human
That is the fourth different excuse you have invented for cutting me out of your visiting list, not counting the repetitions, she gibed, when he had finally fallen back upon the time demands of his work to account for his late neglect of her.
gpt
If I wanted to be hateful I might insist that you haven't given the true reason yet.
human
Perhaps I will give it before I go, he parried.
gpt
But just now I'd much rather talk about something else. Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing all these days when I haven't been able to keep tab on you?
human
Flirting--flirting desperately with Tig, with Lord Falkland, with Mr. Anson, and Mr. Grislow, and that nice boy of yours, Herbert Griffith, and with--no, _not_ with Mr. Leshington; he scares me--makes a face like a wooden image and says: 'Little girl, you need a mother--or a husband; I haven't made up my mind which.' When he _does_ make up his mind I'm going to shriek and run away.
gpt
Who is Lord Falkland?
human
O-o-h! Haven't you met him? He is Tig's boss. He isn't a real lord; he is only a 'younger son.' But we call him Lord Falkland because he has no sense of humor and is always trying to explain. 'Beg pawdon, my _deah_ Miss Massingale, but I'm _not_ Lord Falkland, don't y' know. The--er--title goes with the--er--entail. I'm only the Honorable Pawcy Grammont Penbawthy Trevawnnion.'
gpt
Where does the Honorable All-the-rest keep himself?
human
He stays out at the ranch in the Buckskin with Tig and the range-riders most of the time, I think. It's his ranch, you know, and he is immensely proud of it. He never tires of telling me about the cattle on a thousand hills, or the thousand cattle on one hill, I forget which it is.
gpt
And you flirt with this--this alphabetical monstrosity!
human
Honestly, Victor, I don't; that was only an amiable little figure of speech. You simply _can't_ flirt with a somebody who is almost as brilliant as a lump of Cornish tin ore and, oh, ever so many times as dense.
gpt
Exit Lord Falkland, who isn't Lord Falkland, said Brouillard.
human
Now tell me about the 'Little Susan'; is the Blue-grass farm looming up comfortably on the eastern edge of things?
gpt
Oh, we are prosperous, desperately prosperous. We have power drills, and electric ore-cars, and a crib, and a chute, and a hoist, and an aerial tramway down to the place where the railroad yard is going to be--all the improvements you can see and a lot more that you can't see. And our pay-roll--it fairly frightens me when I make it up on the Saturdays.
human
I see, he nodded.
gpt
All going out and nothing coming in. But the money is all here, safely stacked up in the ore bins. You'll get it all out when the railroad comes.
human
That is another thing--a thing I haven't dared tell father and Stevie. When I was in Mirapolis this morning I heard that the railroad wasn't coming, after all; or, rather, Tig had heard it and he told me. We were digging for facts when you met us on Chigringo Avenue--trying to find out if the rumor were true.
gpt
Did you find out?
human
Not positively. That is why I left the note at your office begging you to come up if you could spare the time. I felt sure you would know.
gpt
It means a great deal to you, doesn't it?
human
It means everything--a thousand times more now than it did before.
gpt
We had no working capital, as I think you must have known. Once a month father or Stevie would make up a few pack-saddle loads of the richest ore and freight them over the mountains to Red Butte. That was how we got along. But when you sent me word by Tig that the railroad company had decided to build the Extension, there was--there was--a chance----
human
Yes,
gpt
A chance that the day of little things was past and the day of big things was come. Mr. Cortwright and some of his associates had been trying to buy an interest in the 'Little Susan.' Father let them in on some sort of a stock arrangement that I don't understand and then made himself personally responsible for a dreadful lot of borrowed money.
human
Borrowed of Mr. Cortwright?
gpt
No; of the bank. Neither Stevie nor I knew about it until after it was done, and even then father wouldn't explain. He has been like a man out of his mind since Mr. Cortwright got hold of him--everything is rose-colored; we are going to be immensely rich the minute the railroad builds its track to the mine dump. The ore is growing richer every day--which is true--and the railroad will let us into the smelters with train loads of it. He is crazy to build more cribs and put on night shifts of miners. But you see how it all depends upon the railroad.
human
Not so much upon the railroad now as upon some other things, said Brouillard enigmatically.
gpt
You say your father has borrowed of the bank--is Mr. Cortwright mixed up in the loan in any way?
human
Yes; he arranged it in some way for father--I don't know just how. All I know is that father is responsible, and that if the railroad doesn't come he will lose everything.
gpt
I don't wonder that the quitting rumor made you nervous.
human
It was, and is, positively terrifying. Father has taken one of the new houses in town and we are to move down next week in spite of all I can do or say. That means more expense and more temptations. I can't tell you how I hate and dread Mirapolis. It isn't like any other place I have ever known; it is cynical, vicious, wicked!
gpt
It is, he agreed soberly.
human
It couldn't well be otherwise. You tell a dozen men they've got a certain definite time to live, and the chances are that two or three of them will begin to prepare to get ready to be sorry for their sins. The other nine or ten will speed up and burn the candle right down into the socket. We shall see worse things in Mirapolis before we see better. But I think I can lift one of your burdens. What you heard in town this morning is a fact: the railroad people have stopped work on the Buckskin Extension. Don't faint--they are going to begin again right away.
gpt
Oh! she gasped.
human
Are you sure? How _can_ you be sure?
gpt
I've given the order, he said gravely.
human
An order they can't disregard. Let's go back a bit and I'll explain. Do you remember my telling you that your brother had tried to bribe me to use my influence with Mr. Ford?
gpt
As if I should ever be able to forget it!
human
Well, that wasn't all that he did--he threatened me--took me to one of the bars in the Niquoia, and let me prove for myself that it was tolerably rich placer ground. The threat was a curious one. If I'd say the right thing to President Ford, well and good; if not, your brother would disarrange things for the government by giving away the secret of the gold placers. It was ingenious, and effective. To turn the valley into a placer camp would be to disorganize our working force, temporarily at least, and in the end it might even stop or definitely postpone the building of the dam.
gpt
Naturally, I saw, or thought I saw, a good reason why he should hesitate to carry out his threat, Brouillard went on.
human
The placer find, with whatever profit might be got out of it, was his only so long as he kept the secret. But he covered that point at once; he said that the 'Little Susan'--with the railroad--was worth more to him and to your father than a chance at the placer-diggings. The ore dump with its known values was a sure thing, while the sluice mining was always a gamble.
gpt
And you--you believed all this?
human
I was compelled to believe it. He let me pan out the proof for myself; a heaping spoonful of nuggets and grain gold in a few panfuls of the sand. It pretty nearly turned my head, Amy; would have turned it, I'm afraid, if Steve hadn't explained that the bar, as a whole, wouldn't run as rich as the sample.
gpt
It is dreadful--dreadful! she murmured.
human
You believed him, and for that reason you used your influence with Mr. Ford?
gpt
No.
human
But you did advise Mr. Ford to build the Extension?
gpt
Yes.
human
Believing that it was for the best interests of the railroad to come here?
gpt
No; doubting it very much, indeed.
human
Then why did you do it? I _must_ know; it is my right to know.
gpt
A few days ago, little girl, I couldn't have told you. But now I can. I am a free man--or I can be whenever I choose to say the word. You ask me why I pulled for the railroad; I did it for love's sake.
human
Oh! she panted,
gpt
Why, Amy, girl! What do you mean? I don't understand----
human
That is it, Victor; _you don't understand_. You deliberately sacrificed your convictions; you have admitted it. And you did it in the sacred name of love! And your freedom--how have you made a hundred thousand dollars in these few weeks? Oh, Victor, is it clean money?
gpt
The 'sacrifice,' as you call it, was made for you, he said, ignoring her question about the money.
human
I merely told Mr. Ford what I should do if the decision lay wholly with me. That is what he asked for--my personal opinion. And he got it.
gpt
Yes; but when you gave it ... did you say: 'Mr. Ford, there is a girl up at the Little Susan
human
Of course I didn't say any such suicidal thing as that! But it is too late to raise the question of culpability in the matter of giving Ford what he asked for. I did it, as I say--for love of you, Amy; and now I have done a much more serious thing--for the same good reason.
gpt
Tell me,
human
Your brother put a weapon in my hands, and I have used it. There was one sure way to make the railroad people get busy again. They couldn't sit still if all the world were trying to get to a new gold camp, to which they already have a line graded and nearly ready for the steel.
gpt
And you have----?
human
I had Levy put the spoonful of nuggets in his window, with a placard stating that it was taken out of a bar in the Niquoia. When I left the office to come up here the whole town was blocking the street in front of Levy's.
gpt
You did this deliberately, Victor, weighing all the consequences? Mirapolis is already a city of frenzied knaves and dupes; did you realize that you were taking the chance of turning it into a wicked pandemonium? Oh, I can't believe you did!
human
Don't look at me that way, Amy, he pleaded. Then he went on, with curious little pauses between the words:
gpt
Perhaps I didn't think--didn't care; you wanted something--and I wanted to give it to you. That was all--as God hears me, it was all. There was another thing that might have weighed, but I didn't let it weigh; I stood to lose the money that will set me free--I could have lost it without wincing--I told Cortwright so. You believe that, Amy? It will break my heart if you don't believe it.
human
You have thrown down another of the ideals, and this time it was mine. You don't understand, and I can't make you understand--that is the keen misery of it. If this ruthless thing you tried to do had succeeded, I should be the most wretched woman in the world.
gpt
If it had succeeded? It has succeeded. Didn't I say just now that the town was crazy with excitement when I left to come up here?
human
God sometimes saves us in spite of ourselves, she said gravely.
gpt
The excitement will die out. There are no placers in the Niquoia. The bars have been prospected again and again.
human
They have been?----