The Law Of Hemlock Mountain Part 14

At midnight Spurrier sat with Harrison in his study and listened to a crisp summarizing of the Russian scheme. It proved to be a project boldly conceived on a broad scale and requiring an amba.s.sador dependable enough and resourceful enough to decide large matters as they arose, without cabling for instructions.

In turn Spurrier talked of his own past doings, and through their cigar smoke the seeming idleness of those weeks a.s.sayed a wealth of exact information and stood revealed as the incubation period of a large conception. Keenly formulated plans emerged from his recitals so simply and convincingly that the greater financier leaned forward and let his cigar die.

Then Harrison rose and paced the room.

"You know something about me, Spurrier," he began. "When I came East they laughed at me--if they deigned to notice me at all. They said: 'Here comes a bushleaguer who thinks he's good enough for the big game. It's one more lamb to the shearing shed.' That's the East, Spurrier! That's c.o.c.ksure New York! They sneer at a Western-bred horse--or a Western-trained prize fighter--and when the newcomer licks the best they've got they straightway let out a holler that they taught him all he knows. Why, New York would die of la.s.situde and anaemia if it wasn't for blood infusions from the provinces!"

Spurrier gazed interestedly at the tall figure of the man with the sandy red mustache, and the snapping eyes, who for all his impeccability of evening dress, might have taken a shovel or pick from a section hand and taught him how to level a road bed.

Harrison laughed shortly.

"They haven't inhaled me so far. I brought only a million with me to this town, and I've got--well, I've got plenty, but I can't call it a day quite yet. There's one buccaneer to be settled with first! He's got to go to the mat with me and come up b.l.o.o.d.y enough to admit that he's been in a ruction. He chooses to pretend that I'm nonexistent, and I won't stand being ignored! I want to leave my mark on that man, and with G.o.d's help--and yours--I'm going to do it!"

"You mean Trabue?" asked Spurrier, and Harrison's head gave a decisive jerk of affirmation while the hot glow of his eyes made his companion think of smelting furnaces.

"That's why this thing of yours interests me. That's why I'm willing to get behind you and back you to the hilt," the big fellow of finance went on. "A. O. and G. are trying to hold others out of this Kentucky field. That proves that they think enough of it to be hurt by having it torn from their teeth. All I need to know is what will hurt them!

If you can take some teeth along with the bone, so much the better."

He paused, then in a voice that had altered to cold steadiness, commanded: "Now, give me your facts."

"At present prices of oil," summarized Spurrier, "the development back of Hemlock Mountain wouldn't pay. With higher market values, it _would_ pay, but less handsomely than other fields A. O. and G. can work. Once the initial cost is laid out, the profit will be constant. The A. O. and G. idea is to hold it in reserve and await developments--meanwhile keeping up the 'no trespa.s.s' sign."

"Doesn't the range practically prohibit railroading?"

"Possibly--but it doesn't prohibit pipe lines."

Spurrier opened the packet he had brought in his overcoat pocket and spread a map under the flooding light of a table lamp.

"I have traced there what seems to me a practical piping route," he explained. "I call it the neck of the bottle. There is a sort of gap through the hills and a porous formation caused by a chain of caverns. Nature is willing to help with some ready-made tunnels."

"Why haven't they discovered that?"

"The oil development of fifteen years ago never crossed Hemlock Mountain. It came the other way."

Harrison stood thinking for a time, then demanded tersely: "Have you secured any land or options?"

"Not an acre, nor an inch," laughed Spurrier. "This is a waiting game.

I don't mean to appear interested. If any man offered to give me a farm I should say it wasn't worth State taxes."

"How do we get the property into our hands then?"

"The buying must be gradual and through men with whom we appear to have no connection."

"And the State charter--how about that?"

"There lies the chief problem," admitted Spurrier. "The charter must come from a legislature that A. O. and G. can, at present, control."

"What," Harrison shot the question out like a cross-examiner, "is the present att.i.tude of the natives toward oil and oil men?"

"Indifference and skepticism." The reply was prompt but the amplification more deliberate. "Once they saw wealth ahead--then the boom collapsed, and they have no longer any faith in the magic of the word 'oil.'"

"I presume," suggested Harrison, "you are encouraging that disbelief?"

Spurrier's face clouded, but only for a moment. "I am the most skeptical of all the skeptics," he a.s.sented, "and yet I'm sorry that they can't be gainers. They are an honest, upstanding folk and they have always felt the pinch of privation. After all they are the rightful owners and development of their country ought to benefit them. Of course, though, to forecast the possibilities would kill the game. We can't take them into our confidence without sounding a warning to the enemy."

"Growing sentimental?" queried Harrison dryly, and the younger man shook his head.

"No," he responded slowly, "I can't afford that--yet."

"And see that you don't," admonished the chief sharply. "Bear in mind, as you have in the past, that we don't want to depend on men of brittle resolution and temperamental squeamishness. We are in this thing toward a definite end and not as humanitarian dreamers.

However----" He broke off abruptly and added in a milder voice, "I don't have to caution you. You understand the proposition."

For some minutes the cigar smoke floated in a silent room, while Martin Harrison sat with the knitted brows of concentrated thought.

Spurrier did not interrupt the mental process which he knew had the heat and power of an ore smelter, reducing to fluid amenability the hard metal of a stubborn proposition. He knew, too, that the fuel which fed the fire was his princ.i.p.al's animosity against Trabue, rather than the possibilities or extent of the loot. This, no less than the mountain vendetta, was, in last a.n.a.lysis, a personal feud and in the parlance of the c.u.mberlands a "war was in ther b'ilin'."

At last Harrison straightened up and tossed away his cigar.

"You are ambitious, Spurrier," he said. "Put this thing over and I should say that all your ambitions can come to realization."

While he sat waiting Spurrier had lifted from the table a photograph of Vivien, appropriately framed in silver. He had taken it up idly because it was a new portrait and one that he had not before seen, but into the gesture the father read a deeper significance. It was as if Spurrier had asked "All my ambitions?" and had emphasized his question by laying his hands on the picture of the girl. That, thought Harrison, was an audacious suggestion, but it was Spurrier's audacity that recommended him.

Slowly the capitalist's eyes lighted into an amused smile as their glance traveled from the younger face to the framed photograph, and slowly he nodded his head.

"_All_ your ambitions," he repeated meaningly, then with the electric snap of warning in his voice he added an admonition: "But don't underestimate the difficulties of your undertaking. You are bucking the strongest and most relentless piracy in finance. You will incur enmities that will stop nowhere, and you must operate in a country where murderers are for 'hire.'"

The threat of personal danger just at that moment disquieted John Spurrier less than the other curtailment of freedom implied in Harrison's words; the tacit acceptance of him as Vivien's suitor. It came to him abruptly that he did not love Vivien; that he wished to remain untrammeled. Heretofore, he had always postponed matrimonial thoughts for the misty future. Now they became embarra.s.singly near and tangible.

But quick on this realization followed another. Here was an offered alliance of tremendous advantage and one not to be ignored. To be Vivien's husband might fail of rapture, but to be Martin Harrison's son-in-law meant triumph. It meant his own nomination as heir apparent and successor in that position of cardinal importance to which he had looked upward as to a throne.

There was no trace of dubiety in his voice as he answered:

"I have counted the handicaps, sir. I'm taking my chance with open eyes."

CHAPTER IX

Sim Colby, after that day when he had slipped through the laurel, had gone back to his own house and waited for the talk of John Spurrier's mysterious death to drift along the waterways where news is the only speedy traveler.

There had been no such gossip and he had dared betray his interest by no inquiry, but he knew it could have only one meaning; that he had failed.

Spurrier was alive, and obviously he was holding his counsel concerning his narrow escape. This silence seemed to Sim Colby an ominous thing indicative of some crafty purpose--as if the intended victim were stalking grimly as well as being stalked. Sim came of a race that knows how to bide its time and that can keep bright the edge of hatred against long-delayed reprisals. It was certainly to be presumed that Spurrier had taken some of his friends into his confidence and that under the mantle of silence over on Little Turkey Tail, these friends were now watchfully alert. The enterprise that had once failed could not be reundertaken at once. Sim must wait for the vigilance to "blow over," and while he waited the rancor of his hatred must fester with the thorn-p.r.i.c.kings of a thousand doubts and apprehensions.

Then he heard one day that Spurrier had left the mountains, and on another day the news was brought that the grand jury had declined to reopen the old issues of the murder case in which Mosebury had escaped justice. Both these things were comforting in themselves, but they failed of complete rea.s.surance for the deserter.

Men said that Spurrier was coming back again, so the day of reckoning was only deferred--not escaped.

The determination with which Sim had set out on his mission of death had largely preempted his field of thought. Now, after weeks and months of brooding reflection, he himself had become only a sort of human garment worn by the sinister spirit of resolve.