Sally of Missouri Part 3

"They mighty fond of each other, though. Seems like she's not in a hurry to marry and leave her pappy."

"Wall naow, I shouldn't be s'prised ef Miss Sally never did git married, talkin' abaout marryin'. 'Twould not s'prise me a-tall, 'twouldn't." Mr.

Quin Beasley was talking. Mr. Beasley was the keeper of the Grange store and admittedly a man of fine conversational powers. His jaws worked on and he seemed able to get nutriment out of his ruminations long after a cow would have gone back to gra.s.s hungrily. "Aint sayin' I never am s'prised, becuz am, but do say that that wouldn't s'prise me, an' no more would it." Mr. Beasley brought his jaws in from their loose meanderings just as the clatter of a horse's hoofs became audible down the side street that, a little way along, became the road to Poetical.

"Name the comer, Beasley. Up to the sugar-tree about now. Name-er, name-er!" The challenger took from his pocket a huge horn knife, covered it with his hand and shook it in the face of Mr. Beasley, who responsively got his hand into his pocket and drew forth a knife, which he held covered after the manner of his opponent.

"Unsight, unseen," said Mr. Beasley. "It's Price Mason's pony."

The challenger chuckled deprecatingly over the carelessness of judgment evinced: "Price Mason's pony comes down with a hippety-hop," he remarked pityingly--"lemme listen--it's--no, taint, aint favorin' his right front foot--it's--wy!" the challenger suddenly twisted his head to one side and held it there like a lean-crawed chicken deciding where to peck.

Simultaneously the other men glanced down the side street where it came into the Square, and when someone said, or whistled, "Wy, who the h-e-double-l _is_ it?" everybody was waiting for an answer.

They had not long to wait. The horseman in question galloped straight toward the group and drew rein in front of them only a few minutes later. He was a big fellow, broad and lithe of shoulder and chest, and young and alert of face.

"Gentlemen," he called from his horse's back, "I want to find Mr.

Crittenton Madeira. Ah!" he laughed, a deep, rich note, as he saw the gold and black sign, "gentlemen, I have found Mr. Madeira!" He leaped from his horse and began to tether him to a staple, set in the pavement in front of the Grange.

"Yes," replied a member of the Grange group, all of whom rose sociably, "Crit and Miss Sally,"--the young man laughed again, softly, as though he could not help it,--"Crit and Miss Sally jes went into the bank; I don't reckin they've come out again."

"Miss Sally's come out again," interposed another Granger, "because I seen her."

"It's the father that I want to see," said the horseman, with smiling emphasis, "not the daughter, not Miss Sally." He pa.s.sed through the bank door, still smiling, and the Grange group looked at each other, rife with speculation on the instant.

"Hadn't-a said not, I'd-a said it wuz Miss Sally he wanted to see.

Looks to me like he might be one of her beaux. Wears sumpin the same clothes."

"Looked like a Yank to me."

"Uh-huh, betchew he lets his biscuits cool before he b.u.t.ters 'em."

"Haven't heard Crit say he was looking for a stranger."

"Reckon if you keep up with Crit's business, my friend, you'll have to walk faster."

While the Grangers were wondering, supposing, reckoning, the man who probably let his biscuits cool before he b.u.t.tered them entered the Bank of Canaan.

When the cage for the clerical force had been put into the Bank of Canaan, there was not a great deal of the bank left, so the man stopped where he thought he was least apt to be sc.r.a.ped, in the little s.p.a.ce in front of the Force's window. The Force put his pen behind his ear, and, without waiting for inquiry or request, called off to the rear of the room.

"Mist' Madeira! He's here! Can he come on in? If you'll go right down there"--went on the Force,--"to that door in front of you, you can go through it."

The thing seemed feasible, as the door was half open, so the visitor attempted it. As he reached the door, however, his way was temporarily blocked by a big red-faced man who held out both hands to him and took possession of him with violent cordiality.

"G.o.d bless my soul! Howdy, howdy, howdy!" cried the big man. "Been looking for you for a week. Only last night I told Sally that I wasn't going to look for you any longer. Just eternally gave you up. How in the Sam Hill have you taken so long to get here? Come on in and have a seat."

As he talked, the Missourian led his guest inside a small private office, handed him to a chair and stood up before him, big, colossal, dominating the younger man, or at least meaning to.

"I am very rapidly concluding that you are Mr. Madeira, and that you know that I am Steering," smiled the visitor, sinking into a chair adaptably, though he realised that, for two men who had never seen each other before, the meeting had been unusual. He also realised that, off somewhere in the sphere of imponderable influences, the effect when his hand clasped the big man's hand had been exactly that of the clashing of two swords.

"Oh, G.o.d love you, there's no black magic about my knowing you for Steering--only stranger that's been expected in Canaan for six weeks!"

cried Madeira, "and as for your guessing that I'm Madeira, you don't deserve a bit of credit for it. My sign's out." His manner conveyed that his sign was quite as much his personality as the black and gold letters on the window. "Yes, I'm Madeira, and you are Steering, and we both might as well own up to it. And now what's kept you so long on the road?

How'd you manage to put in a whole week between here and Springfield?"

Madeira seated himself in a swivel chair in front of his desk and eyed his visitor with that aggressive geniality, that tremendous sense of himself, warm and vivid in his face and manner. And, as in the moment when he had faced Missouri from the top of the Tigmore Hills, Steering had a feeling that he was being claimed, absorbed.

"Why, the explanation is of the simplest. At the very last minute, there at Springfield, too late to get a word of advice out to you, I fell in with some fellows who were going to ride across country toward the Canaan Tigmores, and I joined them. They gave out at Bessietown, but I've come every foot of the way over the Ridge on horseback, and alone at that. I wanted to see Missouri, get acquainted with the home of my ancestors, at close range, as it were."

Madeira chuckled. "G.o.d bless you, you certainly went in at the back door to do it," he said. Madeira's G.o.d-bless-you's and G.o.d-love-you's were valuable crutches to his conversation. With them and his bl.u.s.ter he seemed able to cover a great deal of ground.

"And then I didn't hurry," went on Steering, "because I thought, from what you wrote me, that it would, without doubt, be some weeks before that amiable relative of mine could be dragged around to any real attention to our projects."

"Ah, but that's where you missed out!" cried Madeira, a great ring of triumph in his voice. He crossed his legs, leaned back in his chair, and pushed out his chest. "That's where you didn't know C. Madeira. Young man, I've been hammering at Bruce Grierson night and day ever since I got you interested in this scheme,"--Steering looked at Madeira with a little quick motion of inquiry, but Madeira's arrangement of subject and object was evidently advised; Madeira showed that it was by repeating, "ever since _I_ got _you_ interested, I've been trying to get Grierson interested. We couldn't move hand or foot without him, you know that.

The land is his, you know, even though you are the heir apparent, and there was no use trying to do anything with the land without him. I had got you into it without much trouble,"--Madeira paused just long enough to take the cigar that Steering offered him. (Steering could always see better through smoke.) "Yes, I had got you!" cried Madeira, biting off the end of the cigar with a sharp snap of his teeth, "and having got you, the next thing was to get Grierson. Well, I got him, got him since you left New York." He chuckled his spill-over chuckle again, swung around to his desk and took from one of its pigeon-holes an envelope addressed to him in a deep-gouging hand. The expression of geniality lingered about the wings of his nose and the corners of his mouth, as though it had been moulded there by long habit, but his eyes narrowed and the play of light from them was by now like the whisk of a sharp knife through the air. "You know I chased that old fellow all over Colorado with my letters about my scheme to open up the Tigmores, until I got him mad," he said, holding the letter up to say it, as though the contents would be illumined by his saying it. Then he handed it to Steering, who took it from its cover, flapped it open, and read:

"DEAR CRIT:

"Use this power of attorney to open up h.e.l.l if you want to, but don't you write to me.

"Your obedient servant,

"B. GRIERSON."

It was the sort of letter to make a man laugh, and Steering laughed.

Then the phrase "open up h.e.l.l" caught his eye again, like a sign of sinister warning.

"I've never been able to understand," he began with a questioning inflection in his voice, "what's the trouble with the scion of the house of Grierson. Why is he so indifferent to a project for the development of his property that may mean a million to him?"

"Aw, you know he's cracked!" replied Madeira quickly and harshly.

"No, I don't know him at all, you will remember. Never saw him, never had a line from him."

"Well, he's cracked. He fooled around here in the Tigmores for twenty years hunting silver, G.o.d bless you! Spent everything he had riding that hobby, then got another hunch, for zinc this time, borrowed money, sank it, borrowed more, sank that, then got a feeling that he was abused and went away from here declaring that the Canaan Tigmores could slide into the Di before he would ever raise a finger to stop them. That's why he wouldn't write you. I've handled his affairs--what's left of them--for years, and I've had enough trouble handling them, let me tell you." He took the letter from Steering and replaced it in the pigeon-hole. "But I've got him settled now," he said, "and we can go right on--oh! for the matter of going on, things are pretty far on already." He began rummaging through his desk in other pigeon-holes. "I'll just show you what I've drawn up."

Steering found himself unable to keep up with Madeira. He took his cigar from his mouth, conscious of a sensation that he was being jerked along by the hair. He tried to get the best of the sensation by leaning back comfortably in his chair and observing Madeira leisurely. He tried to feel that he was following Madeira voluntarily, that he didn't have to if he didn't want to. When he had quitted New York he had been sustained by an idea that he had, in his correspondence, put before Madeira a plan that had some merit and promise in it, in the way that it got around the terms of a will, under which he was heir apparent to a vast acreage of land whose t.i.tle now rested in another man, his 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. G.o.d 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, G.o.d bless you! you can rely upon liking the things of this kind that I do." Madeira's a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.sed 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, G.o.d 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 G.o.d bless you, I don't care a thing about it. I know that old Bruce Grierson b.u.t.ted 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."