The Law of Hemlock Mountain

by Hugh Lundsford

  CHAPTER IV

  Spurrier entered the smoke room and stood for a moment in itsthreshold.

  There were uniforms there, and some men in them whom he had known,though now these other-time acquaintances avoided his eye and thenecessity of an embarrassment which must have come from meeting it.

  But from an alcove seat near the door rose a stocky gentleman, wellgroomed and indubitably distinguished of guise, who had been tearingthe covering from a bridge deck.

  "Spurrier, my boy," he exclaimed cordially, "I'm glad to see you. Iread your name on the list. Won't you join us?"

  This was the man who had rolled away the mountains of official inertiaand saved him from prison; who had stipulated with his daughter thatshe should not write to him in his cell; and who now embraced thefirst opportunity to greet him publicly with cordial words. Here,reflected the cashiered soldier, was poise more calculated than hisown, and he smiled as he shook his head, giving the answer which heknew to be expected of him.

  "No, thank you, senator." Then he added a request: "But if thesegentlemen can spare you for a few minutes I would appreciate a wordwith you."

  "Certainly, my boy." With a glance about the little company whichmade his excuses, Beverly rose and linked his arm through Spurrier's,but when they stood alone on deck that graciousness stiffenedimmediately into manner more austere.

  "I've seen Augusta," began the younger man briefly, "and told her Iwouldn't seek to hold her to her promise. I suppose that meets withyour approval?"

  The public man, whom rumor credited with presidential aspirations,nodded. "Under the circumstances it is necessary. I may as well becandid. I tried vainly to persuade her to throw you over entirely, butI had to end in a compromise. She agreed not to communicate with youin any manner until your trial came to its conclusion."

  The cashiered officer felt his temples hammering with the surge ofindignant blood to his forehead. This man who had so studiedly andsuccessfully feigned genuine pleasure at seeing him, when other eyeswere looking on, was telling him now with salamander coolness that hehad urged upon his daughter the policy of callous desertion. Theimpulse toward resentful retort was almost overpowering, but with itcame the galling recognition that, except for Beverly's bull-dogpertinacity, Spurrier himself would have been a life-termer, and thatnow humility became him better than anger.

  "Did you seek to have Augusta throw me over, without even afarewell--because you believed me guilty, sir?" His inquiry camequietly and the older man shook a noncommittal head.

  "It's not so much what I think as what the world will think," he madeeven response. "To put it in the kindest words, Spurrier, you restunder a cloud."

  "Senator," said the other in measured syllables, "I rest, also, undera great weight of obligation to you, but, there were times, sir, whenfor a note from her I'd willingly have accepted the death penalty."

  "I won't pretend that I fail to understand--even to sympathize withyou," came the answer. "You must see none the less that I had noalternative. Augusta's husband must be--well, like Caesar's wife."

  "There is nothing more to be said, I think," admitted Spurrier, andthe senator held out his hand.

  "In every other matter, I feel only as your friend. It will be betterif to other eyes our relations remain cordial. Otherwise my efforts onyour behalf would give the busy-bodies food for gossip. That's what weare both seeking to avoid."

  Spurrier bowed and watched the well-groomed figure disappear.

  The cloudless days and the brilliant nights of low-hung stars andphosphor waters were times of memorable opportunity and paradise forother lovers on that steamer. For Spurrier they were purgatorial andwhen he realized Augusta Beverly's clearly indicated wish that heshould leave her free from the embarrassment of any tete-a-tete, heknew definitely that her silence was as final as words could have madeit. The familiar panama hat seen at intervals and the curve of thecheek that he had once been privileged to kiss seemed now to belong toan orbit of life remote from his own with an utterness of distance noless actual because intangible.

  The young soldier's nature, which had been prodigally generous, beganto harden into a new and unlovely bitterness. Once he passed her asshe leaned on the rail with a young lieutenant who was going to theStates on his first leave from Island duty, and when the girl met hiseyes and nodded, the cub of an officer looked up--and cut him deadwith needless ostentation.

  For the old general, who had pretended not to see him, Jack Spurrierhad felt only the sympathy due to a man bound and embarrassed by asevere code of etiquette, but with this cocksure young martinet, hishands itched for chastisement.

  Throughout the trying voyage Spurrier felt that Snowdon, the engineer,was holding him under an interested sort of observation, and thissurveillance he mildly resented, though the entire politeness of theother left him helpless to make his feeling outspoken. But when theyhad stood off from Honolulu and brought near to completion the lastleg of the Pacific voyage, Snowdon invited him into his own stateroomand with candid directness spoke his mind.

  "Spurrier," he began, "I'd like to have a straight talk with you ifyou will accept my assurance of the most friendly motive."

  Spurrier was not immediately receptive. He sat eying the other for alittle while with a slight frown between his eyes, but in the end henodded.

  "I should dislike to seem churlish," he answered slowly. "But I've hadmy nerves rubbed raw of late, and they haven't yet grown callous."

  "You see, it's rather in my line," suggested Snowdon by way ofpreface, "to assay the minerals of character in men and to gauge thepercentage of pay-dirt that lies in the lodes of their natures. SoI've watched you, and if you care to have the results of mysuperficial research, I'm ready to report. No man knows himself untilintroduced to himself by another, because one can't see one's self atsufficient distance to gain perspective."

  Spurrier smiled. "So you're like the announcer at a boxing match," hesuggested. "You're ready to say, 'Plunger Spurrier, shake hands withJack Spurrier--both members of this club.'"

  "Precisely," assented Snowdon as naturally as though there had been noelement of facetiousness in the suggestion. "And now in the firstplace, what do you mean to do with yourself?"

  "I have no idea."

  "I suppose you have thought of the possibilities open to a West Pointman--as a soldier of fortune?"

  "Yes," the answer was unenthusiastic. "Thought of them and discardedthem."

  "Why?"

  The voice laughed and then spoke contemptuously.

  "A man's sword belongs to his flag. It can no more be honorably hiredout than a woman's love. I can see in either only a form ofprostitution."

  "Good!" exclaimed Snowdon heartily. "I couldn't have coached you to abetter answer. Are you financially independent?"

  "On the contrary, I have nothing. Until now there was my pay and----"He paused there but went on again with a dogged self-forcing. "I mightas well confess that the gaming table has always left a balance on myside of the ledger."

  "I haven't seen you playing since you came aboard."

  "No. I've cut that out----"

  "Good again--and that brings us to where I stop eliciting informationabout yourself and begin giving it. I had heard of your gamblingexploits before I saw you. I found that you had that cold quality ofnerve which a few gamblers have, fewer than are credited with it, byfar! Incidentally, it's precisely the same quality that makes notablegenerals--and adroit diplomats--if they have the other qualities tosupport it. It's sublimated self-control and boldness. You were usingit badly, but it was because you were seeking an outlet through thewrong channels. So I studied you, quite impersonally. Your situationon board wasn't easy or enviable. You knew that eyes followed you andtongues wagged about you with a morbid interest. You saw chattinggroups fall abruptly silent when you approached them and officers youhad once fraternized with look hurriedly elsewhere. In short, my youngfriend, you have faced an acid test of ordeal, and you have borneyourself with neither the defiance of braggadocio
, nor the visiblehint of flinching. If I were looking for a certain type of specializedability, I should say you had qualified."

  A flush spread on the face of the listener.

  "You are indeed introducing me to some one I haven't known," he said.

  "I know, too," went on Snowdon, "that there has been a girl--and," hehastened to add as his companion stiffened, "I mention her only toshow you that my observations have not been _too_ superficial. Thosequalities which I have catalogued have engaged my attention, becausethey are rare--rare enough to be profitably capitalized."

  "All this is parable to me, sir."

  "Quite probably. I mean to construe it. There are men who originate ordiscover great opportunities of industry--and they need capital tobring their plans to fruition--but capital can be approached onlythrough envoys and will receive only ambassadors who can compelrecognition. The man who can hope to be successfully accredited to thecourt of Big Money must possess uncommon attributes. Pinch-beckpromoters and plausible charlatans have made cynics of our lords ofwealth."

  "What would such a man accomplish," inquired Spurrier, "aside from asort of non-resident membership in the association of plutocrats?"

  "He would," declared Snowdon promptly, "help bridge the chasm betweenthe world's unfinanced achievers, and its unachieving finances."

  "That," conceded the ex-soldier, "would be worth the doing."

  "John Law at twenty-one built a scheme of finance for Great Britain,"the engineer reminded him. "He could come into the presence of a kingand in five minutes the king would urge him to stay. Force andpresence can make such an ambassador, and those things are the veinsof human ore I've assayed in you in paying quantities."

  Spurrier looked across at the strange companion whom chance had thrownacross his path with a commotion of pulses which his face in no wisemirrored into outward expression. It had begun to occur to him that ifa man is born for an adventurous life even the Articles of War cannotcancel his destiny.

  "It would seem," he suggested casually enough, "that this need ofwhich you speak is for fellows, in finance, who can carry the messageto Garcia, as it were. Isn't that it?"

  "That's it, and messengers to Garcia don't tramp on each other'sheels. Yet I have spoken of only one phase of the career I'moutlining. It has another side to it as well, if one man is going tounite in himself the whole of the possibility."

  Snowdon broke off there a moment and seemed to be distracted by somethought of his own, but presently he began again.

  "My hypothetical man would act largely as a free lance, knocking aboutthe world on a sort of constantly renewed exploration. He would be theprospector hunting gold and the explorer searching for new continentsof industrial development, only instead of being just the one or theother he would be a sort of sublimation. His job would sometimes callhim into the wildernesses, but more often, I think, his discoverieswould lie under the noses of crowds, passed by every day by cleverfolk who never saw them--clever folk who are not quite cleverenough."

  "It would seem to me that those discoveries," demurred Spurrierthoughtfully, "would come each time to some highly trained technicianin some particular line."

  Snowdon shook his head again. "That's why they have come slowlyheretofore," he declared with conviction. "That man I have in mind isone with a sure nose for the trail and a power of absorbing readilyand rapidly what he requires of the other man's technical knowledge.It's the policy that Japan has followed as a nation. They let otherswork the problems out over there--then they appropriate the results.I'm not commending it as a national trait, but for this work it's thefirst essential. Having made his discovery, this new type of businessman will enlist for it the needful financial support." He paused againand Spurrier, lighting a fresh cigarette, regarded him through eyesslit-narrowed against the flare of the match.

  "He must be a sort of opportunity hound," continued Snowdon smilingly."He would go baying across the world in full cry and come back to thekennel at the end of each chase."

  Spurrier laughed. "If you'll pardon me, sir," he hazarded, "you make avery bad metaphor. I should fancy that the opportunity hound would dothe stillest sort of still hunting."

  The older man smiled and bowed his head affirmatively.

  "I accept the amendment. The point is, do I give you the concept ofthe work?"

  "In a broad, extremely sketchy way, I think I get the picture,"replied Spurrier. "But could you give me some sort of illustrationthat would make it a shade more concrete?"

  His companion sat considering the question for a while and at lastinquired: "Do you know anything about oil? I mean about itsproduction?"

  "I've been on the Pennsylvania Railroad, coming west," testified theformer lieutenant. "And I've run through ragged hills where on everyside, stood clumsy, timber affairs like overgrown windmills from whichsome victorious Don Quizote had knocked off the whirligigs. Then I'veread a little of Ida Tarbell."

  "Even that will serve for a sort of background. Now, people in generalthink of striking oil as they might think of finding money on thesidewalk or of lightning striking a particular spire--as a matter ofpurest chance. To some extent that idea is correct enough, but thebrains of oil production are less haphazard. In the office of a fewgentlemen who hold dominion over oil and gas hangs a map drawn by theintelligence department of their general staff. On that map are tracedlines not unlike those showing ocean currents, but their arrows pointinstead to currents far under ground, where runs the crude petroleum,discovered--and undiscovered."

  "Undiscovered?" Spurrier's brows were lifted in polite incredulity,but his companion nodded decisively.

  "Discovered and undiscovered," he repeated. "Geological surveys toldthe mapmakers how certain lines and structures ran in tendency. Wherewent a particular formation of Nature's masonry, there in probabilitywould go oil. The method was not absolute, I grant you, but neitherwas it haphazard. Sitting in an office in Pittsburgh a certain mandrew on his chart what has since been recognized as the line of theforty-second degree, running definitely from the Pennsylvania fieldsdown through Ohio and into the Appalachian hills of Kentucky--thencewest and south. Study your fields in Oklahoma, in old Mexico, and youwill find that, widely separated as they are, each of them is markedby a cross on that map, and that each of them lies along the currenttrend which the Pittsburgh man traced before many of them were touchedby a drill."

  "That, surely," argued Spurrier, "testifies for the highly skilledtechnician, doesn't it?"

  "So far. I now come to the chance of the opportunity hound. Thepresent fields are spots of production here and there. Between themlie others, virgin to pump or rig. Much of that ground is, of course,barren territory, for even on an acre of proven location dry holes maylie close to gushers; one man's farm may be a 'duster' while hisneighbor's spouts black wealth. But along that charted line run theprobabilities."

  Into Spurrier's eyes stole the gleam of the adventuring spirit thatwas strong in him.

  "It sounds like Robert Louis Stevenson and buried treasure," hedeclared with unconcealed enthusiasm, but Snowdon only smiled.

  "Remember," he cautioned, "I'm illustrating--nothing more. Now in thefoothills of the Kentucky Cumberlands, for example, some years ago menbegan finding oil. It lay for the most part in a country where theroads were creek beds--remote from railway facilities. It was anexpensive sort of proposition to develop, but the cry of 'Oil! Oil!'has never failed to set the pack a-running, and it ran."

  "I don't remember hearing of that rush," admitted Spurrier.

  "No, I dare say you didn't. It was a flare-up and a die-down. The menwho rushed in, plodded dejectedly out again, poorer by the time theyhad spent."

  "Then the boom collapsed?"

  "It collapsed--but why? Because the gentlemen who hold dominion overoil and gas caucussed and so ordained. They gathered around their mapand stuck pins here and there. They said, 'This oil can come out intwo ways only: by pipe line or tank cars. We will stand aloof anddevelop where the cost is less and the profit gre
ater--and without us,it cannot succeed.'"

  "Were there no independent concerns to bring the stuff to market?"

  Snowdon laughed. "The gentlemen who hold dominion have their owndefenses against competition. You may have heard of a certain dog inthe manger? Well, they said as they sat about their table on which themap was spread, 'Some day other fields may run out. Some day somethingmay set oil soaring until even this yield may be well worth ourattention. We will therefore hold this card in reserve against thatday and that contingency.' So quietly, inconspicuously, yet with apower that strangled competition, lobbies operated in Statelegislatures. The independents failed to secure needful charters--thelines were never laid. Those particular fields starved, and now theignorant mountaineers who woke for a while to dreams of wealth, laughat the man who says 'oil' to them. Yet at some properly, or improperlydesignated day, those failure fields will flash on the astonishedworld as something risen from the dead, and fortunes will blossom forthe lucky."

  "Yes?" prompted the listener.

  "Now let us suppose our opportunity hound as willing to gounostentatiously into that country; as willing to spend part of eachyear there for a term of years; nipping options here and there,waiting patiently and watching his chance to slip a charter throughone of those bound and gagged legislatures in some moment of relaxedvigilance. Such a man might find himself ultimately standing with thekey to the situation in his own hand. It's just a story, but perhapsit serves to give you my meaning."

  "Did I understand you to suggest," inquired Spurrier with a forcedcalmness, "that you fancy you see in me the qualities of youropportunity hound?"

  "Our own concern," said Snowdon quietly, "is fortunate enough to havepassed through the period of cooling its heels in the anterooms ofcapital, but we can still use a man such as I have described. There'sa place for you with us if you want it."

  "When do I go to work?" demanded the former lieutenant rising from hisseat, and Snowdon countered:

  "When will you be ready to begin?"

  "When we dock at 'Frisco," came the immediate response, "provided I beallowed time for an affair of my own, two months from now. A certainprivate in my old company will be discharged from the service then. Ifancy he'll land there, and I want to be waiting for him when he stepsashore."

  "A reprisal?" inquired Snowdon in a disappointed tone, but the othershook his head.

  "He is the one man through whom there's a chance of clearing my name,"Spurrier said slowly. "I hope it won't call for violence."