canvassing all manner of chicanery possible through statutes made and enacted when his wife came in, flushed and breathless.
“Hugh,” she cried, “I’ve had heaps of fun this afternoon! Madame de Neuville brought me to the Duchesse de Brasnes’ place in that quaint old Faubourg St. Germain, and the Duchesse took such a fancy to me that we are invited for a week-end shoot at her castle, one of the real châteaux on the Loire. You’ll come, of course?”
“Why, yes, Nancy.”
“You say yes as though I had asked you to go to the dentist.”
“I’m a trifle worried, and that’s the fact.”
“What is it? Can I help?”
Marten hesitated; though only for an instant. His wife was more adorable than ever since she had discovered what wonders an illimitable purse could achieve in the boutiques of the Rue de la Paix; but there was ever at the back of his mind a suspicion that she looked on her past life as a thing that was dead, and was schooling herself to an artificial gaiety in these glittering surroundings of rank and fashion.
“The truth is that I am vexed at something which has happened in Colorado – at Bison,” he said.
“You have had no ill news of Dad?” she cried, in quick alarm.
“No, he’s all right. I told you he had sold the ranch. Well, the purchaser is that young engineer, Derry Power.”
He watched her closely; but trust any woman to mislead a man when she knows that her slightest change of expression will be marked and understood. Mrs. Marten’s eyes opened wide, and she had no difficulty in feigning honest surprise.
“Derry Power!” she almost gasped. “What in the world does he want with the ranch?”
“It seems that he contrived to find the main vein which we lost in the Esperanza mine.”
“Oh, is that it?” She was indifferent, almost bored. Her mind was in the valley of the Loire.
“Yes. That idiot Page was kept in the dark very neatly; so he sold the mill at a scrap price – by my instructions, I admit – and now Power and MacGonigal have everything in their own hands.”
Nancy’s eyebrows arched, and she laughed gleefully. “Just fancy Mac blossoming into a mining magnate!” she cried. “But why should this affair worry you, Hugh?”
His hard features softened into a smile – in this instance, a real smile – for he was intensely proud of his pretty wife.
“I hate to feel that I have got the worst of a deal,” he admitted. “But that’s all right, Nancy. We won’t quarrel with old friends at Bison. Run away and write to your duchess while I concoct a cable.”
And so it came to pass that Page, instead of receiving a curt dismissal, was told to place no obstacles in the way of the new venture, but rather to facilitate it by fixing a reasonable price on land and houses not covered by the sale of the mill, should they be needed by Marten’s successors at Bison. In fact, by an unexampled display of good will on the part of his employer, he was bade to offer these properties to Power at a valuation. That somewhat simple though generous proposal had a highly important sequel when Francis Willard, rendered furious by learning how he had been ousted from the ranch, sought legal aid to begin a suit against Power. Even his own lawyer counseled abandonment of the law when the facts were inquired into. Power’s title was indisputable, and Marten’s action in selling the mill, no less than his readiness to make over other portions of the real estate if desired, showed that the whole undertaking had been carried through in an open and businesslike way.
Willard was convinced against his will; but, being a narrow-minded and selfish man, who had not scrupled to imperil his daughter’s happiness when a wealthy suitor promised to extricate him from financial troubles, the passive dislike he harbored against Power now became an active and vindictive hatred. He believed, perhaps he had honestly convinced himself of this, that the young engineer had secured the estate by a trick. It was not true, of course, because he had jumped at the chance of a sale when approached by the Denver lawyer acting for Power. But a soured and rancorous nature could not wholly stifle the prickings of remorse. He knew that he had forced his daughter into a loveless marriage; he could not forget the girl’s wan despair when no answer came from Sacramento to her letters; he had experienced all the misery of a craven-hearted thief when he stole the letters Power sent to Bison until Marten assured him that equally effective measures at the other end had suppressed Nancy’s correspondence also. Because these things were unforgivable he could not forgive the man against whom they were planned. Penury and failing health had driven him to adopt the only sure means by which he could break off the tacit engagement which opposed a barrier to his scheming; but the knowledge that he had sinned was an ever-present torture. A certain order of mind, crabbed, ungenerous, self-seeking, may still be plagued by a lively conscience, and Willard’s enmity against Power could be measured only by his own fiercely repressed sufferings.
“Curse the fellow!” he said bitterly, when the lawyer told him that a suit for recovery of the ranch must be dismissed ignominiously. “Curse him! Why did he cross my path? I am an old man, and I do not wish to distress my daughter, or I would go now to Bison and shoot him at sight!”
So John Darien Power had made at least one determined enemy, and it may be taken for granted that, had he visited the Dolores ranch instead of Denver on that first day in the open air after his accident, no money he could command would have made him undisputed lord of the land and all it contained.
But evil thinking is a weed that thrives in the most unlikely soil. To all appearance, with Nancy wed and the foundations of a fortune securely laid, Willard’s animosity could achieve small harm to Power. Yet it remained vigorous throughout the years, and its roots spread far, so that when the opportunity came they entangled Power’s feet, and he fell, and was nearly choked to death by them.
CHAPTER V
WHEREIN POWER TRAVELS EAST
One summer’s day at high noon a man rode into Bison from the direction of the railway, and, judging by the critical yet interested glances he cast right and left while his drowsy mustang plodded through the dust, he seemed to be appraising recent developments keenly. As the horseman was Francis Willard, and as this was the first time he had visited Bison since leaving the ranch, there were many novelties to repay his scrutiny. The number of houses had been nearly doubled, the store had swollen proportionately, not to mention the Bison Hotel, which had sprung into being on the site of the ramshackle lean-to where once MacGonigal’s patrons had stabled their “plugs,” and a roomy omnibus rumbled to and fro in the main street before and after the departure of every train from the depot.
These unerring signs of prosperity spoke volumes; but it was only when the rider drew rein near the mouth of the Gulch that he was able to note the full measure of Bison’s progress. Deep in a hollow to the left were two mills instead of one, and the noise of ore-crunching rolls was quadrupled in volume. Two long rows of recently erected cyanide vats betokened the increased output of the mine, and, even while Willard sat there, gazing moodily at a scene almost strange to his vision, an engine snorted by, seemingly hauling a dozen loaded trucks, but in reality exerting its panting energy to restrain the heavily freighted cars from taking headlong charge of the downward passage. Another engine, heading a similar string of empty wagons, was evidently on the point of making the ascent; so Willard jogged an unwilling pony into movement again, and entered the Gulch.
Beyond the two sets of rails, nothing new caught his eye here until he had rounded the curve leading to the watershed. Then he came in sight of the original entrance to the mine – a shaft
