never tole me.”
Willard laughed disagreeably. He had not forgotten Mac’s peculiarities, one of which used to be blank ignorance concerning any subject on which he did not wish to be drawn.
“By the way,” he said, “why did you give the new mine such a queer name – El Preço – I guess you know it means, ‘The Price’? Why was it called that?”
“It was jest a notion of Derry’s.”
“Rather odd, wasn’t it?”
“Derry’s mostly odd, size him up anyways you hev’ a mind ter.”
“I could have understood it better had he christened the place, ‘The Bargain.’ He shook me up good and hard when he grabbed Dolores for five thousand dollars.”
“He sure had his wits about him, had Derry,” said MacGonigal admiringly.
“And he has gone now to New York, you tell me,” went on Willard.
“East, I said.”
“Well, East stands for New York all the time. Is he making a long stay there?”
“He never said a word. Jest, ‘So long, Mack,’ an’, ‘So long, Derry.’ That’s all thar was to it. Kin I get you a drink? Thar’s a chunk of ice somewhar in the outfit.”
“No, thanks. Time I got a move on. How about those freight cars of yours? Have I a clear road back through the Gulch?”
“Thar’s a half-hour’s off spell right now,” was the prompt answer, and a minute later the resident manager of El Preço mine was watching Willard descend the canyon in the direction of Bison.
“I’d give a ten-spot ter know jest why that skunk kem nosin’ round here,” he mused, gazing contemplatively after the slow-moving mustang and its rider. Then he called the youth who had held the horse during Willard’s brief visit.
“What sort of an Indian air you, Billy?” he grinned.
“Purty spry, Boss, when the trail’s fresh,” said the boy.
“Well, hike after old man Willard, an’ let me know when he’s safe off this yer section.”
Within a couple of hours Billy reported that Willard had entered a train bound for Denver, and MacGonigal blew a big breath of relief. It was not that he had the slightest misgiving as to the effect of Willard’s ill will against either his partner or himself, but he was intensely anxious that Power should not come in contact with anyone who would remind him of the existence of Mrs. Hugh Marten. Power himself never mentioned her; so his faithful friend and trusted associate in business could only hope that the passing years, with their multiplicity of fresh interests, were gradually dimming the memory of events which had altered the whole course of his life.
MacGonigal did not think it necessary to tell Willard that Power had brought his mother from San Francisco soon after the mine proved its worth. Mother and son occupied the Dolores ranch. The presence of the gentle, white-haired woman was a positive blessing to Bison; for she contrived to divert no mean percentage of her son’s big income into channels of social and philanthropic effort in which she took a close personal interest. A library and reading-room had been established; a technical instruction class offered an excellent supplement to the state school; a swimming bath was built close to the mills; two churches were in course of erection; a wideawake theatrical manager at Denver had secured a site for a theater and the township already boasted its ten miles of metaled roadway. In the self-satisfied phrase of the inhabitants, Bison was becoming “quite a place,” and everyone testified that it was to Mrs. Power rather than her son that all these civic improvements were due. Men had even ceased to consult Power himself on such matters.
“You run and see my mother about that,” he would say, with a quiet smile, when someone had endeavored to arouse his sympathy in behalf of a deserving object. “It’s my affair to make the money which she spends. Get her to O. K. your scheme, and it goes.”
In business he was equally unapproachable.
“Put it before MacGonigal,” was his regular formula. “I can’t do a thing without his say-so. But I warn you he is a terror. If there’s a kink in your proposition, he’ll find it, as sure as Jake can run his fingers onto a splint.”
For all that, the stout manager of mine and mill realized his limitations.
Once, and once only, did MacGonigal act in the belief that Power had referred a point to him for final settlement. A glib agent for mining machinery persuaded him to purchase a new type of drill, which proved absolutely useless when asked to disintegrate the hard granite of Colorado. Power laughed when he heard of its failure.
“You must have thought it was meant for cutting cheese, Mac,” he said lightly. But the barbed shaft struck home, and “the terror” bought no more drills without first consulting the man who understood them.
Thus, slowly but effectually, Power contrived to isolate himself from Bison. With an almost uncanny prescience he gave occasional directions in the mine, or suggested some modification in the milling process which invariably resulted in a higher percentage of extraction. For the rest, he devoted his days to the improvement of the stud farm, and his evenings to books. His mother tried vainly to dissipate this recluse trend of thought and habit. On one memorable occasion she invited a friend and her two cheerful and good-looking daughters to visit the ranch for a week. Timidly enough, she had sprung a surprise on her son, warning him of the forthcoming invasion only when it was too late to stop travelers already en route from San Francisco. Then she, like MacGonigal, had to learn her lesson. Derry agreed she had acted quite rightly. He merely expressed a suave doubt that the ladies would enjoy the enforced seclusion of a place like Dolores, but they might appreciate the air. Then he strolled out, and a telegram from Denver apologized for a sudden departure to Chicago. He explained in a letter that he was in need of a number of books, and thought it best to look through the bookstores in person rather than trust to catalogues. He returned two days after the guests had left, and there were no more experiments in that direction. Be sure that an anxious mother had long ago formed a remarkably accurate opinion as to the circumstances attending Nancy Willard’s wedding; but, being a wise woman, she said no word to her son concerning it, and was content to pray that the cloud might lift from off his soul, and that he might yet meet a girl who would make him a good and loving wife. For that is the way of women who are mothers – they find real joy only in the well-being of their offspring. Though this gentle-hearted creature knew that she was risking some of her own belated happiness in bringing about her son’s marriage, she was ready to dare that, and more, for his sake. She longed to renew her own youth in fondling his children. She was almost feverishly desirous of seeing him thoroughly established in a bright and cheerful home before the gathering mists shut him out forever from her sight. So she waited, and watched, and wondered what the future had in store for her loved one, and often, in her musings, she tried to imagine what manner of girl Nancy Willard was that she should have inspired such an enduring and hopeless passion.
The upheaval, when it came, was due to the simplest of causes. Power had foreseen the tremendous industrial development which lay before Colorado, and indulged his horse-breeding hobby on lines calculated to produce a large income wholly apart from the ever-increasing profits of the mine. The state needed horses, which must be strong of bone, with plenty of lung capacity; yet not too heavy, for mountain tracks and dusty valleys are anathema to the soft Belgian. They must be presentable animals, too, symmetrical, of untarnished lineage, and of a type fitted either for saddle or harness, because Colorado was making money in a hurry. Thus, it chanced that, shortly before Willard’s ill-omened visit to Bison, an Eastern agent wrote
