The Rapids Part 12

The upper part of the house was softly lighted and the windows were open. Its gabled roof seemed diminutive compared to the structures which were taking shape close by and, as they looked, there drifted out the sound of a piano. Clark himself was invisible, but his finger tips were talking to the glistening keys. Elsie listened breathlessly.

This was the man within the man who now sat plunged in profound meditation.

Presently the music ceased and Clark's figure appeared at the window.

He was staring at the rapids, and it seemed that as he stared he set up some mysterious communication that linked his own force and determination with their irresistible sweep.

On the way back Elsie was very silent and it came upon Belding with dull insistency that whatever attraction he had hoped to have for the girl had been merged in the fact that, for the present at any rate, he was nothing more than a means of satisfying her sudden and, to him, fantastical interest in the man under whose dominant bidding the color of so many lives was being modified and blended.

VIII.--IRON

A year later a prospector was slowly pus.h.i.+ng his way through the wilderness some seventy miles northward of St. Marys. It was springtime and the air was mild, but, while the ridges were already bare, great banks of snow still lay in the deep folds of the hills where the sun but touched them at noon hour. The endless lacework of naked branches now began to be feathered with tender green, and everywhere the bush was alive with the voices of wild things whose blood was stirred to mating by the soft caresses of the southerly wind.

Thrusting through a patch of tangled undergrowth, the man reached higher ground and, advancing to a hillock, stood with his hat off and his brown face steaming with sweat.

He was of middle age, with short, st.u.r.dy frame, a broad face of pale, copper color, swarthy black brows and a small, stringy mustache. His feet were enclosed in shoepacks, soggy with water, and he was otherwise clad in the nondescript fas.h.i.+on of old bushmen. Around his shoulders were strung a compa.s.s, binoculars and map case, and at his belt dangled a small ax and a prospector's hammer pick. He was torn, scratched, and in a general way disheveled, but the clear glance of the black eyes and the easy grace of his pose proclaimed him fit for action.

He stood for some time while his keen glance searched the country ahead--a frozen sea in which congealed billows of rock thrust up their tumbled heads in a gigantic confusion. Here and there were more definite ridges that took a general trend, but for the most part it was a chaos of rock and timber, slope and swamp, the refuse from the construction of a more attractive country which had been a.s.sembled elsewhere.

Presently Fisette took out his compa.s.s, balanced it in the palm of his sinewy hand and glanced at the needle. As he glanced, this filament of soft iron began to tremble and swing. He stood fascinated. Slowly at first, but gradually with more active and jerky motions, the thing became possessed. It vibrated as though in doubt, then moved off in continued restlessness. Not by any means could Fisette end these vagaries. After a little, a slow light grew in his eyes, his strong face broadened into a smile and, snapping back the compa.s.s lid, he strode down hill.

A quarter of an hour later he was chipping the edges of a ridge of blackish-gray rock from which he had stripped great rolls of damp, green moss. The rock lay exposed and glistening, its polished surface scarred with the scratches of hard stones that once lay embedded in the feet of prehistoric glaciers, but Fisette, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his bushy brows over a tiny magnifying gla.s.s and peering at the sparkling fragments in his palm and balancing their weight, cared nothing for glaciers. He only knew he had found that which he had been seeking for more than a year.

There is no measuring device for joy, and no foot-rule one can lay on emotion, but it is questionable if to the heart of any man comes greater lightness than to that of the one who by stress and endurance in the wilderness, upturns the treasure he has so arduously sought.

These moments are few and rapt and precious, and they glowed in the slow brain of the half-breed Fisette as nothing else had ever glowed.

It was true that he stood to do well and earn independence out of this discovery, but he was conscious at the instant of a reward greater than ease and comfort and money to spend. He had backed himself, single-handed, against the wilderness, and he had won. Again he unrolled from a strip of caribou skin the fragment of ore Clark had given him--the fragment he was to match--and laid it amongst the fresh chippings at his feet. Only by size and shape could he distinguish it.

Now it may be a.s.sumed that Fisette forthwith threw his tattered hat into the air and gave way to noisy manifestations of joy. He did nothing of the kind, for in his hairy breast were combined the practical side of his French father and the noiseless secrecy of an Indian mother. There was much to be done, and he went about it with voiceless determination. First of all he blazed a jack pine whose knotted roots grasped nakedly at the ridge, and marked it boldly with his name and the number of his prospecting license and the date, which latter, he remembered contentedly, was the birthday of his youngest child.

This accomplished, he disappeared in the bush and two hours later reappeared bending forward under a pack strap whose broad center strained against his swarthy forehead. And in the pack were a small shed tent and his camping outfit. Making a tiny, smokeless fire of dry wood, he cooked and ate, stopping now and again to listen intently.

But all he heard was the chuckle of a hidden spring and the insolent familiarity of a blue jay, which, perched in a branch immediately above, eyed the prospector's frying pan with a bright inquiring gaze.

By noon of the second day Fisette had blazed the enclosing boundaries of three claims, along the middle of which for three quarters of a mile he had traced the ridge of ore, and when corner posts were in, he shouldered his pack and, stepping quietly to the river where his canoe was hidden three miles away, began his homeward journey. He paddled easily, squatting in the middle like his ancestors, and feeling a new pleasure in the steady pressure of his noiseless blade. He did not experience any particular sense of triumph, but when, six hours afterward, he saw the glint of Lake Superior around a bend in the river he laughed softly to himself.

IX.--CONCERNING THE APPREHENSION OF CLARK'S DIRECTORS

Move now to Philadelphia, long since linked with St. Marys by a private wire, at either end of which sat the confidential operators of the Company. The seed sown by Clark a few years ago had flourished amazingly. Instead of the austerity of Wimperley's office there was now the quiet magnificence of the Consolidated Company's financial headquarters, tenanted by a small battalion of clerks and officials.

These were the metropolitan evidence of the remote activities in St.

Marys.

To thousands of Pennsylvanians this office was a focal point of extreme interest. From it emanated announcements of work by which they were vitally affected, for Clark had come to Philadelphia at the psychological moment and cast his influence on those who were accredited leaders in the community. He had said that millions waited investment and he was right, for once Wimperley, Stoughton and Riggs had satisfied themselves as to the project and announced their support, money began to come in, at first in a slow trickle, but soon in a steadily increasing flood.

It was recognized that time was required to bring to fruition the various undertakings so rapidly conceived, and Clark's shareholders had in them a certain stolid deliberation, aided, perhaps, by a strain of Dutch ancestry. This kept money moving in a steady stream and in the desired direction. From Philadelphia the attraction spread to outside points. It was noticeable that, with the exception of Pennsylvania, other States did not evidence any appreciable interest. The thing was a Philadelphia enterprise, and to this city from neighboring villages came a growing demand for stock.

Four years before this, St. Marys was practically unknown in Philadelphia, but now at thousands of breakfast tables the morning papers were hurriedly turned over in search of the closing quotation of Clark's various companies. These began to increase in number, and there commenced that gigantic pyramid in which the various stories were interdependent and dovetailed with all the art of the financial expert.

Daily, it might be said, the interest grew, until it seemed that the potent voice of the rapids had leaped the intervening leagues and its dull vibrations were booming in the ears of thousands.

Moving in the procession was one whose training did not permit of wholesale surrender to the cause. Wimperley was a railway man and had, in consequence, a keen eye for results. His normal condition of mind was one in which he balanced operating costs against traffic returns and a.n.a.lyzed the results. And Wimperley was getting anxious. The profits from the pulp mill, for there were profits, had gone straight into other undertakings, and the G.o.d of construction who reigned at St.

Marys demanded still further offerings. This was why Wimperley had persuaded Birch, one of the keenest and most cold blooded financial men in the city, to come on the board. Birch, he reckoned, would be the necessary balance-wheel, and it was safe betting that he would not yield to the mesmeric influence of the man in St. Marys. Now Stoughton and Riggs and Birch had met him in the Consolidated office, and through a pale, gray haze of cigar smoke Wimperley spoke that which was in his mind.

"The thing is going too fast," he concluded. "My G.o.d! How much money has that man spent?"

Birch fingered a straggling gray beard. He was a tall man, lean and silent, with a tight mouth, sallow cheeks and cold eyes. It was said he had never been caught napping, and his was one of those fortunes which are acquired in secrecy. He was neither companionable nor magnetic but he was obviously shrewd and astute and created a sense of confidence which, though chilling, was none the less rea.s.suring.

Birch, like the rest, had met Clark, but now he put the vision of those remarkable eyes out of his head.

"Seven millions and a half up to last Sat.u.r.day."

Stoughton made a thick little noise in his throat. He knew it was something over seven millions, but the figures sounded differently as Birch gave them. Then Wimperley's voice came in.

"Had a letter yesterday, Clark wants to build a railway."

"Why?" squeaked Riggs.

"To bring down pulp wood from new areas which are not on the river. He wants to open up the country generally--says it is full of natural resources."

"Is there any dividend in sight?" demanded Stoughton bluntly.

Followed a little silence and the long thin fingers of Birch began an intermittent tap on the polished table. Presently Wimperley glanced up and smiled dryly. He had not known that Birch understood the Morse code. "Birch has told you," he said.

Stoughton and the rest looked puzzled.

"We can't pay a dividend if we let Clark build this railway."

"Then why build it?"

"Clark claims it is necessary to secure a dependable supply of spruce for the pulp mills, and hard wood for the veneer works. He reckons it will cost two million, and says the Government will help--but perhaps they won't." He broke off, rather red in the face.

"Do any of you fellows remember Marsham?" put in Birch quietly.

Stoughton looked up. "Only too well, what about him?"

"Well, you know he's been gunning for me for years since that Alabama sc.r.a.p in which he got knocked out. Now he's gunning for all of us."

"Why?" demanded Wimperley.

"Because I have the present privilege of being a.s.sociated with you. I had it privately from perfectly reliable sources. Marsham's looking for a hole in the Consolidated, and if he finds one he's going to get busy and you know what that means. So far we're all right because we've got the Dutch farmer behind us and his money is coming in, in a good steady trickle. It's our job to keep it trickling till we get out of the woods into which our prophet has led us."

Wimperley nodded gravely. "That sounds good to me. But I've got something else in my mind."

"Well," snapped Birch, "spit it out."

"I've got to go back a bit to a day you'll all remember, except you, Birch."

"The day of hypnosis?" suggested Stoughton.

"I guess it was, if you like to put it that way. We were satisfied with what Clark told us and what we afterwards saw for ourselves, and we found him three millions, then another and another and so on. Now, as it stands and as it goes, I don't see any end to this thing. It's like throwing money into the rapids at St. Marys--a fresh sweep of water comes and carries it away. You see it glint for a moment and there's apparently no bottom to the river. The trouble with Clark is that he is not equipped with brakes. He can't stop. He's always the roof on one station and, at the same time, contracting for another one still further on. We've got to do the braking, that's all." He turned to Riggs, "How about it?"