The Treasure of Hidden Valley. Willis George Emerson
“Business!”—Roderick repeated the word with bitter emphasis.
“Yes, sir, business,” retorted Allen Miller, with some warmth. “To my mind matrimony is one of the most important deals in life—perhaps the most important.”
“If the money is right,” laughed the young man contemptuously. “But don’t you think that before another word is said about such a matter I should have the chance of seeing the young lady and the young lady a chance of seeing me?”
The humor of the situation had brought a pleasant smile to his face. The banker looked relieved.
“Wait now, my boy,” he replied musingly. “Do you remember when you were a little chap, perhaps twelve or thirteen years old, going with your Aunt Lois and myself to St. Louis on the Diamond Joe boat line?”
“Yes, I remember it perfectly.”
“Well, then,” continued Allen Miller, “you perhaps haven’t forgotten a lady and gentleman with a little tot of a girl only five or six years old, who joined us at Quincy. You engaged in a regular boyish love affair at first sight with that little girl. Well, she is the one—a mighty fine young lady now—just passed eighteen and her father is rated away up in the financial world.”
For the moment Roderick’s indignation over the cold-blooded, cut-and-dried, matrimonial proposition was arrested, and he did not even notice the renewed reference to finance. He had become pensive and retrospective.
“How very long ago,” he mused more to himself than to his Uncle Allen—“How very long ago since that trip down the river. Yes, I remember well the little blue-eyed, black-curly-headed chick of a girl. It was my first steamboat ride and of course it was a holiday and a fairyland affair to my boyish fancy.”
He drew in a long breath and looked out through the window at the snow which was now falling, as if many chapters of the world’s history had been written in his own life since that far away yet well remembered trip. He fell silent for a spell.
Allen Miller chuckled to himself. At last his scheme was working. All his life he had been a success with men and affairs, and his self-confidence was great. He rubbed his hands together and smiled, while he humored Roderick’s silence. He would tell his wife Lois of his progress. Presently he said: “She is an only child, Roderick, and I think her father could qualify for better than a quarter of a million.”
This time the reiterated money recommendation jarred unpleasantly on Roderick’s nerves and revived his antagonism. He hastily arose from his chair and walked back and forth across the room. Presently he halted before his uncle and with forced deliberation—for his anger was keyed to a high tension—said: “I am pleased, Uncle, to know the young lady is not a party to this shameful piece of attempted barter and sale business. When I marry, if ever, it shall be someone as regards whom wealth will count as of least importance. True love loathes avarice and greed. I require no further time to consider your proposals. I flatly reject your offer of a position in the bank, and shall leave Keokuk tomorrow. I prefer hewing out my own destiny and while doing so retaining my freedom and my self-respect. This is my decision, and it is an irrevocable one.”
The ebullition of pent-up feelings had come so suddenly and unexpectedly that Allen Miller was momentarily overwhelmed. He had arisen and was noticeably agitated. His face was very white, and there was a look in his eyes that Roderick Warfield had never seen before.
“Young man,” he said, and his voice was husky and trembling with suppressed rage—“you shall never have a dollar of my fortune unless you marry as I direct I will give you until tomorrow to agree to my plans. If you do not desire to accept my offer without change or modification in any shape, then take the balance of your money in the bank and go your way. I wash my hands of you and your affairs. Go and play football with the world or let the world play football with you, and see how it feels to be the ‘pigskin’ in life’s game.”
With these words the old man swung a chair round to the fireplace, dropped into it, and began vigorously and viciously pounding at a lump of coal. There was an interval of silence. At last Roderick spoke; his voice was firm and low.
“There will not be the slightest use, Uncle, in reopening this question tomorrow. My mind, as I have said, is already made up—unalterably.” The last word was uttered with an emphasis that rang finality.
The banker flung down the poker, and rose to his feet. His look was equally determined, equally final, equally unalterable.
“All right,” he snapped. “Then we’ll get through the banking business now.”
He touched a push-button by the side of the mantel. During the brief interval before a clerk responded to the summons, not another word was spoken.
“Bring me the exact figure of Mr. Warfield’s credit balance,” he said to his subordinate, “and cash for the amount. He will sign a check to close the account.”
Five minutes later Roderick had the little wad of bills in his pocket, and was ready to depart Uncle and nephew were again alone.
“There is one other matter,” said the banker with cold formality. “There is a paper in my possession which was entrusted to my keeping by your father just before he died. I was to deliver it to you at my discretion after you had attained your majority, but in any case on your reaching the age of twenty-five. I will exercise my discretion, and hand over the paper to you now.”
He advanced to a safe that stood open at one side of the room, unlocked a little drawer, and returned to the fireplace with a long linen envelope in his hand. A big red splash of wax showed that it had been carefully sealed.
“This is yours,” said the banker shortly, handing it over to the young man.
The latter was greatly agitated. A message from his dead father! What could it mean? But he mastered his emotions and quietly bestowed the packet in his breast pocket—beside the papers connected with the mining deal.
“I’ll read this later,” he said. And then he extended his hand. There was yearning affection in his eyes, in the tremor of his voice: “Uncle, we surely will part as friends.”
“You can regain my friendship only by doing my will. I have nothing more to say. Good-by.”
And without taking the proffered hand, Allen Miller turned away, leaning an elbow on the mantelshelf. His attitude showed that the interview was at an end.
Without another word Roderick Warfield left the room. Outside the soft snow was falling in feathery silence. At a street corner the young man hesitated. He glanced up the road that led to his old home—Allen Miller’s stately mansion on the hill. Then he took the other turning.
“I guess I’ll sleep at the Club to-night,” he murmured to himself. “I can bid Aunt Lois good-by in the morning.”
CHAPTER II—A MESSAGE FROM THE GRAVE
ALLEN MILLER, the rich banker, was alone—alone in the president’s room at his bank, and feeling alone in the fullest sense of the word now that Roderick Warfield had gone, the youth he had reared and loved and cherished as his own child, now turned out of doors by the old man’s deliberate act.
For full an hour he walked slowly back and forth the whole length of the apartment But at last he halted once again before the open grate where some slumbering chunks of coal were burning indifferently. He pushed them together with the iron poker, and a bright blaze sprung up.
Looking deep into the fire his thoughts went back to his boyhood days and he saw John Warfield, his chum of many years. He thought of their experience in the terrible massacre in the Sierra Madre Mountains in the region of Bridger Peak, of a lost trail, of hunger and