The Iron Trail Part 37

She was a bit afraid to pursue her inquiries into the coal subject, for her ideas were fixed, and she feared that O'Neil's activities merited condemnation. In his railroad-building, she believed, he was doing a fine work, but the coal was another matter. Obviously it belonged to the people, and he had no right to lay hands upon their heritage.

She wondered if it would not be possible to omit all mention of him in her coal stories and center attention upon the Trust. It was impossible for her to attack him now, since she had come to understand her feelings toward him. Even so, she reflected with horror that if her articles created the comment she antic.i.p.ated their effect would be to rob him of his holdings. But she took her work very seriously, and her sense of duty was unwavering. She was one of the few who guide themselves by the line of principle, straight through all other considerations. She would write what she found true, for that was her mission in life. If Murray proved culpable she would grieve over his wrong-doing--and continue to love him.

O'Neil had recognized her sincerity, and on the broad subject of conservation he had done nothing to influence her views. He preferred to let her see the workings of the principle and, after actually meeting some of those who had suffered by it, form her own conclusions.

It was for this reason mainly that he had arranged the trip to Kyak.

The journey in a small boat gave Eliza a longed-for opportunity to discuss with him the questions which troubled her. He was uncommunicative at first, but she persisted in her attempt, drawing him out in the hope of showing him the error of his ways. At last she provoked him to a vigorous defense of his views.

"Conservation is no more than economy," he declared, "and no one opposes that. It's the misapplication of the principle that has r.e.t.a.r.ded Alaska and ruined so many of us. The situation would be laughable if it weren't so tragic."

"Of course you blame your troubles on the Government. That's one thing governments are for."

"Our ancestors blamed King George for their troubles, more than a hundred years ago, and a war resulted. But every abuse they suffered is suffered by the people of Alaska to-day, and a lot more besides.

Certainly England never violated her contracts with the colonies half so flagrantly as our Government has violated its contracts with us."

"Of course you exaggerate."

"I don't. Judge for yourself. The law offers every citizen the chance--in fact, it invites him--to go upon the public domain and search for treasure. If he is successful it permits him to locate the land in blocks, and it agrees to grant him a clear t.i.tle after he does a certain amount of work and pays a fixed price. Further, it says in effect: 'Realizing that you may need financial a.s.sistance in this work, we will allow you to locate not only for yourself, but also for your friends, through their powers of attorney, and thus gain their co-operation for your mutual advantage. These are the rules, and they are binding upon all parties to this agreement; you keep your part, we will keep ours.' Now then, some pioneers, at risk of life and health, came to Kyak and found coal. They located it, they did all the law required them to do--but did the Government keep its word? Not at all.

It was charged that some of them hadn't conformed strictly to the letter of the agreement, and therefore all the claims were blacklisted.

Because one man was alleged to have broken his contract the Government broke its contract with every man who had staked a coal claim, not only at Kyak, but anywhere else in Alaska. Guilty and innocent were treated alike. I was one of the latter. Was our money returned to us? No! The Government had it and it kept it, along with the land. We've been holding on now for years, and the Interior Department has tried by various means to shake us off. The law has been changed repeatedly at the whim of every theorist who happened to be in power. It has been changed without notice to us even while we were out in the wilderness trying to comply with the regulations already imposed. You can see how it worked in the case of Natalie and her mother. The Government succeeded in shaking them off."

"That's only one side of the question," said Eliza. "You lose sight of the fact that this treasure never really belonged to you, but to the public. The coal-lands were withdrawn from entry because men like you and the agents of the Heidlemanns were grabbing it all up."

O'Neil shook his head, frowning. "That's what the papers say, but it isn't true. There are twenty million acres of coal in Alaska, and not more than thirty thousand acres have been located. The law gave me the right to locate and buy coal claims, and I took advantage of it. Now it tells me that I have money enough, and takes back what it gave. If it did the right thing it would grant patents to those who located under the law as it then existed and withdraw the rest of the land from entry if advisable. This country needs two things to make it prosper--transportation and fuel. We are doing our best to supply the first in spite of hindrance from Washington; but the fuel has been locked away from us as if behind stone walls. Rich men must be brave to risk their dollars here under existing conditions, for they are not permitted to utilize the mines, the timber, or the water-power, except upon absurd and unreasonable terms. Why, I've seen timber lying four layers deep and rotting where it lies. The Government won't save it, nor will it allow us to do so. That's been its policy throughout. It is strangling industry and dedicating Alaska to eternal solitude.

Railroads are the keys by which this realm can be unlocked; coal is the strength by which those keys can be turned. The keys are fitted to the lock, but our fingers are paralyzed. For eight years Alaska's greatest wealth has lain exposed to view, but the Government has posted the warning, 'Hands off! Some one among you is a crook!' Meanwhile the law has been suspended, the country has stagnated, men have left dispirited or broken, towns have been abandoned. The cost in dollars to me, for instance, has been tremendous. I'm laying my track alongside rich coal-fields, but if I picked up a chunk from my own claim to throw at a chipmunk I'd become a lawbreaker. I import from Canada the fuel to drive my locomotives past my own coal-beds--which I have paid for--and I pay five times the value of that fuel, forty percent of which is duty. I haul it two thousand miles, while there are a billion tons of better quality beneath my feet. Do you call that conservation? I call it waste."

"Fraud was practised at the start, and of course it takes time to find out just where it lay."

"That's the excuse, but after all these years no fraud has been proved.

In administering the criminal law there is an axiom to the effect that it is better for ninety-nine guilty men to escape than for one innocent man to suffer, but the Land Office says that ninety-nine innocent Alaskans shall suffer rather than that one guilty man shall escape. The cry of fraud is only a pretense, raised to cover the main issue.

There's something sinister back of it."

"What do you mean?"

"A conspiracy of the Eastern coal-operators and the transcontinental freight-lines."

"How ridiculous!" cried Eliza.

"You think so? Listen! Since all the high-grade coal of the Pacific coast must come from the East, who, then, would discourage the opening of local fields but those very interests? Every ton we burn means a profit to the Eastern miner and the railroad man. Yes, and twenty per cent. of the heat units of every ton hauled are consumed in transportation. Isn't that waste? Every two years it costs our navy the price of a battle-ship to bring coal to the Pacific fleet, while we have plenty of better fuel right here on the ground. Our coal is twenty-five hundred miles nearer to the Philippines than San Francisco, and twelve thousand miles nearer than its present source. If Alaskan coal-beds were opened up, we wouldn't have this yearly fight for battle-ship appropriations; we'd make ourselves a present of a first-cla.s.s navy for nothing. No, our claims were disputed, and the dispute was thrown into politics to keep us out of compet.i.tion with our Eastern cousins. We Alaskans sat in a game with high stakes, but after the cards were dealt the rules were changed."

"You argue very well," said Eliza, who was a bit dazed at this unexpected, forceful counter-attack, "but you haven't convinced me that this coal should be thrown open to the first person who comes along."

"I didn't expect to convince you. It's hard to convince a woman whose mind is made up. It would take hours to cover the subject; but I want to open your eyes to the effect of this new-fangled national policy.

Any great principle may work evil if it isn't properly directed, and in Kyak you'll see the results of conservation ignorantly applied. You'll see how it has bound and gagged a wonderful country, and made loyal Americans into ragged, bitter traitors who would spit upon the flag they used to cherish."

"Is that the only reason why you came along--just to make sure that I saw all this?"

"No. I want to look at the Heidlemann breakwater. My fortune hangs upon it."

"It's as serious as that?"

O'Neil shrugged. "I'm waiting for the wind. My coal is in the hands of the bureaucracy at Washington, my railroad is in the hands of the wind G.o.d. Incidentally, I'd much rather trust the G.o.d than the Government."

Natalie, who had listened so far without the least sign of interest, now spoke up.

"If the storm doesn't come to your help, will you be ruined?" she asked.

Murray smiled cheerfully. "No man is ruined as long as he keeps his dreams. Money isn't much, after all, and failure is merely a schooling.

But--I won't fail. Autumn is here: the tempest is my friend; and he won't be long in coming now. He'll arrive with the equinox, and when he does he'll hold my fortune in his hand."

"Why, the equinoctial storm is due," said Eliza.

"Exactly! That's why I'm going to meet it and to bid it welcome."

The village of Kyak lay near the mouth of the most easterly outlet of the Salmon, and it was similar in most respects to Hope and to Omar, save that it looked out across a shallow, unprotected bay to the open reaches of the north Pacific. The sh.o.r.es were low; a pair of rocky islets afforded the only shelter to its shipping, and it was from these as a starting-point that the Copper Trust had built its break-water. A trestle across the tide-flats connected the work with the mainland, and along this rock-trains crawled, adding their burdens to the strength of the barrier. Protected by this arm of steel and stone and timber lay the terminal buildings of the Alaska Northern, as the Heidlemann line was called, and there also lay the terminus of the old McDermott enterprise into which Curtis Gordon had infused new life. Both places showed plenty of activity when O'Neil and his two companions arrived, late one afternoon.

Kyak, they found, was inferior to Omar in its public accommodations, and Murray was at a loss to find shelter for the girls until his arrival was made known to the agents of the Alaska Northern. Then Mr.

Trevor, the engineer in charge, looked him up and insisted upon sharing his quarters with the visitors. In Trevor's bearing was no suggestion of an enmity like Gordon's. He welcomed his rival warmly--and indeed the Trust had never been small in its opposition. O'Neil accepted the invitation gratefully.

After dinner he took Natalie with him to see the sights, while Eliza profited by the opportunity to interview Trevor. In her numerous tilts with O'Neil she had not been over-successful from the point of view of her magazine articles, but here at her hand was the representative of the power best known and best hated for its activities in the north-land, and he seemed perfectly willing to talk. Surely from him she would get information that would count.

"Understand, I'm on the side of your enemies," she warned him.

"So is everybody else," Mr. Trevor laughed; "but that's because we're misunderstood."

"The intentions of any Trust warrant suspicion."

He shrugged. "The Heidlemanns are just ordinary business men, like O'Neil, looking for investment. They heard of a great big copper-field hidden away back yonder in the mountains, and they bought what they considered to be the best group of claims. They knew the region was difficult of access, but they figured that a railroad from tide-water would open up not only their own properties, but the rest of the copper-belt and the whole interior country. They began to build a road from Cortez, when some 'shoe-stringer' raised the cry that they had monopolized the world's greatest copper supply, and had double-cinched it by monopolizing transportation also. That started the fuss. They needed cheap coal, of course, just as everybody else needs it; but somebody discovered the danger of a monopoly of that and set up another shout. Ever since then the yellow press has been screaming. The Government withdrew all coal-lands from entry, and it now refuses to grant patents to that which had been properly located. We don't own a foot of Alaskan coal-land, Miss Appleton. On the contrary, we haul our fuel from British Columbia, just like O'Neil and Gordon. Those who would like to sell local coal to us are prevented from doing so."

"It sounds well to hear you tell it," said Eliza. "But the minute the coal patents are issued you will buy what you want, then freeze out the other people. You expect to control the mines, the railroads, and the steamship lines, but public necessities like coal and oil and timber and water-power should belong to the people. There has been an awakening of the public conscience, and the day of monopolized necessities is pa.s.sing."

"As long as men own coal-mines they will sell them. Here we are faced not by a question of what may happen, but of what has happened. If you agreed to buy a city lot from a real-estate dealer, and after you paid him his price he refused to give you a deed, you'd at least expect your money back, wouldn't you? Well, that's the case of Uncle Sam and the Alaskan miners. He not only refuses to deliver the lot, but keeps the money, and forces them to pay more every year. I represent a body of rich men who, because of their power, are regarded with suspicion; but if they did anything so dishonest as what our Government has done to its own people they would be jailed."

"No doubt there has been some injustice, but the great truth remains that the nation should own its natural resources, and should not allow favored individuals to profit by the public need."

"You mean railroads and coal-fields and such things?"

"I do."

Trevor shook his head. "If the people of Alaska waited for a Government railroad, they'd die of old age and be buried where they died, for lack of transportation. The Government owns telegraph-lines here, but it charges us five times the rates of the Western Union. No, Miss Appleton, we're not ready for Government ownership, and even if we were it wouldn't affect the legality of what has been done. Through fear that the Heidlemanns might profit this whole country has been made to stagnate. Alaska is being depopulated; houses and stores are closed; people are leaving despondent. Alaskans are denied self-government in any form; theories are tried at their expense, but they are never consulted. Not only does Congress fail to enact new laws to meet their needs, but it refuses to proceed under the laws that already exist. If the same policy had been pursued in the settlement of the Middle West that applies to this country, the buffalo would still be king of the plains and Chicago would be a frontier town. You seem to think that coal is the most important issue up here, but it isn't. Transportation is what the country needs, for the main riches of Alaska are as useless to-day as if hidden away in the chasms of the moon. O'Neil had the right idea when he selected the Salmon River route, but he made an error of judgment, and he lost."

"He hasn't lost!" cried Eliza, in quick defense of her friend. "Your breakwater hasn't been tested yet."

"Oh, it will hold," Trevor smiled. "It has cost too much money not to hold."

"Wait until the storms come," the girl persisted.

"That's what we're doing, and from present indications we won't have much longer to wait. Weather has been breeding for several days, and the equinox is here. Of course I'm anxious, but--I built that breakwater, and it can't go out."