Produced by Mary Starr. HTML version by Al Haines.
RIDGWAY OF MONTANA
(STORY OF TO-DAY, IN WHICH THE HERO IS ALSO THE VILLAIN)
by
WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE
To JEAN
AND THAT KINGDOM
"Where you and I through this world's weather Work, and give praise and thanks together."
CONTENTS
1. Two Men and a Woman 2. The Freebooter 3. One to One 4. Fort Salvation 5. Enter Simon Harley 6. On the Snow-trail 7. Back from Arcadia 8. The Honorable Thomas B. Pelton 9. An Evening Call 10. Harley Makes a Proposition 11. Virginia Intervenes 12. Aline Makes a Discovery 13. First Blood 14. A Conspiracy 15. Laska Opens a Door 16. An Explosion in the Taurus 17. The Election 18. Further Developments 19. One Million Dollars 20. A Little Lunch at Alphonse's 21. Harley Scores 22. "Not Guilty"--"Guilty" 23. Aline Turns a Corner 24. A Good Samaritan 25. Friendly Enemies 26. Breaks One and Makes Another Engagement
CHAPTER 1. TWO MEN AND A WOMAN
"Mr. Ridgway, ma'am."
The young woman who was giving the last touches to the very effectivepicture framed in her long looking-glass nodded almost imperceptibly.
She had come to the parting of the ways, and she knew it, with a shrewdsuspicion as to which she would choose. She had asked for a week todecide, and her heart-searching had told her nothing new. It wascharacteristic of Virginia Balfour that she did not attempt to deceiveherself. If she married Waring Ridgway it would be for what sheconsidered good and sufficient reasons, but love would not be one ofthem. He was going to be a great man, for one thing, and probably avery rich one, which counted, though it would not be a determiningfactor. This she could find only in the man himself, in the masterfulforce that made him what he was. The sandstings of life did not disturbhis confidence in his victorious star, nor did he let fine-spun moralobligations hamper his predatory career. He had a genius for success inwhatever he undertook, pushing his way to his end with a shrewd, directenergy that never faltered. She sometimes wondered whether she, too,like the men he used as tools, was merely a pawn in his game, and herconsent an empty formality conceded to convention. Perhaps he wouldmarry her even if she did not want to, she told herself, with thesudden illuminating smile that was one of her chief charms.
But Ridgway's wary eyes, appraising her mood as she came forward tomeet him, read none of this doubt in her frank greeting. Anything moresure and exquisite than the cultivation Virginia Balfour breathed hewould have been hard put to it to conceive. That her gown and itsaccessories seemed to him merely the extension of a dainty personalitywas the highest compliment he could pay her charm, and an entirelyunconscious one.
"Have I kept you waiting?" she smiled, giving him her hand.
His answering smile, quite cool and unperturbed, gave the lie to hiswords. "For a year, though the almanac called it a week."
"You must have suffered," she told him ironically, with a glance at theclear color in his good-looking face.
"Repressed emotion," he explained. "May I hope that my suffering hasreached a period?"
They had been sauntering toward a little conservatory at the end of thelarge room, but she deflected and brought up at a table on which laysome books. One of these she picked up and looked at incuriously for amoment before sweeping them aside. She rested her hands on the tablebehind her and leaned back against it, her eyes meeting his fairly.
"You're still of the same mind, are you?" she demanded.
"Oh! very much."
She lifted herself to the table, crossing her feet and dangling themirresponsibly. "We might as well be comfy while we talk;" and sheindicated, by a nod, a chair.
"Thanks. If you don't mind, I think I'll take it standing."
She did not seem in any hurry to begin, and Ridgway gave evidence of nodesire to hasten her. But presently he said, with a little laugh thatseemed to offer her inclusion in the joke:
"I'm on the anxious seat, you know--waiting to find out whether I'm tobe the happiest man alive."
"You know as much about it as I do." She echoed his laugh ruefully."I'm still as much at sea as I was last week. I couldn't tell then, andI can't now."
"No news is good news, they say."
"I don't want to marry you a bit, but you're a great catch, as you arevery well aware."
"I suppose I am rather a catch," he agreed, the shadow of a smile atthe corners of his mouth.
"It isn't only your money; though, of course, that's a temptation," sheadmitted audaciously.
"I'm glad it's not only my money." He could laugh with her about itbecause he was shrewd enough to understand that it was not at all hiswealth. Her cool frankness might have frightened away another man. Itmerely served to interest Ridgway. For, with all his strength, he was avain man, always ready to talk of himself. He spent a good deal of hisspare time interpreting himself to attractive and attracted young women.
Her gaze fastened on the tip of her suede toe, apparently studying itattentively. "It would be a gratification to my vanity to parade you asthe captive of my bow and spear. You're such a magnificent specimen,such a berserk in broadcloth. Still. I shan't marry you if I can helpit--but, then, I'm not sure that I can help it. Of course, I disapproveof you entirely, but you're rather fascinating, you know." Her eyetraveled slowly up to his, appraising the masterful lines of his squarefigure, the dominant strength of his close-shut mouth and resoluteeyes. "Perhaps 'fascinating' isn't just the word, but I can't helpbeing interested in you, whether I like you or not. I suppose youalways get what you want very badly?" she flung out by way of question.
"That's what I'm trying to discover"--he smiled.
"There are things to be considered both ways," she said, taking himinto her confidence. "You trample on others. How do I know you wouldn'ttread on me?"
"That would be one of the risks you would take," he agreed impersonally.
"I shouldn't like that at all. If I married you it would be because asyour wife I should have so many opportunities. I should expect to doexactly as I please. I shouldn't want you to interfere with me, thoughI should want to be able to influence you."
"Nothing could be fairer than that," was his amiably ironical comment.
"You see, I don't know you--not really--and they say all sorts ofthings about you."
"They don't say I am a quitter, do they?"
She leaned forward, chin in hand and elbow on knee. It was a part ofthe accent of her distinction that as a rebel she was both demure anddaring. "I wonder if I might ask you some questions--the intimate kindthat people think but don't say--at least, they don't say them to you."
"It would be a pleasure to me to be put on the witness-stand. I shouldprobably pick up some interesting side-lights about myself."
"Very well." Her eyes danced with excitement. "You're what they call abuccaneer of business, aren't you?"
Here were certainly diverting pastimes. "I believe I have been calledthat; but, then, I've had the hardest names in the dictionary thrown atme so often that I can't be sure."
"I suppose you are perfectly unscrupulous in a business way--stop atnothing to gain your point?"
He took her impudence smilingly.
"'Unscrupulous' isn't the word I use when I explain myself to myself,but as an unflattered description, such as one my enemies might use todescribe me, I dare say it is fairly accurate."
"I wonder why. Do you dispense with a conscience entirely?"
"Well, you see, Miss Balfour, if I nursed a New England conscience Icould stand
up to the attacks of the Consolidated about as long as adove to a hawk. I meet fire with fire to avoid being wiped off the mapof the mining world. I play the game. I can't afford to keep a buttonon my foil when my opponent doesn't."
She nodded an admission of his point. "And yet there are rules of thegame to be observed, aren't there? The Consolidated people claim yousteal their ore, I believe." Her slanted eyes studied the effect of herdaring.
He laughed grimly. "Do they? I claim they steal mine. It's ratherdifficult to have an exact regard for mine and thine before the courtsdecide which is which."
"And meanwhile, in order to forestall an adverse decision, you areworking extra shifts to get all the ore out of the disputed veins."
"Precisely, just as they are," he admitted dryly. "Then the side thatloses will not be so disappointed, since the value of the veins will beless. Besides, stealing ore openly doesn't count. It is really a moralobligation in a fight like this," he explained.
"A moral obligation?"
"Exactly. You can't hit a trust over the head with the decalogue.Modern business is war. Somebody is bound to get hurt. If I win out itwill be because I put up a better fight than the Consolidated, andcripple it enough to make it let me alone. I'm looking out for myself,and I don't pretend to be any better than my neighbors. When you getdown to bed-rock honesty, I've never seen it in business. We're all ofus as honest as we think we can afford to be. I haven't noticed thatthere is any premium on it in Mesa. Might makes right. I'll win if I'mstrong enough; I'll fail if I'm not. That's the law of life. I didn'tmake this strenuous little world, and I'm not responsible for it. If Iplay I have to take the rules the way they are, not the way I shouldlike them to be. I'm not squeamish, and I'm not a hypocrite. SimonHarley isn't squeamish, either, but he happens to be a hypocrite. Sothere you have the difference between us."
The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company set forth his creedjauntily, without the least consciousness of need for apology for thefact that it happened to be divorced from morality. Its frank disregardof ethical considerations startled Miss Balfour without shocking her.She liked his candor, even though it condemned him. It was really verynice of him to take her impudence so well. He certainly wasn't a prig,anyway.
"And morality," she suggested tentatively.
"--hasn't a thing to do with success, the parsons to the contrarynotwithstanding. The battle is to the strong."
"Then the Consolidated will beat you finally."
He smiled. "They would if I'd let them; but brains and resource andfinesse all count for power. Granted that they have a hundred dollarsto my one. Still, I have elements of strength they can't even estimate.David beat Goliath, you know, even though he didn't do it with a bigstick."
"So you think morality is for old women?"
"And young women," he amended, smiling.
"And every man is to be a law unto himself?"
"Not quite. Some men aren't big enough to be. Let them stick to theconventional code. For me, if I make my own laws I don't break them."
"And you're sure that you're on the road to true success?" she askedlightly.
"Now, you have heaven in the back of your mind."
"Not exactly," she laughed. "But I didn't expect you to understand."
"Then I won't disappoint you," he said cheerfully.
She came back to the concrete.
"I should like to know whether it is true that you own the courts ofYuba County and have the decisions of the judges written at yourlawyer's offices in cases between you and the Consolidated."
"If I do," he answered easily, "I am doing just what the Consolidatedwould do in case they had been so fortunate as to have won the lastelection and seated their judicial candidates. One expects a friendlyleaning from the men one put in office."
"Isn't the judiciary supposed to be the final, incorruptible bulwark ofthe nation?" she pretended to want to know.
"I believe it is supposed to be."
"Isn't it rather--loading the dice, to interfere with the courts?"
"I find the dice already loaded. I merely substitute others of my own."
"You don't seem a bit ashamed of yourself."
"I'm ashamed of the Consolidated"--he smiled.
"That's a comfortable position to be able to take." She fixed him for amoment with her charming frown of interrogation. "You won't mind myasking these questions? I'm trying to decide whether you are too muchof a pirate for me. Perhaps when I've made up my mind you won't wantme," she added.
"Oh, I'll want you!" Then coolly: "Shall we wait till you make up yourmind before announcing the engagement?"
"Don't be too sure," she flashed at him.
"I'm horribly unsure."
"Of course, you're laughing at me, just as you would"--she tilted asudden sideways glance at him--"if I asked you WHY you wanted to marryme."
"Oh, if you take me that way----"
She interrupted airily. "I'm trying to make up my mind whether to takeyou at all."
"You certainly have a direct way of getting at things."
He studied appreciatively her piquant, tilted face; the long, gracefullines of her slender, perfect figure. "I take it you don't want thesentimental reason for my wishing to marry you, though I find thatamply justified. But if you want another, you must still look toyourself for it. My business leads me to appreciate values correctly.When I desire you to sit at the head of my table, to order my house, myjudgment justifies itself. I have a fancy always for the best. When Ican't gratify it I do without."
"Thank you." She made him a gay little mock curtsy "I had heard youwere no carpet-knight, Mr. Ridgway. But rumor is a lying jade, for I ambeing told--am I not?--that in case I don't take pity on you, the lonefuture of a celibate stretches drear before you."
"Oh, certainly."
Having come to the end of that passage, she tried another. "A young mantold me yesterday you were a fighter. He said he guessed you wouldstand the acid. What did he mean?"
Ridgway was an egoist from head to heel. He could voice his own praisesby the hour when necessary, but now he side-stepped her little trap tomake him praise himself at second-hand.
"Better ask him."
"ARE you a fighter, then?"
Had he known her and her whimsies less well, he might have taken heraudacity for innocence.
"One couldn't lie down, you know."
"Of course, you always fight fair," she mocked.
"When a fellow's attacked by a gang of thugs he doesn't pray forboxing-gloves. He lets fly with a coupling-pin if that's what comeshandy."
Her eyes, glinting sparks of mischief, marveled at him with mockreverence, but she knew in her heart that her mockery was a fraud. Shedid admire him; admired him even while she disapproved the magnificentlawlessness of him.
For Waring Ridgway looked every inch the indomitable fighter he was. Hestood six feet to the line, straight and strong, carrying justsufficient bulk to temper his restless energy without impairing itspower. Nor did the face offer any shock of disappointment to thepromise given by the splendid figure. Salient-jawed and forceful, setwith cool, flinty, blue-gray eyes, no place for weakness could be foundthere. One might have read a moral callousness, a colorblindness inpoints of rectitude, but when the last word had been said, itsmasterful capability, remained the outstanding impression.
"Am I out of the witness-box?" he presently asked, still leaningagainst the mantel from which he had been watching her impersonally asan intellectual entertainment.
"I think so."
"And the verdict?"
"You know what it ought to be," she accused.
"Fortunately, kisses go by favor, not by, merit."
"You don't even make a pretense of deserving."
"Give me credit for being an honest rogue, at least."
"But a rogue?" she insisted lightly.
"Oh, a question of definitions. I could make a very good case formyself as an honest man."
"If you thought it worth while?"
"If I didn't happen to want to be square with you"--he smiled.
"You're so fond of me, I suppose, that you couldn't bear to have methink too well of you."
"You know how fond of you I am."
"Yes, it is a pity about you," she scoffed.
"Believe me, yes," he replied cheerfully.
She drummed with her pink finger-tips on her chin, studying himmeditatively. To do him justice, she had to admit that he did not evenpretend much. He wanted her because she was a step up in the socialladder, and, in his opinion, the most attractive girl he knew. That hewas not in love with her relieved the situation, as Miss Balfouradmitted to herself in impersonal moods. But there were times when shecould have wished he were. She felt it to be really due her attractionsthat his pulses should quicken for her, and in the interests ofexperience she would have liked to see how he would make love if hereally meant it from the heart and not the will.
"It's really an awful bother," she sighed.
"Referring to the little problem of your future?"
"Yes."
"Can't make up your mind whether I come in?"
"No." She looked up brightly, with an effect of impulsiveness. "I don'tsuppose you want to give me another week?"
"A reprieve! But why? You're going to marry me."
"I suppose so." She laughed. "I wish I could have my cake, and eat it,too."
"It would be a moral iniquity to encourage such a system of ethics."
"So you won't give me a week?" she sighed. "All sorts of things mighthave happened in that week. I shall always believe that the fairyprince would have come for me."
"Believe that he HAS come," he claimed.
"Oh, I didn't mean a prince of pirates, though there is a triumph inhaving tamed a pirate chief to prosaic matrimony. In one way it will bea pity, too. You won't be half so picturesque. You remember howStevenson puts it: 'that marriage takes from a man the capacity forgreat things, whether good or bad.'"
"I can stand a good deal of taming."
"Domesticating a pirate ought to be an interesting process," sheconceded, her rare smile flashing. "It should prove a cure for ENNUI,but then I'm never a victim of that malady."
"Am I being told that I am to be the happiest pirate alive?"
"I expect you are."
His big hand gripped hers till it tingled. She caught his eye on aroving quest to the door.
"We don't have to do that," she announced hurriedly, with anembarrassed flush.
"I don't do it because I have to," he retorted, kissing her on the lips.
She fell back, protesting. "Under the circumstances--"
The butler, with a card on a tray, interrupted silently. She glanced atthe card, devoutly grateful his impassive majesty's entrance had notbeen a moment earlier.
"Show him in here."
"The fairy prince, five minutes too late?" asked Ridgway, when the manhad gone.
For answer she handed him the card, yet he thought the pink thatflushed her cheek was something more pronounced than usual. But he waswilling to admit there might be a choice of reasons for that.
"Lyndon Hobart" was the name he read.
"I think the Consolidated is going to have its innings. I should liketo stay, of course, but I fear I must plead a subsequent engagement andleave the field to the enemy."
Pronouncing "Mr. Hobart" without emphasis, the butler vanished. Thenewcomer came forward with the quiet assurance of the born aristocrat.He was a slender, well-knit man, dressed fastidiously, with clear-cut,classical features; cool, keen eyes, and a gentle, you-be-damned mannerto his inferiors. Beside him Ridgway bulked too large, too florid. Hisease seemed a little obvious, his prosperity overemphasized. Even hisvoice, strong and reliant, lacked the tone of gentle blood that Hobarthad inherited with his nice taste.
When Miss Balfour said: "I think you know each other," the manager ofthe Consolidated bowed with stiff formality, but his rival laughedgenially and said: "Oh, yes, I know Mr. Hobart." The geniality wasgenuine enough, but through it ran a note of contempt. Hobart read init a veiled taunt. To him it seemed to say:
"Yes, I have met him, and beaten him at every turn of the road, thoughhe has been backed by a power with resources a hundred times as greatas mine."
In his parting excuses to Miss Balfour, Ridgway's audacity crystallizedin words that Hobart could only regard as a shameless challenge. "Iregret that an appointment with Judge Purcell necessitates my leavingsuch good company," he said urbanely.
Purcell was the judge before whom was pending a suit between theConsolidated and the Mesa Ore-producing Company, to determine theownership of the Never Say Die Mine; and it was current report thatRidgway owned him as absolutely as he did the automobile waiting forhim now at the door.
If Ridgway expected his opponent to pay his flippant gibe the honor ofrepartee, he was disappointed. To be sure, Hobart, admirably erect inhis slender grace, was moved to a slight, disdainful smile, but itevidenced scarcely the appreciation that anybody less impervious tocriticism than Ridgway would have cared to see.