Sally of Missouri. Rose E. Young
relative. He and Carington had worked the thing over conscientiously, and, there in New York, they had taken some pride in the thought that they had hacked out a good base for the operations of a potential Steering-Grierson Mining and Development Company. Here, in Missouri, in Madeira's office, before the on-roll of Madeira's manner, Steering was no longer sure that he and Carington had had anything to do with the case.
"Here's my prospectus," Madeira was saying, his voice ringing triumphantly again, "and here are the articles. God bless you, we are right up to the point where we can effect the organisation and issue the first one hundred thousand shares of stock. There are some Tigmore County men that I want you to meet, some fellows who can be used to fill out the directorate, and, first thing you know, we'll be filing an application for a charter, my boy."
"Just so," said Steering absently. He had the papers in his hand, and was running them over. Both men were pulling at their cigars with strong puffs, and the room was so vaporous with smoke that Steering was beginning to see very clearly indeed, as he went through the papers. They were couched in good, clear English, the succinct English that Carington used, with admirable changes here and there, which brought out Carington's points still more clearly. "I am familiar with these," said Steering, looking up presently. "You seem to have let it stand about as we drafted it in the New York office. What changes you have made I like."
"Oh, God bless you! you can rely upon liking the things of this kind that I do." Madeira's assumption was comprehensive and bland. There was absolutely no sense in going against that manner of his at this stage of developments. Steering began to ask questions and to wait.
"Now, according to what we set forth here,"—Steering tapped the paper—"the object and purpose of our corporation will be the mining of zinc and lead ore in the Canaan Tigmores. We are projecting upon the hypothesis that there is ore in the Tigmores, but we can't go too far upon hypothesis. There in New York it seemed worth while to take up the idea that, as there was ore all around through southwestern Missouri, there might be ore in the Canaan Tigmores. Then, being equipped for theorising only, Carington and I passed easily into the consideration of the possibilities if there were ore in the Canaan Tigmores. You say that we are ready to organise, but it looks to me just now as though before we organise it might be in order to solidify hypothesis into fact. I don't think organisation is the next step at all; the next step, according to my notion, is to get off paper into the ground. Question now is, is there any ore in the Canaan Tigmores?"
"Question now is," interrupted Madeira baldly, "are there enough fools in the United States to donate us a fortune while we are finding out whether there is or isn't ore in the Canaan Tigmores? Oh, God bless you, my boy, you must bear in mind that gold isn't the only thing that can be minted! You can mint a man's thirst for gold, if you are up to it. The Southwest is zinc crazy right now. The time is as ripe as a nut——"
"Well, one minute—what's your private opinion about the chance for ore in the Canaan Tigmores, Mr. Madeira?"
"I d'n know a thing about it. And God bless you, I don't care a thing about it. I know that old Bruce Grierson butted his brains out on the Tigmore rocks, on the jack-trail, for twenty years, and I know, that all over the country—not here in Tigmore County, but farther southwest—men are drilling into rock that looks rich, and cuts blind, quick enough to ruin them; and I know that we are not going into this thing to lose money, but to make it, coming and going; I know that we've got to stand to win, coming and going. That's business."
Face to face with this sort of frank self-commitment to "business," Steering was impressed into silence, and Madeira took advantage of the silence to push on in the big way he had that was like the broad-paddling, tooting vehemence of a river steamer. "I'm for getting a drill into the hills right away, just as much as ever you can be, my boy, understand. It will look better. We'll do it. But Lord love you, we won't hold back the organisation for that. Just leave these things to me. I've got a programme arranged here that will suit you, I think. First thing is to take you around and let you see that document in the recorder's office—I believe you said you wanted to read the Bruce Peele will—then you can come out and have dinner with Sally and me. I've got a nice place three miles out, and I've got a daughter that is not to be beat, in New York or out of it. Then this evening we'll get together some of the fellows that I handle around here, and take up some of the preliminary business."
Madeira had risen, preparatory to conducting Steering to the recorder's office in accord with the first number of his programme, and Steering got up, too. While Madeira shut up his desk, Steering threw away the stump of his cigar and brought his flexed arms back to his shoulders with an expansive pull on his chest that sent a big influx of air into his lungs. After his séance with Madeira he felt as though he had been pummelled down flat. Madeira had to open his desk again for something he had forgotten and Steering passed on to the door, impatient for some outside air. As he opened the door, with his eyes rather thoughtfully fixed upon the floor, he saw, peeping around the curve where the Force's cage elbowed its way out into the room, a foot. Being a slender foot, in a well-fitting walking boot, it held him an unconscionably long time, then drew him on mandatorily, up the little space between the Force's cage and the wall, until he had rounded the curve and had come out by the Force's window, where a bare-headed girl leaned, talking merrily, gouging a hat-pin into the hat that she had taken off.
"Oh, it's Mr. Steering—isn't it?" she asked at once, and put her hand out to him. "I heard Father say that he was expecting you. And then, too, a friend of yours, who seemed much concerned about your fate over at Poetical, rode to our house last night and made me promise to welcome you to Canaan. I am Sally Madeira."
"Hi, Pet, you there?" Madeira's big voice came through the door of the private office and took possession of the minute and the girl—"entertain the New Yorker until I get through here, will you? I got to monkey with this blasted lock again."
"Yes, Father, I'm entertaining him," Madeira's daughter called back, while Bruce held helplessly to the hand she had given him. A peculiar mistiness had come over his senses. He could have sworn that through it he saw a picture that had been with him a good deal during the past year of his life, a picture of a woman's flower face, her fluffiness—as of silk and lace—lose colour, outline, significance, like a daguerreotype in the sunlight. A swift joy that he was in Canaan possessed him. All he could say was, "So you are Miss Sally?" It sounded very dull, so dull that he hastened to add, "So you know Piney?—Awfully kind of Piney to attract your attention to me." Remembering with horror some of his conversation with Piney about Miss Madeira, he repeated solemnly, "Awfully kind."
"Well, I think you can give the little vagabond credit for a kind heart." Miss Madeira laughed softly.
"I give him credit for much more than that," said Bruce. He was envying Piney, seeing that the tramp-boy's intuitive appreciations matched his vigorous young beauty, that he was far more poet than vagabond, that he, Bruce, had attempted to play clownishly upon what was a worthy and lovely idyl in the boy's heart. As though she, too, had some faint, perturbing consciousness of Piney, the girl flushed a little, laughed a little, and turned the subject readily.
"I know yet another friend of yours," said she.
"I am glad of that." Bruce had released her hand, forgotten the business that had brought him to Missouri, forgotten Crittenton Madeira, and stood with his arms folded, looking down upon her, glad that she was so tall, glad that he was taller, glad about everything.
"Yes, another friend," she nodded with fleeting meaning, "I was at Vassar with Elsie Gossamer."
Face to face with a woman like Sally Madeira the thought of a woman like Miss Gossamer must necessarily stay hazy in a man's brain. As with another Romeo, Rosaline had but laid the velvet up which came the surer feet of Juliet. "Well," said Steering happily, "all this is going to make us acquainted, isn't it?"
"It may, if you like." She had a splendid comradeship of manner. Her father's energy stopped short of bluster in her. Borne up on her breezy westernism was a fragrant reserve, a fine reticence that disengaged a tantalising promise.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст