Part 5

"Well, Throcker, my boy, my ledge of Cherokee runs up here from the Canaan Tigmores, d'you know that?" said Madeira. He put his thumbs in his pockets and rocked upon the balls of his feet with a springing, tip-toe movement, as Throcker stopped them in front of a shaft out of whose cavernous depths a cage was swinging toward them. From Madeira's manner you might have inferred that the Cherokee had a Madeira permit to "run up here."

In the cage it was necessary for Steering to extend his arm behind Miss Madeira, as there were no sides between the great cables at the four corners. It was not a very large cage and the number on it crowded it, so that the girl rested lightly on Steering's arm. He could think of no place so deep down that he would not be well satisfied to journey to it like that.

But there came a jolt and a jar, the cage settled upon the stope, and the journey was over. Throcker led the way through a thick underground gloom. Great masses of crush-rock slid under foot, there was a black drip from ceiling and walls, and the excavation was filled with the hollow boom of the water-and air-pumps. With lights flaring uncertainly, they followed the mine-boss out upon a rocky crag that gave upon a deep abyss, faintly illuminated by the flicker of the lamps of the working force below and by torches set in the wall. There was an upward slope in the formation of the ledge from the bottom of the cavern to the spur upon which they stood, but it was made by irregular juttings with ugly, saw-tooth projections. Unless they were very near the edge they could not follow the dim outline of the slope at all. Throcker in his eagerness to point out the ore, shining like specks of gold all up and down the slope, worked dangerously near the edge, but he was accustomed and recovered his balance easily when a piece of his support crumbled away under his feet. Steering, who was agile and athletic, had no difficulty in keeping up with the miner, but Madeira had to be watchful. The miner would not let Miss Madeira come far out on the crag, though he let the men follow him, calling warnings to them as they came.

"From where you stand, Miss Sally," Throcker turned toward the girl who waited below the summit of the crag, "from where you stand up to here, the loose ore is worth about sixty-five thousand dollars!"

The girl looked up at them responsively. Standing there under the strange flickering light of her torch, with the black folds of the rubber coat swathing her, her face, with its fine eyes, was cut out for Steering sharp as a cameo.

"I am delighted for your sake, Mr. Throcker," she called gaily, but with a little uneasiness in her voice. "Father, please be careful."

"Sixty-five thousand dollars! Why, Lord love you, Throcker, a hundred thousand, if one." Madeira, taking charge of the probabilities in the case, moved toward the edge to support his estimate by measuring with his eye the distance down the crag.

"Father, please be careful. Watch him, Mr. Steering,--O-h-h-h!" A woman's cry of horror rang though the tunnelled walls as Madeira's great frame toppled on the edge of the crag, and disappeared.

Throwing out his right arm protectingly, as though in answer to the girl below, Steering had been able to knot the sinewy fingers of one hand about Madeira's collar as the latter fell. The force of the fall brought Steering to his knees, then flat out across the ledge, to get all the purchase power he could. Madeira's weight was terrific, even after Steering had brought his other hand into requisition; and though Throcker sprang to the rescue, Throcker was a weak man and the best aid that he could render was to assume a small share of Madeira's weight by getting down flat upon the ledge, after Steering's fashion. In the black hole below the miners saw what had happened and two burly men began to clamber up the treacherous slope.

"Gently, boys, gently," warned Throcker, as the men came on; he and Steering could feel the rock upon which they lay vibrate; there was a rending and splitting going on all through the ledge. "Can you hold on a minute alone, sir?" gasped Throcker suddenly. "I have a bad heart and it's going back on me,"--he fell weakly beside Steering.

"Yes, I can hold on alone." Steering's face was in the loose crush, and his lips were cut by the rock when he opened them, so he stopped trying to talk.

"Get back, Mr. Throcker--let me get my hands down and help Mr. Steering." It was the girl's voice, and the girl was beside Steering, quiet and capable.

"Oh, you?" said Steering. He had known all these seconds that he was doing this for her, but the strain that he was on had somehow pulled him beyond the comprehension of her as actual; for the last ten seconds she had been rather a big abstraction, a high principle of his soul, a good desire in his heart. To see her there before him was to see abstraction, principle, desire becoming adequately incarnate. "No, you mustn't try to reach down here,--your arms aren't long enough,--the commotion on the edge here is dangerous,--if you will just put something, your handkerchief, under my face where the sharp little rocks are at it,--ah, you should not have done _that_!"--she had slipped her hands beneath his face, and the touch of her fingers was like velvet as she worked away the sticking, stinging bits of ore and rock that worried him. He had not known how chief a part in his sensation of discomfort those bits had played until he could bury his face in the relief of her soft hands. As a matter of fact, with those bits out of his cheeks,--and his face in her hands,--he felt no great discomfort at all. If it had not been for her shivering sigh of relief he would have been sorry when the miners drew Madeira up. Madeira had not spoken, and he was purple as they carried him to a place of safety some distance back on the ledge.

"He is just the sort of man physically who ought not to be subjected to choking experiences," said Steering. One of the miners had brought water, and Steering and Miss Madeira were reviving Madeira with it. Madeira did not seem to be unconscious, but his senses were obtunded, and it was some minutes before he could sit up.

"God bless my soul! God bless my soul!" he said, at last, and shivered. Then he turned to Steering: "My boy, you know how to hold on. I believe you've got as much stick-to-it-iveness as I have." It was his supremest form of acknowledgment, and, in making it, he made, too, an impression upon Steering that he resented the circumstances that compelled him to make it.

They got back to the upper air presently, followed by a cheer from the mine force below. The miners had watched Steering perform one of those supernatural feats of strength and endurance that an onlooker can never explain afterward. Usually the performer knows that the thing was a matter of motive and will, not muscle.

Up in the daylight again, Madeira was quickly himself again. He resumed charge of affairs in his comprehensive way, and though the mine-boss, frightened and remorseful, was limp now, all his enthusiasm gone, Madeira's welled up again strong within him. They went back to their horses without loss of time, and, waving adieux to Throcker and some of his men who had gathered about, they were soon journeying back down the white road toward Joplin. Miss Madeira's hands were in bad condition for driving, Steering thought, but she had taken the reins just the same.

"We are all dilapidated for the matter of that," she said. "Father is as grey-faced as a rat, your cheeks are all cut and pricked--my hands don't count."

Twilight was coming on and a full moon was rising. The great sweep of flat stretched out about them in a mesh of soft light. The ride back was gay, and when they stopped at the house of the Joplin man, who was their host, all three were still in nervously high spirits. A negro servant came out for the horses, and Steering helped Miss Madeira to alight. The girl had drawn off her driving gauntlets, and the ungloved hand that she gave him was scratched and scarred across its brown back.

"Isn't that shameful,--and you did it for me!" mourned Steering.

"Oh, if I could have done more!" she cried breathlessly, "if I could do more,--as much as you have done for me! If I have not thanked you, you know,"--what she was saying was fragmentary and confused, but her eyes were shining sweetly upon him,--"it's because I can't. You must understand that. I never can talk when I am busy feeling. How are your shoulders?"

"I don't know that I have any," replied Steering, with wretched prevarication.

"Come on, Honey, come on." Madeira was at the stone steps of the Joplin house, and the girl took his arm and climbed the steps with him. At the top Madeira turned back to Steering, who was a step behind. "Well, old man, let's have it out now, before we go in and get mixed up with these strangers. What about those shares? Coming in with us, I reckon?" It was like Madeira to select a position of advantage like that, a higher place from which he could look down and dominate, with his daughter beside him, and it was like him to select a moment like that, a moment when the three were close, on the very summit of their friendship and sympathy. "We are to be all together on that deal, aren't we?"

Though the girl, her arm linked through her father's, was waiting for his answer, and though Steering saw that she expected his acquiescence as the right and natural thing, her influence upon him, despite that, was all for the rejection of Madeira's proposition. She looked so young, so straight, so honest, that, as an influence, she was ranged against Madeira, even though, in her ignorance, she imagined herself to be in harmony with him. Steering, looking at her first and Madeira next, knew that she really fashioned his answer, that it was really all because of her that his words came, swiftly, earnestly:

"Don't allot me any shares at all, Mr. Madeira. I have decided not to go into the company."

Madeira emitted a breezy "All right. God bless you, all right." The girl looked sorry and puzzled. Steering came on up the steps behind them, with a sense of mingled elation and sadness, and the three passed through the door of the Joplin man's house.

_Chapter Six_

FATHER AND DAUGHTER

Madeira Place was the old Peele Farm, whose square brick house had been the boast of Canaan township ever since it had been put up,--out of brick hauled by team across three counties,--by the man who had established, but failed, despite his effort, to make permanent the fortunes of his family. When the grandnephew, Bruce Grierson, came on, the brick house was plastered with a mortgage that somehow passed eventually into the hands of the then alert young sapling land-agent, Crittenton Madeira. Crittenton took the house, and, by and by, Bruce Grierson, the second, took himself, with money borrowed from Madeira, out of Canaan, never to return. It was not long after this that Crittenton Madeira, who was still a slight man, with a young wife and a pretty baby out at the brick house, began to be named "our esteemed fellow townsman" by the _Canaan Call_. Madeira built a hotel for Canaan, promoted the Canaan Short Line, and established the Bank of Canaan. His wife died, and his little girl grew, and he became large of girth. It was not until his daughter was twelve that he had to share honours with anyone as the foremost personage of Tigmore County. At twelve the daughter began to show that she had inherited her father's vitality, though the sphere of her activities was different. He bought and sold and made money. She lassoed heifers, broke colts, and rode up and down the Di in rickety skiffs. The community took as much pride in her adventures as it did in his achievements.

The Madeiras were very happy together all through those days, and very proud of each other. She recognised that her father was superior to the Canaan men, that they did what he told them to do, and he recognised that she was the most wonderful child, and the most beautiful, that had ever come into the world. His convictions on that score were so profound that they seemed to him something surer and bigger than the customary paternal pride and affection. As the girl grew older he spent a great deal of his money on her education and pleasure--at first blindly, guided only by a big impulse to have her as good as the best, an impulse that resulted in some funnily pathetic scenes where the little girl, frightfully over-dressed, wandered through the St. Louis shops, holding to the big man's finger, trying to think up something else that she might possibly want. Later, under the girl's own direction, the money went to better purpose.

His daughter's way of spending the money early became, in Madeira's manner of getting at the thing, a sort of balance-wheel to his way of making it. Although he had made money in the same way before she was born, and although he would have made it in the same way had she never been born, he grew to like the feeling that what he did he did for her, and that his desire to make money had a soul in his desire to have her spend it. This feeling was in the ascendant always when he was with her. Unconsciously she fanned it within him. She had spent her young life couched rosily on his love for her and hers for him; at home she was lonely; at home Madeira was well-nigh perfect, and the girl's imagination made all her ideals live in the big, handsome, assertive man who was at once father to her and hero. Perceiving this, Madeira, with her, entered into a sort of world of make-believe, and, with her, was sometimes able to take himself for what she held him, a man whose honour matched his ability, and, with her, sometimes surprised in himself the little glow that she seemed to get when she was profoundly appreciating him.

One Sunday afternoon they were sitting, father and daughter, in the garden, behind the brick house, he with a St. Louis paper on his knee, his head bare, his waistcoat loose, his feet in slippers. His chair was tilted back against a crab-apple tree at the side of one of the garden walks. For several weeks his face had been showing some sort of strain, but at this moment he looked comfortable. She had been telling him that she was glad that he had put up the new watering trough in Court House Square, and the way she had talked about it had made him feel sure that he had had some notion, when he did it, of benefiting the community, instead of insuring that the farmers would stop in front of the Grange store, in which he was interested.

She sat on a bench near him, quite idle; her gown, a tawny drapery, whose half-hidden suggestions of blue were like shy spring flowers, was sheathed closely about her; her eyes were following the pale wide river below the garden; her hair, so light that it made her eyes seem lighter, was piled above the warm, creamy tan of her forehead; there was a little drowsy droop on her face; the dusky-gold radiance was all about her.

"Daddy," she said, by and by, "do you know that I swam the Di once?" He laughed sleepily. He remembered. "I wonder if I could do it now--I was pretty awful as a youngster, wasn't I, Daddy?"

"You certainly had a reputation," he admitted.

"Do you know that I still have a good deal of a reputation"--she turned upon him with more directness and a little laughing pugnacity--"as though I were the same terrible child, up to the same riotous tricks as when I was twelve!"

"Hump-mmh, hump-mmh!" He looked at her from under his slanted lids and shook his head, while his big face quivered with amusement. "You haven't given up all your riotous tricks even yet--don't tell me." He spoke with the indulgence that had allowed free rein to her caprices all her life.

"Never you mind, I do precious little that is riotous any more; I am getting used to harness," she made answer, and looked as though she did not mean to be interfered with in the precious little that was riotous that she still clung to, and then looked as though she were threatening herself with sweeping reform. "Go back to sleep, Daddy. You will be in my way presently, anyhow."

"Anybody coming?"

"Your Mr. Steering."

"'My!'" Madeira's face clouded over, and he thrust out his jaw grimacingly. "If he _were_ mine, you know what I should do with him?" he asked, in a sharp voice.

"No, I don't know. What would you do with him?"

"I should send him packing back East. This country don't need,--aw, the people of this country are good enough for the country and the country is good enough for them. We don't need outsiders."

He was so vehement that she regarded him questioningly. "Don't you like him any more?" she inquired, with a little dubious shake of her head.

"I don't like"--Madeira got up and walked back and forth under the crab-apple tree--"I don't like for a man without any practical knowledge or experience to get a lot of ideas about a thing and bring them to a field and try to push other chaps out, other chaps who are already in the field."

"Yes, but----" It occurred to her that she was defending Steering--"but if he brings the ideas, he ought to have the credit for originating the ideas, oughtn't he?"

"No! No!" Madeira's voice rang up, urgent, strident; he did not seem conscious that he was talking to her; he seemed rather to be having something out with himself. The strain of the past weeks had come back to his face. "Plenty of people before this Steering have thought of ore in the Canaan Tigmores. Look at old Grierson himself! Originate the idea! Grierson had the idea before Steering was born! We can get ideas in this country, and work 'em out, too, without any help from outsiders."

"Mr. Steering is not exactly an outsider, is he?"

"Yes, he is, too. He hasn't any more claim to this land now than you have; it isn't any more his business what's done here during Grierson's lifetime than it's Rockefeller's business. Not a bit. Let Steering wait till the land is his."

"Well,"--she was troubled,--"in the meantime, what is old Grierson going to do?"

Madeira seemed to be trying to quiet himself. He went down to the garden fence and looked at the oak forest on the other side of the Di, puckered up his mouth, as though to whistle, but stopped short of it, and came sauntering back toward his daughter. "He is going to do what I tell him to do, Honey," he made answer. "And I'm telling him to put the Canaan Mining and Development Company into the Tigmores after zinc."

"I should think, though," she said then, slowly, "that even if the matter is in your hands now, it would be to your ultimate advantage to have Mr. Steering in with you. He is the next owner, and, if old Grierson should die, whatever work you have done on the Tigmores would go for nothing. I should think it would be almost essential for you and Mr. Steering to be together."

He let his chair down angrily. "There isn't a big enough scheme in the universe to accommodate Steering and me together! He is a blamed idiot," he said doggedly. And it became clear to her that in his bull-headed way he had forged all the links of one of his intense antagonisms. He had been like that all his life; of pronounced personality himself, he had never been able to abide pronounced personality in those with whom he came in contact. He had ridden rough-shod over inferior men all his life; he liked to ride rough-shod; he was never pleased when his path crossed people over whom he could not ride rough-shod. Generally she had accepted his classification of those who opposed him strongly as "blamed idiots"; sometimes with a little of her laughing banter, but usually, his superiority standing out sharp and clear when opposed to the dull Canaanites, endorsing his opinion. "I sort of wish," he went on, with that keen, wire-edged exasperation still sawing in his voice, "that you wouldn't have much to do with that chap. He isn't my kind of people. I shouldn't mind if, now that you've given him a good high swing, you'd let him drop."

"Why, Father! You oughtn't to forget that there was one time in your life when he might have let you drop--and didn't!"

He saw that he had got himself before her in too keen a light.

"Yes, but you don't expect me to let him hold me up by the collar forever, do you, Pet? That's his dog-on way, anyhow--wants to dictate. I can't stand a man who wants to dictate. I think we've had enough of him. That's what I mean, and all I mean." He patted her hands and got up from his chair again. "There comes Samson with the mail," he said nervously.

A negro man rode up through the big gate at the front of the grounds and came on to Madeira, who took two letters from him. "One for you, Sally," said Madeira, "and one for me."

"Oh, from Elsie Gossamer!" she cried, and took her letter and sat, unobservant of him, for several moments, the little frown that his words had brought out still on her brow. Presently she looked up and saw that he had read his letter, and had put it in his pocket; he was tilted back against the crab-apple tree again, his forehead knit, his eyes brilliant, a peculiar fixity in their gaze. "Oh, here!" she cried protestingly, "you look as though you had just decided to become the President of the United States of America! Stop scowling and listen; Elsie is after me again to join her in Europe. She is fairly eloquent with the project----"

He broke in upon her with a sudden intensity of interest: "Do it!" he cried. "It's the very thing. You go. You go and have a good time."

"I don't want to go so awfully," she began hesitatingly. "I've been away from you a lot in the last two years. I don't care so much about it."

"Yes, you do; you go." He was always keen for her pleasure, but in the present case he seemed especially earnest.

"Want to get rid of me, huh?"

"No; you know I'll half die without you. But I am going to be fearfully busy from now on,"--his mouth seemed hot and dry as he talked,--"it will suit better now than ever. You go."