The Valley of the Giants Part 24

"Well," he said, "your query is rather sudden, Judge, but still I can name you a price. I will state frankly, however, that I believe it to be over your head. We have several times refused to sell to Colonel Pennington for a hundred thousand dollars."

"Naturally that little dab of timber is worth more to Pennington than to anybody else. However, my client has given me instructions to go as high as a hundred thousand if necessary to get the property."

"What!"

"I said it. One hundred thousand dollars of the present standard weight and fineness."

Judge Moore's last statement swept away Bryce's suspicions. He required now no further evidence that, regardless of the ident.i.ty of the Judge's client, that client could not possibly be Colonel Seth Pennington or any one acting for him, since only the night before Pennington had curtly refused to buy the property for fifty thousand dollars. For a moment Bryce stared stupidly at his visitor. Then he recovered his wits.

"Sold!" he almost shouted, and after the fashion of the West extended his hand to clinch the bargain. The Judge shook it solemnly. "The Lord loveth a quick trader," he declared, and reached into the capacious breast pocket of his Prince Albert coat. "Here's the deed already made out in favour of myself, as trustee." He winked knowingly.

"Client's a bit modest, I take it," Bryce suggested.

"Oh, very. Of course I'm only hazarding a guess, but that guess is that my client can afford the gamble and is figuring on giving Pennington a pain where he never knew it to ache him before. In plain English, I believe the Colonel is in for a razooing at the hands of somebody with a small grouch against him."

"May the Lord strengthen that somebody's arm," Bryce breathed fervently. "If your client can afford to hold out long enough, he'll be able to buy Pennington's Squaw Creek timber at a bargain."

"My understanding is that such is the programme."

Bryce reached for the deed, then reached for his hat. "If you'll be good enough to wait here, Judge Moore, I'll run up to the house and get my father to sign this deed. The Valley of the Giants is his personal property, you know. He didn't include it in his a.s.sets when incorporating the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company."

A quarter of an hour later he returned with the deed duly signed by John Cardigan and witnessed by Bryce; whereupon the Judge carelessly tossed his certified check for a hundred thousand dollars on Bryce's desk and departed whistling "Turkey in the Straw." Bryce reached for the telephone and called up Colonel Pennington.

"Bryce Cardigan speaking," he began, but the Colonel cut him short.

"My dear, impulsive young friend," he interrupted in oleaginous tones, "how often do you have to be told that I am not quite ready to buy that quarter-section?"

"Oh," Bryce retorted, "I merely called up to tell you that every dollar and every a.s.set you have in the world, including your heart's blood, isn't sufficient to buy the Valley of the Giants from us now."

"Eh? What's that? Why?"

"Because, my dear, overcautious, and thoroughly unprincipled enemy, it was sold five minutes ago for the tidy sum of one hundred thousand dollars, and if you don't believe me, come over to my office and I'll let you feast your eyes on the certified check."

He could hear a distinct gasp. After an interval of five seconds, however, the Colonel recovered his poise. "I congratulate you," he purred. "I suppose I'll have to wait a little longer now, won't I?

Well--patience is my middle name. Au revoir."

The Colonel hung up. His hard face was ashen with rage, and he stared at a calendar on the wall with his cold, phidian stare. However, he was not without a generous stock of optimism. "Somebody has learned of the low state of the Cardigan fortune," he mused, "and taken advantage of it to induce the old man to sell at last. They're figuring on selling to me at a neat profit. And I certainly did overplay my hand last night. However, there's nothing to do now except sit tight and wait for the new owner's next move."

Meanwhile, in the general office of the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company, joy was rampant. Bryce Cardigan was doing a buck and wing dance around the room, while Moira McTavish, with her back to her tall desk, watched him, in her eyes a tremendous joy and a sweet, yearning glow of adoration that Bryce was too happy and excited to notice.

Suddenly he paused before her. "Moira, you're a lucky girl," he declared. "I thought this morning you were going back to a kitchen in a logging-camp. It almost broke my heart to think of fate's swindling you like that." He put his arm around her and gave her a brotherly hug. "It's autumn in the woods, Moira, and all the underbrush is golden."

She smiled, though it was winter in her heart.

CHAPTER XX

Not the least of the traits which formed Shirley Sumner's character was pride. Proud people quite usually are fiercely independent and meticulously honest--and Shirley's pride was monumental. Hers was the pride of lineage, of womanhood, of an a.s.sured station in life, combined with that other pride which is rather difficult of definition without verbosity and is perhaps better expressed in the terse and illuminating phrase "a dead-game sport." Unlike her precious relative, unlike the majority of her s.e.x, Shirley had a wonderfully balanced sense of the eternal fitness of things; her code of honour resembled that of a very gallant gentleman. She could love well and hate well.

A careful a.n.a.lysis of Shirley's feelings toward Bryce Cardigan immediately following the incident in Pennington's woods, had showed her that under more propitious circ.u.mstances she might have fallen in love with that tempestuous young man in sheer recognition of the many lovable and manly qualities she had discerned in him. As an offset to the credit side of Bryce's account with her, however, there appeared certain debits in the consideration of which Shirley always lost her temper and was immediately quite certain she loathed the unfortunate man.

He had been an honoured and (for aught Shirley knew to the contrary) welcome guest in the Penninton home one night, and the following day had a.s.saulted his host, committed great bodily injuries upon the latter's employees for little or no reason save the satisfaction of an abominable temper, made threats of further violence, declared his unfaltering enmity to her nearest and best-loved relative, and in the next breath had had the insolence to prate of his respect and admiration for her. Indeed, in cogitating on this latter incongruity, Shirley recalled that the extraordinary fellow had been forced rather abruptly to check himself in order to avoid a fervid declaration of love! And all of this under the protection of a double-bitted axe, one eye on her and the other on his enemies.

However, all of these grave crimes and misdemeanors were really insignificant compared with his crowning offense. What had infuriated Shirley was the fact that she had been at some pains to inform Bryce Cardigan that she loathed him--whereat he had looked her over coolly, grinned a little, and declined to believe her! Then, seemingly as if fate had decreed that her futility should be impressed upon her still further, Bryce Cardigan had been granted an opportunity to save, in a strikingly calm, heroic, and painful manner, her and her uncle from certain and horrible death, thus placing upon Shirley an obligation that was as irritating to acknowledge as it was futile to attempt to reciprocate.

That was where the shoe pinched. Before that day was over she had been forced to do one of two things--acknowledge in no uncertain terms her indebtedness to him, or remain silent and be convicted of having been, in plain language, a rotter. So she had telephoned him and purposely left ajar the door to their former friendly relations.

Monstrous! He had seen the open door and deliberately slammed it in her face. Luckily for them both she had heard, all unsuspected by him as he slowly hung the receiver on the hook, the soliloquy wherein he gave her a pointed hint of the distress with which he abdicated-- which knowledge was all that deterred her from despising him with the fervour of a woman scorned.

Resolutely Shirley set herself to the task of forgetting Bryce when, after the pa.s.sage of a few weeks, she realized that he was quite sincere in his determination to forget her. Frequent glimpses of him on the streets of Sequoia, the occasional mention of his name in the Sequoia Sentinel, the very whistle of Cardigan's mill, made her task a difficult one; and presently in desperation she packed up and departed for an indefinite stay in the southern part of the State. At the end of six weeks, however, she discovered that absence had had the traditional effect upon her heart and found herself possessed of a great curiosity to study the villain at short range and discover, if possible, what new rascality he might be meditating. About this time, a providential attack of that aristocratic ailment, gout, having laid Colonel Pennington low, she told herself her duty lay in Sequoia, that she had Shirley Sumner in hand at last and that the danger was over. In consequence, she returned to Sequoia.

The fascination which a lighted candle holds for a moth is too well known to require further elucidation here. In yielding one day to a desire to visit the Valley of the Giants, Shirley told herself that she was going there to gather wild blackberries. She had been thinking of a certain blackberry pie, which thought naturally induced reflection on Bryce Cardigan and reminded Shirley of her first visit to the Giants under the escort of a boy in knickerbockers. She had a very vivid remembrance of that little amphitheatre with the sunbeams falling like a halo on the plain tombstone; she wondered if the years had changed it all and decided that there could not possibly be any harm in indulging a very natural curiosity to visit and investigate.

Her meeting with Moira McTavish that day, and the subsequent friendship formed with the woods-boss's daughter, renewed all her old apprehensions. On the a.s.sumption that Shirley and Bryce were practically strangers to each other (an a.s.sumption which Shirley, for obvious reasons, did not attempt to dissipate), Moira did not hesitate to mention Bryce very frequently. To her he was the one human being in the world utterly worth while, and it is natural for women to discuss, frequently and at great length, the subject nearest their hearts. In the three stock subjects of the admirable s.e.x--man, dress, and the ills that flesh is heir to--man readily holds the ascendancy; and by degrees Moira--discovering that Shirley, having all the dresses she required (several dozen more, in fact) and being neither subnormal mentally nor fragile physically, gave the last two topics scant attention--formed the habit of expatiating at great length on the latter. Moira described Bryce in minute detail and related to her eager auditor little unconscious daily acts of kindness, thoughtfulness, or humour performed by Bryce--his devotion to his father, his idealistic att.i.tude toward the Cardigan employees, his ability, his industry, the wonderful care he bestowed upon his fingernails, his marvellous taste in neckwear, the boyishness of his lighter and the mannishness of his serious moments. And presently, little by little, Shirley's resentment against him faded, and in her heart was born a great wistfulness bred of the hope that some day she would meet Bryce Cardigan on the street and that he would pause, lift his hat, smile at her his compelling smile and, forthwith proceed to bully her into being friendly and forgiving--browbeat her into admitting her change of heart and glorying in it.

To this remarkable state of mind had Shirley Sumner attained at the time old John Cardigan, leading his last little trump in a vain hope that it would enable him to take the odd trick in the huge game he had played for fifty years, decided to sell his Valley of the Giants.

Shortly after joining her uncle in Sequoia, Shirley had learned from the Colonel the history of old man Cardigan and his Valley of the Giants, or as the townspeople called it, Cardigan's Redwoods.

Therefore she was familiar with its importance to the a.s.sets of the Laguna Grande Lumber Company, since, while that quarter-section remained the property of John Cardigan, two thousand five hundred acres of splendid timber owned by the former were rendered inaccessible. Her uncle had explained to her that ultimately this would mean the tying up of some two million dollars, and inasmuch as the Colonel never figured less than five per cent. return on anything, he was in this instance facing a net loss of one hundred thousand dollars for each year obstinate John Cardigan persisted in retaining that quarter-section.

"I'd gladly give him a hundred thousand for that miserable little dab of timber and let him keep a couple of acres surrounding his wife's grave, if the old fool would only listen to reason," the Colonel had complained bitterly to her. "I've offered him that price a score of times, and he tells me blandly the property isn't for sale. Well, he who laughs last laughs best, and if I can't get that quarter-section by paying more than ten times what it's worth in the open market, I'll get it some other way, if it costs me a million."

"How?" Shirley had queried at the time.

"Never mind, my dear," he had answered darkly. "You wouldn't understand the procedure if I told you. I'll have to run all around Robin Hood's barn and put up a deal of money, one way or another, but in the end I'll get it all back with interest--and Cardigan's Redwoods! The old man can't last forever, and what with his fool methods of doing business, he's about broke, anyhow. I expect to do business with his executor or his receiver within a year."

Shirley, as explained in a preceding chapter, had been present the night John Cardigan, desperate and brought to bay at last, had telephoned Pennington at the latter's home, accepting Pennington's last offer for the Valley of the Giants. The cruel triumph in the Colonel's handsome face as he curtly rebuffed old Cardigan had been too apparent for the girl to mistake; recalling her conversation with him anent the impending possibility of his doing business with John Cardigan's receiver or executor, she realized now that a crisis had come in the affairs of the Cardigans, and across her vision there flashed again the vision of Bryce Cardigan's homecoming--of a tall old man with his trembling arms clasped around his boy, with grizzled cheek laid against his son's, as one who, seeking comfort through bitter years, at length had found it.

Presently another thought came to Shirley. She knew Bryce Cardigan was far from being indifferent to her; she had given him his opportunity to be friendly with her again, and he had chosen to ignore her though sorely against his will. For weeks Shirley had pondered this mysterious action, and now she thought she caught a glimpse of the reason underlying it all. In Sequoia, Bryce Cardigan was regarded as the heir to the throne of Humboldt's first timber- king, but Shirley knew now that as a timber-king, Bryce Cardigan bade fair to wear a tinsel crown. Was it this knowledge that had led him to avoid her?

"I wonder," she mused. "He's proud. Perhaps the realization that he will soon be penniless and shorn of his high estate has made him chary of acquiring new friends in his old circle. Perhaps if he were secure in his business affairs--Ah, yes! Poor boy! He was desperate for fifty thousand dollars!" Her heart swelled. "Oh, Bryce, Bryce,"

she murmured, "I think I'm beginning to understand some of your fury that day in the woods. It's all a great mystery, but I'm sure you didn't intend to be so--so terrible. Oh, my dear, if we had only continued to be the good friends we started out to be, perhaps you'd let me help you now. For what good is money if one cannot help one's dear friends in distress. Still, I know you wouldn't let me help you, for men of your stamp cannot borrow from a woman, no matter how desperate their need. And yet--you only need a paltry fifty thousand dollars!"

Shirley carried to bed with her that night the woes of the Cardigans, and in the morning she telephoned Moira McTavish and invited the latter to lunch with her at home that noon. It was in her mind to question Moira with a view to acquiring additional information. When Moira came, Shirley saw that she had been weeping.

"My poor Moira!" she said, putting her arms around her visitor. "What has happened to distress you? Has your father come back to Sequoia?

Forgive me for asking. You never mentioned him, but I have heard-- There, there, dear! Tell me all about it."

Moira laid her head on Shirley's shoulder and sobbed for several minutes. Then, "It's Mr. Bryce," she wailed. "He's so unhappy.

Something's happened; they're going to sell Cardigan's Redwoods; and they--don't want to. Old Mr. Cardigan is home--ill; and just before I left the office, Mr. Bryce came in--and stood a moment looking--at me--so tragically I--I asked him what had happened. Then he patted my cheek--oh, I know I'm just one of his responsibilities--and said 'Poor Moira! Never any luck!' and went into his--private office. I waited a little, and then I went in too; and--oh, Miss Sumner, he had his head down on his desk, and when I touched his head, he reached up and took my hand and held it--and laid his cheek against it a little while--and oh, his cheek was wet. It's cruel of G.o.d--to make him-- unhappy, He's good--too good. And--oh, I love him so, Miss Shirley, I love him so--and he'll never, never know. I'm just one of his-- responsibilities, you know; and I shouldn't presume. But n.o.body--has ever been kind to me but Mr. Bryce--and you. And I can't help loving people who are kind--and gentle to n.o.bodies."

The hysterical outburst over, Shirley led the girl to her cozy sitting-room upstairs and prevailed upon the girl to put on one of her own beautiful negligees. Moira's story--her confession of love, so tragic because so hopeless--had stirred Shirley deeply. She seated herself in front of Moira and cupped her chin in her palm.

"Of course, dear," she said, "you couldn't possibly see anybody you loved suffer so and not feel dreadfully about it. And when a man like Bryce Cardigan is struck down, he's apt to present rather a tragic and helpless figure. He wanted sympathy, Moira--woman's sympathy, and it was dear of you to give it to him."

"I'd gladly die for him," Moira answered simply. "Oh, Miss Shirley, you don't know him the way we who work for him do. If you did, you'd love him, too. You couldn't help it, Miss Shirley."