CHAPTER VII
WALLY GETS ORDERS
Macdonald, from his desk, looked up at the man in the doorway. Selfridgehad come in jauntily, a cigar in his mouth, but at sight of the grimface of his chief the grin fled.
"Come in and shut the door," ordered the Scotchman. "I sent for you tocongratulate you, Wally. You did fine work outside. You told me, didn'tyou, that it was all settled at last--that our claims are clear-listedfor patent?"
The tubby little man felt the edge of irony in the quiet voice. "Sure.That's what Winton told me," he assented nervously.
"Then you'll be interested to know that a special field agent of theLand Department sat opposite me last night and without batting an eyecame across with the glad news that he was here to investigate ourclaims."
Selfridge bounced up like a rubber ball from the chair into which he hadjust settled. "What!"
"Pleasant surprise, isn't it? I've been wondering what you were doingoutside. Of course I know you had to take in the shows and cabarets ofNew York. But couldn't you edge in an hour or two once a week to attendto business?"
Wally's collar began to choke him. The cool, hard words of the bigScotchman pelted like hail.
"Must be a bluff, Mac. The muckrake magazines have raised such a rowabout the Guttenchild crowd putting over a big steal on the public thatthe party leaders are scared stiff. I couldn't pick up a newspaperanywhere without seeing your name in the headlines. It was fierce."Selfridge had found his glib tongue and was off.
"I understand that, Wally. What I don't get is how you came to let themslip this over on you without even a guess that it was going to happen."
That phase of the subject Selfridge did not want to discuss.
"Bet you a hat I've guessed it right--just a grand-stand play of theAdministration to fool the dear people. This fellow has got his ordersto give us a clean bill of health. Sure. That must be it. I suppose it'sthis man Elliot that came up on the boat with us."
"Yes."
"Well, that's easy. If he hasn't been seen we can see him."
Macdonald looked his man Friday over with a scarcely veiled contempt."You have a beautiful, childlike faith in every man's dishonesty, Wally.Did it ever occur to you that some people are straight--that they won'tsell out?"
"All he gets is a beggarly two thousand or so a year. We can fix him allright."
"You've about as much vision as a breed trader. Unless I miss my guessElliot isn't that kind. He'll go through to a finish. What I'd like toknow is how his mind works. If he sees straight we're all right, but ifhe is a narrow conservation fanatic he might go ahead and queer thewhole game."
"You wouldn't stand for that." The quick glance of Selfridge asked aquestion.
The lips of the Scotchman were like steel traps and his eyes points ofsteel. "We'll cross that bridge if we come to it. Our first move is totry to win him to see this thing our way. I'll have a casual talk withhim before he leaves for Kamatlah and feel him out."
"What's he doing here at all? If he's investigating the Kamatlah claims,why does he go hundreds of miles out of his way to come in to Kusiak?"asked Selfridge.
Macdonald smiled sardonically. "He's doing this job right. Elliot asgood as told me that he's on the job to look up my record thoroughly. Sohe comes to Kusiak first. In a few days he'll leave for Kamatlah. That'swhere you come in, Wally."
"How do you mean?"
"You're going to start for Kamatlah to-morrow. You'll arrange the stagebefore he gets there--see all the men and the foremen. Line them up sothey'll come through with the proper talk. If you have any doubts aboutwhether you can trust some one, don't take any chances. Fire him out ofthe camp. Offer Elliot the company hospitality. Load him down withfavors. Take him everywhere. Show him everything. But don't let him getany proofs that the claims are being worked under the same management."
"But he'll suspect it."
"You can't help his suspicions. Don't let him get proof. Cover all thetracks that show company control."
"I can fix that," he said. "But what about Holt? The old man won't do athing but tell all he knows, and a lot more that he suspects. You knowhow bitter he is--and crazy. He ought to be locked away with theflitter-mice."
"You mustn't let Elliot meet Holt."
"How the deuce can I help it? No chance to keep them apart in thatlittle hole. It can't be done."
"Can't it?"
Something in the quiet voice rang a bell of alarm in the timid heart ofSelfridge.
"You mean--"
"A man who works for me as my lieutenant must have nerve, Wally. Haveyou got it? Will you take orders and go through with them?"
His hard eyes searched the face of the plump little man. This was a jobhe would have liked to do himself, but he could not get away just now.Selfridge was the only man about him he could trust with it.
Wally nodded. His lips were dry and parched. "Go to it. What am I to do?"
"Get Holt out of the way while Elliot is at Kamatlah."
"But, Good Lord, I can't keep the man tied up a month," protested theleading tenor of Kusiak.
"It isn't doing Holt any good to sit tight clamped to that claim of his!He needs a change. Besides, I want him away so that we can contest hisclaim. Run him up into the hills. Or send him across to Siberia on awhaler. Or, better still, have him arrested for insanity and send him toNome. I'll get Judge Landor to hold him a while."
"That would give him an alibi for his absence and prevent a contest."
"That's right. It would."
"Leave it to me. The old man is going on a vacation, though he doesn'tknow it yet."
"Good enough, Wally. I'll trust you. But remember, this fight hasreached an acute stage. No more mistakes. The devil of it is we neverseem to land the knockout punch. We've beaten this bunch of reformidiots before Winton, before the Secretary of the Interior, before thePresident, and before Congress. Now they're beginning all over again.Where is it to end?"
"This is their last kick. Probably Guttenchild agreed to it so as tolet the party go before the people at the next election without anyapologies. Entirely formal investigation, I should say."
This might be true, or it might not. Macdonald knew that just now theAmerican people, always impulsive in its thinking, was supportingstrongly the movement for conservation. A searchlight had been turnedupon the Kamatlah coal-fields. Magazines and newspapers had hammeredit home to readers that the Guttenchild and allied interests wereengaged in a big steal from the people of coal, timber, and power-sitelands to the value of more than a hundred million dollars.
The trouble had originated in a department row, but it had spread untilthe Macdonald claims had become a party issue. The officials of the LandOffice, as well as the National Administration, were friendly to theclaimants. They had no desire to offend one of the two largest moneygroups in the country. But neither did they want to come to wreck onaccount of the Guttenchilds. They found it impossible to ignore thecharge that the entries were fraudulent and if consummated would resultin a wholesale robbery of the public domain. Superficial investigationshad been made and the claimants whitewashed. But the clamor hadpersisted.
Though he denied it officially, Macdonald made a present to the publicof the admission that the entries were irregular. Laws, he held, weremade for men and should be interpreted to aid progress. Bad ones oughtto be evaded.
The facts were simple enough. Macdonald was the original promoter ofthe Kamatlah coal-field. He had engaged dummy entrymen to take up onehundred and sixty acres each under the Homestead Act. Later he intendedto consolidate the claims and turn them over to the Guttenchilds underan agreement by which he was to receive one eighth of the stock of thecompany formed to work the mines. The entries had been made, the feeaccepted by the Land Office, and receipts issued. In course of timeMacdonald had applied for patents.
Before these were issued the magazines began to pour in theirbroadsides, and since then the papers had been held up.
The conscience of Macdonald was quit
e clear. The pioneers in Alaska werebuilding out of the Arctic waste a new empire for the United States, andhe held that a fair Government could do no less than offer them liberaltreatment. To lock up from present use vast resources needed by Alaskanswould be a mistaken policy, a narrow and perverted application of thedoctrine of conservation. The Territory should be thrown open to theworld. If capital were invited in to do its share of the building,immigration would flow rapidly northward. Within the lives of thepresent generation the new empire would take shape and wealth would pourinevitably into the United States from its frozen treasure house.
The view held by Macdonald was one common to the whole Pacific Coast.Seattle, Portland, San Francisco were a unit in the belief that theGovernment had no right to close the door of Alaska and then put apadlock upon it.
Feminine voices drifted from the outer office. Macdonald opened the doorto let in Mrs. Selfridge and Mrs. Mallory.
The latter lady, Paris-shod and gloved, shook hands smilingly with theScotch-Canadian. "Of course we're intruders in business hours, thoughyou'll tell us we're not," she suggested.
He was not a man to surrender easily to the spell of woman, but when helooked into her deep-lidded, smouldering eyes something sultry beat inhis blood.
"Business may fly out of the window when Mrs. Mallory comes in at thedoor," he answered.
"How gallant of you, especially when I've come with an impertinentquestion." Her gay eyes mocked him as she spoke.
"Then I'll probably tell you to mind your own business," he laughed."Let's have your question."
"I've just been reading the 'Transcontinental Magazine.' A writer theresays that you are a highway robber and a gambler. I know you're a robberbecause all the magazines say so. But are you only a big gambler?"
He met her raillery without the least embarrassment.
"Sure I gamble. Every time I take a chance I'm gambling. So doeseverybody else. When you walk past the Flatiron Building you bet itwon't fall down and crush you. We've got to take chances to live."
"How true, and I never thought of it," beamed Mrs. Selfridge. "What aphilosopher you are, Mr. Macdonald."
The Scotchman went on without paying any attention to her effervescence."I've gambled ever since I was a kid. I bet I could cross Death Valleyand get out alive. That time I won. I bet it would rain once down inArizona before my cattle died. I lost. Another time I took a contractto run a tunnel. In my bid I bet I wouldn't run into rock. My bank wentbroke that trip. When I joined the Klondike rush I was backing my luckto stand up. Same thing when I located the Kamatlah field. The coalmight be a poor quality. Maybe I couldn't interest big capital in theproposition. Perhaps the Government would turn me down when I came toprove up. I was betting my last dollar against big odds. When I quitgambling it will be because I've quit living."
"And I suppose I'm a gambler too?" Mrs. Mallory demanded with a littletilt of her handsome head.
He looked straight at her with the keen eyes that had bored through herfrom the first day they had met, the eyes that understood the manner ofwoman she was and liked her none the less.
"Of all the women I know you are the best gambler. It's born in you."
"Why, Mr. Macdonald!" screamed Mrs. Selfridge in her high staccato. "Idon't think that's a compliment."
Mrs. Mallory did not often indulge in the luxury of a blush, but shechanged color now. This big, blunt man sometimes had an uncannydivination. Did he, she asked herself, know what stake she was gamblingfor at Kusiak?
"You are too wise," she laughed with a touch of embarrassment verybecoming. "But I suppose you are right. I like excitement."
"We all do. The only man who doesn't gamble is the convict in stripes,and the only reason he doesn't is that his chips are all gone. It's truethat men on the frontier play for bigger stakes. They back their betswith all they have got and put their lives on top for good measure. Butkids in the cradle all over the United States are going to live easierbecause of the gamblers at the dropping-off places. That writer fellowhit the nail on the head about me. My whole life is a gamble."
She moved with slow grace toward the door, then over her shoulderflashed a sudden invitation at him. "Mrs. Selfridge and I are doing alittle betting to-day, Big Chief Gambler. We're backing our luck thatyou two men will eat lunch with us at the Blue Bird Inn. Do we win?"
Macdonald reached for his hat promptly. "You win."