of the rapid and unexpected happenings which had befallen him since his arrival, and at the same time carry on a conversation with the rumbling-voiced originator of Snake's Fall boom.
"At one time I guessed I'd bumped right into the hands of the Philistines," he said. "That's when I was – er arriving. Since then a Samaritan got busy my way and dumps me right down in the heart of the Promised Land, which just now seems to be flowing with milk and honey. I set out to view the dull black mountains of industry, and instead I arrive at the sparkling plains of delightful ease. Mr. Mallinsbee, you certainly have contrived to put me under enormous obligation."
Gordon's eyes were pleasantly following the movements of the girl's graceful figure about the plain but neat parlor. "I suppose all offices in the West are not like this, because – "
Mallinsbee rumbled a pleasant laugh.
"Office?" he said, without turning. "That's jest how Hazel calls it. Guess she's got notions since she finished off her education at Boston. She's got around with a heap of 'em, includin' that suit she's wearin'. Y'see, she's my foreman hoss-breaker, and reckons skirts and things are – played out. Office? Why, it's just a shack. Some time you must get around out an' see the ranch house. It's some place," he added with simple pride.
Hazel went up to her father and pretended to threaten him by the neck.
"See, Daddy, you can just quit telling about my notions to – folks. Anyway" – she turned her back to Gordon – "I appeal to you, Mr. Van Henslaer, isn't an office a place where folks transact big deals and make fortunes?"
"That's how folks reckon when they rent them," said Gordon. "Of course, I've known folks to sleep in 'em. Others use 'em as a sort of club smoking lounge. Then they've been known to serve some men as a shelter from – home. I used to have an office."
Silas Mallinsbee turned from his contemplation of the horizon. He was interested, and his shrewd eyes displayed the fact.
Hazel clapped her hands.
"And what did you use it for?" she demanded quizzically.
"I – oh, I – let's see. Well, mostly an address from which to have word sent to folks I didn't want to see that – I was out. I used to find it useful that way."
Mallinsbee's chuckle amused Gordon, but Hazel assumed an air of judicial severity.
"A spirit not to be encouraged." Then, at the sound of her father's chuckle, "My daddy, you are as bad as he. Now food's ready, so please sit in. We can talk easier around a table than when people are dreaming somewhere in the distance on the horizon, or walking about a room that isn't bigger than the bare size to sit in. Anyway, Mr. Van Henslaer, this office is for business. I won't have it disparaged by my daddy, or – or anyone else. It serves a great purpose so far as we're concerned." Then she added slyly, "You see, we're in the throes of the great excitement of making a huge pile, for the sheer love of making it. Aren't we, Daddy, dear?"
Silas Mallinsbee looked up from the food he was eating with the air of a man who only eats as a matter of sheer necessity.
"Say, Mr. Van Henslaer," he said in his deep tones, "I've been a rancher all my life. Cattle, to me, are just about the only things in the world worth while, 'cept horses. I've never had a care or thought outside 'em, till one day I got busy worrying what was under the ground instead of keeping to the things I understood above the ground. Y'see, the trouble was two things," he went on, smiling tenderly in his daughter's direction. "One was I'd fed the ranch stoves with surface coal that you could find almost anywheres on my land, and the other was the fates just handed me the picture of a daughter who caught the dangerous disease of 'notions' way down east at school in Boston. Since she's come along back to us I've had coal, coal, coal all chasin' through my head, an' playing baseball with every blamed common-sense idea that ever was there before. Wal, to tell things quick, I made a mighty big pile out of that coal just to please her. We didn't need it, but she guessed it was up to me to do this. But that didn't finish it. This gal here couldn't rest at that. She guessed that pile was made and done with. She needs to get busy in another direction. Well, she gets to work, and has all my land on the railroads staked out into a township, and reckons it's a game worth playing. The other was too dead easy. This time she reckons to measure her brains and energy against a railroad! She reckons to show that we can match, and beat, any card they can play. That's the reason of this office."
Hazel laughed and raised an admonishing finger at the smiling face and twinkling eyes of her father.
"What did I tell you, Mr. Van Henslaer?" she cried. "Didn't I say he was just a scallywag? Oh, my great, big daddy, I'm dreadfully, dreadfully ashamed and disappointed in you. I'm going to give you away. I am, surely. There, there, Mr. Van Henslaer, sits the wicked plotter and schemer. Look at him. A big, burly ruffian that ought to know better. Look at him," she went on, pointing a dramatic finger at him. "And he isn't even ashamed. He's laughing. Now listen to me. I'm going to tell you my version. He's a rancher all right, all right. He's been satisfied with that all his life, and prosperity's never turned him down. Then one day he found coal, and did nothing. We just used to talk of it, that was all. Then another day along comes a friend, a very, very old friend and neighbor, whom he's often helped. He came along and got my daddy to sell him a certain patch of grazing – just to help him out, he said. He was a poor man, and my big-hearted daddy sold it him at a rock-bottom price to make it easy for him. Three months later they were mining coal on it – anthracite coal. That fellow made a nice pile out of it. He'd bluffed my daddy, and my daddy takes a bluff from no man. Well, say, he just nearly went crazy being bested that way, and he said to me – these were his words: 'Come on, my gal, you and me are just goin' to show folks what we're made of. If there's money in my land we're going to make all we need before anyone gets home on us. I'm goin' to show 'em I'm a match for the best sharks our country can produce – and that's some goin'.' There sits the money-spinner. There! Look at him; he's self-confessed. I'm just his clerk, or decoy, or – or any old thing he needs to help him in his wicked, wicked schemes!"
Mallinsbee sat chuckling at his daughter's charge, and Gordon, watching him, laughed in chorus.
"I'm kind of sorry, Mr. Mallinsbee, to have had to listen to such a tale," he said at last, with pretended seriousness, "but I guess you're charged, tried, convicted and sentenced. Seeing there's just two of you, it's up to me to give the verdict Guilty!" he declared. "Have you any reason to show why sentence should not be passed upon you? No? Very well, then. I sentence you to make that pile, without fail, in a given time. Say six months. Failing which you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that you have assisted in the ruin of an innocent life."
In the midst of the lightness of the moment Gordon had suddenly taken a resolve. It was one of those quick, impulsive resolves which were entirely characteristic of him. There was nothing quite clear in his mind as to any reason in his decision. He was caught in the enthusiasm of his admiration of the fair oval face of his hostess, whose unconventional camaraderie so appealed to his wholesome nature; he was caught by the radiance of her sunny smile, by the laughing depths of her perfect hazel eyes. Nor was the manner of the man, her father, without effect upon his responsive, simple nature.
But his sentence on Silas Mallinsbee had caught and held both father's and daughter's attention, and excited their curiosity.
"Why six months?" smiled Hazel.
"Say, it's sure some time limit," growled Mallinsbee.
Gordon assumed an air of judicial severity.
"Is the court to be questioned upon its powers?" he demanded. "There is a law of 'contempt,'" he added warningly.
But his warning was without effect.
"And the innocent's ruin?" demanded Hazel.
