worse—we merely have achieved a more well-bred indifference toward other people’s affairs. One can hear a scandal a minute in large towns and small, if one has nothing better to do than listen; but whereas in our mothers’ time a woman was dropped if she was ‘talked about,’ today we don’t turn a hair at anything short of a quite superlative divorce court scandal—not even about girls; always provided that they continue to dress well, and keep on being charming and spending money.”