The Rim of the Desert

by Ada Woodruff Anderson

  Tisdale swung around. “See here, Foster, I want you to know I should have considered that money as a loan if David had lived. If he had lived—and recovered—I should have made him take back that half interest in the Aurora. You've got to believe that; and I would be ready to do as much for his wife, if she had treated him differently. But she wrecked his life. I hold her responsible.”

  Foster was silent.

  “Think of it!” Hollis went on. “The shame of it! All those years while he faced privation, the worst kind, tramping Alaska trails, panning in icy streams, sluicing, digging sometimes like any common laborer, wintering in shacks, she was living in luxury down here. He never made a promising discovery that he wasn't forced to sell. She spent his money faster than he made it; kept him handicapped. And all she ever gave him was a friendly letter now and then, full of herself and the gay life she led, and showing clearly how happy she could be without him. Think of it, Foster!” His voice deepened and caught its vibrant quality. “A fine fellow like Weatherbee; so reliable, so great in a hard place. How could she have treated him as she did? Damn it! How could he have thrown himself away like that, for a feather-headed woman?”

  Foster knocked the ash from the end of his cigar. “You don't know her,” he answered. “If you did, you wouldn't put it in that way.” He smiled a little and looked off at the golden path on the lake. “So,” he said after a moment, and his glance returned to meet Tisdale's squarely, “she has absolutely nothing now but that tract of unimproved desert on the other side of the Cascades.”

  CHAPTER II. THE QUESTION

  Sometime, high on a mountain slope, a cross current of air, or perhaps a tremor of the surface occasioned far off, starts the small snow-cap, that sliding, halting, impelled forward again, always accumulating, gathering momentum, finally becomes the irresistible avalanche. So Marcia Feversham, the following morning, gave the first slight impetus to the question that eventually menaced Tisdale with swift destruction. She was not taking the early train with her husband; she desired to break the long journey and, after the season in the north, prolong the visit with her relatives in Seattle. The delegate had left her sleeping, but when he had finished the light breakfast served him alone in the Morganstein dining-room and hurried out to the waiting limousine, to his surprise he found her in the car. “I am going down to see you away,” she explained; “this salt breeze with the morning tide is so delightfully fresh.”

  There was no archness in her glance; her humor was wholly masculine. A firm mouthy brilliant, dark eyes, the heavy Morganstein brows that met over the high nose, gave weight and intensity to anything she said. Her husband, in coaching her for the coming campaign at Washington, had told her earnestness was her strong suit; that her deep, deliberate voice was her best card, but she held in her eyes, unquestionably, both bowers.

  “Delightful of you, I am sure,” he answered, taking the seat beside her, with his for-the-public smile, “but I give credit to the air; you are looking as brilliant at this outrageous hour as you would on your way to an afternoon at bridge.” Then, the chauffeur having closed the door and taken his place in the machine, Feversham turned a little to scrutinize her face.

  “Now, my lady,” he asked, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Mr. Tisdale,” she answered directly. “Of course you must see now, even if I do contrive to meet him through Frederic, as you suggested, and manage to see him frequently; even if I find out what he means to say in those coal reports, when it comes to influence, I won't have the weight of a feather. No woman could. He is made of iron, and his principles were cast in the mold.”

  “Every man has his vulnerable point, and I can trust you to find Hollis Tisdale's.” The delegate paused an instant, still regarding his wife's face, frowning a little, yet not without humor, then said: “But you have changed your attitude quickly. Where did you learn so much about him? How can you be so positive about a man you never have met? Whom you have seen only a time or two at a distance, on some street—or was it a hotel lobby?—in Valdez or Fairbanks?”

  “Yesterday, when we were talking, that was true; but since then I have seen him at close range. I've heard him.” She turned and met Feversham's scrutiny with the brilliancy rising in her eyes. “Last night at the clubhouse, when he told the story of David Weatherbee, I was there.”

  “You were there? Impossible! That is against the rules. Not a man of the Circle would have permitted it, and you certainly would have been discovered before you reached the assembly hall. Why, I myself was the last to arrive. Frederic, you remember, had to speed the car a little to get me there. And I looked back from the door and saw you in the tonneau with Elizabeth, while Mrs. Weatherbee kept her place in front with Frederic. You were going down the boulevard to spend the evening with her at Vivian Court.”

  “That was our plan, but we turned back,” she explained. “We had a curiosity to see the Circle seated around the banquet board in those ridiculous purple parkas. And Frederic bet me a new electric runabout against the parka of silver fox and the mukluks I bought of the Esquimau girl at Valdez that we never could get as far as the assembly room. He waited with Elizabeth in the car while we two crept up the stairs. The door was open, and we stood almost screened by that portiere of Indian leather, peeping in. Mr. Tisdale was telling the ptarmigan yarn—it's wonderful the power he has to hold the interest of a crowd of men—and the chance was too good to miss. We stole on up the steps to the gallery,—no one noticed us,—and concealed ourselves behind that hanging Kodiak bearskin.”

  “Incredible!” exclaimed Feversham. “But I see you arrived at the opportune moment,—when Tisdale was talking. There's something occult about the personality of that man. And she, Mrs. Weatherbee, heard everything?”

  Marcia nodded. “Even your graceful toast to her.”

  At this he settled back in his seat, laughing. “Well, I am glad I made it. I could hardly have put it more neatly had I known she was there.”

  “She couldn't have missed a word. We had found a bench behind the Kodiak skin, and she sat straight as a soldier, listening through it all. I couldn't get her to come away; it was as though she was looking on at an interesting play. She was just as neutral and still; only her face turned white, and her eyes were wide as stars, and once she gripped the fur of the Kodiak so hard I expected to see it come down. But I know she failed to grasp the vital point of the story. I mean the point vital to her. She doesn't understand enough about law. And I myself slept on it the night through before I saw. It came the moment I wakened this morning, clear and sudden as an electric flash. If David Weatherbee was mentally unbalanced when he made that transfer, the last half interest in the Aurora mine ought to revert to her.”

  Feversham started. He lifted his plump hands and let them drop forcibly on his broad knees. But she did not notice his surprise. They were approaching the station, and time pressed. “You know it is not a simple infatuation with Frederic,” she hurried on, “to be forgotten tomorrow. He has loved her passionately from the day he first met her, four years ago. He can't think of anything else; he never will do anything of credit to the family until she is his wife. And now, with David Weatherbee safely buried, it seems reasonably sure. Still, still, Miles, this unexpected fortune held out to her just now might turn the scales. We have got to keep it from her, and if those coal claims are coming up for trial, you must frame some excuse to have them postponed.”

  “Postponed? Why, we've just succeeded in gaining Federal attention. We've been waiting five years. We want them settled now. It concerns Frederic as well as the rest of us.”

  “True,” she answered, “even more. If those patents are allowed, he will take immediate steps to mine the coal on a large scale. And it came over me, instantly, on the heels of the first flash, that it was inevitable, if Mr. Tisdale had taken advantage of David Weatherbee's condition—and his own story shows the man had lost his mind; he was wandering around planting make-believe orchards in the snow—you would use the point
to impeach the Government's star witness.”

  “Impeach the Government's witness?” repeated Feversham, then a sudden intelligence leaped into his face. “Impeach Hollis Tisdale,” he added softly and laughed.

  Presently, as the chauffeur slackened speed, looking for a stand among the waiting machines at the depot, the attorney said: “If the syndicate sends Stuart Foster north to the Iditarod, he may be forced to winter there; that would certainly postpone the trial until spring.”

  The next moment the chauffeur threw open the limousine door, and the delegate stepped out; but he lingered a little over his good-by, retaining his wife's hand, which he continued to shake slowly, while his eyes telegraphed an answer to the question in hers. Then, laughing again deeply, he said: “My lady! My lady! Nature juggled; she played your brother Frederic a trick when she set that mind in your woman's head.”

  CHAPTER III. FOSTER TOO

  The apartment Tisdale called home was in a high corner of the Alaska building, where the western windows, overtopping other stone and brick blocks of the business center, commanded the harbor, caught like a faceted jewel between Duwamish Head and Magnolia Bluff, and a far sweep of the outer Sound set in wooded islands and the lofty snow peaks of the Olympic peninsula. Next to his summer camp in the open he liked this eyrie, and particularly he liked it at this hour of the night tide. He drew his chair forward where the stiff, salt wind blew full in his face, but Foster, who had found the elevator not running and was somewhat heated by his long climb to the “summit,” took the precaution of choosing a sheltered place near the north window, which was closed. A shaded electric lamp cast a ring of light on the package he had laid on the table between them, but the rest of the room was in shadow, and from his seat he glanced down on the iridescent sign displays of Second Avenue, then followed the lines of street globes trailing away to the brilliant constellations set against the blackness of Queen Anne hill.

  “She is to be out of town a week,” he said, “and I hardly liked to leave Weatherbee's things with a hotel clerk; since I am sailing on the Admiral Sampson tonight, I brought the package back. You will have to be your own messenger.”

  “That's all right, Foster; I can find another when she returns. I'll ask Banks.”

  “No.” Foster's glance came back from the street; his voice rang a little sharp. “Take it yourself, Hollis.”

  “I can trust it with Banks.” Tisdale paused a moment, still looking out on the harbor lights and the stars, then said: “So you are going north again; back to the copper mine, I presume?”

  “No, I shall be there later, but I expect to make a quick trip in to the Iditarod now, to look over placer properties. The syndicate has bonded Banks' claims and, if it is feasible, a dredger will be sent in next spring to begin operations on a big scale. I shall go, of course, by way of the Yukon, and if ice comes early and the steamers are taken off, return by trail around through Fairbanks.”

  “I see.” Tisdale leaned forward a little, grasping the arms of his chair. “The syndicate is taking considerable risk in sending you to the Iditarod at this time. Suppose those coal cases should be called, with you winter-bound up there. Why, the Chugach trial couldn't go on.”

  “I am identified with the Morganstein interests there, I admit; but why should the Chugach claims be classed with conspiracies to defraud the Government? They were entered regularly, fifty coal claims of one hundred and sixty acres each, by as many different persons. Because the President temporarily suspended Alaska coal laws is no reason those patents should be refused or even delayed. Our money was accepted by the Government; it was never refunded.”

  “As I thought,” said Tisdale softly, addressing the stars; “as I feared.” Then, “Foster, Foster,” he admonished, “be careful. Keep your head. That syndicate is going to worry you some, old man, before you are through.”

  Foster got to his feet. “See here, Hollis, be fair. Look at it once from the other side. The Morgansteins have done more for Alaska than they will ever be given credit for. Capital is the one key to open that big, new, mountain-locked country, and the Government is treating it like a boa-constrictor to be throttled and stamped out. Millions went into the development of the El Dorado, yet they still have to ship the ore thousands of miles to a smelter, with coal,—the best kind, inexhaustible fields of it,—at our door. And go back to McFarlane. He put one hundred and fifty thousand into the Chugach Railway to bring out the coal he had mined, but he can't touch it; it's all tied up in red tape; the road is rotting away. He is getting to be an old man, but I saw him doing day labor on the Seattle streets to-day. Then there's the Copper River Northwestern. That company built a railroad where every engineer but one, who saw the conditions, said it could not be done. You yourself have called it the most wonderful piece of construction on record. You know how that big bridge was built in winter—the only time when the bergs stopped chipping off the face of the glacier long enough to set the piers; you know how Haney worked his men, racing against the spring thaw—he's paying for it with his life, now, down in California. In dollars that bridge alone cost a million and a half. Yet, with this road finished through the coast mountains, they've had to suspend operation because they can't burn their own coal. They've got to change their locomotives to oil burners. And all this is just because the President delays to annul a temporary restriction the previous executive neglected to remove. We have waited; we have imported from British Columbia, from Japan; shipped in Pennsylvania, laid down at Prince William Sound at fifteen dollars a ton, when our own coal could be mined for two and a quarter and delivered here in Seattle for five.”

  “It could, I grant that,” said Tisdale mellowly, “but would it, Stuart? Would it, if the Morganstein interests had exclusive control?”

  Foster seemed not to have heard that question. He turned restlessly and strode across the room. “The Government with just as much reason might have conserved Alaska gold.”

  Tisdale laughed. “That would have been a good thing for Alaska,” he answered; “if a part, at least of her placer streams had been conserved. Come, Foster, you know as well as I do that the regulations early prospectors accepted as laws are not respected to-day. Every discovery is followed by speculators who travel light, who do not expect to do even first assessment work, but only to stay on the ground long enough to stake as many claims as possible for themselves and their friends. When the real prospector arrives, with his year's outfit, he finds hundreds of miles, a whole valley staked, and his one chance is to buy or work under a lease. Most of these speculators live in the towns, some of them down here in Seattle, carrying on other business, and they never visit their claims. They re-stake and re-stake year after year and follow on the heels of each new strike, often by proxy. We have proof enough of all this to convince the most lukewarm senator.”

  “You think then,” said Foster quickly, “there is going to be a chance, after all, for the bill for Home Rule?”

  “No.” Tisdale's voice lost its mellowness. “It is a mistake; it's asking too much at the beginning. We need amended mining laws; we should work for that at once, in the quickest concerted way. And, first of all, our special delegates should push the necessity of a law giving a defined length of shaft or tunnel for assessment work, as is enforced in the Klondike, and ask for efficient inspectors to see that such laws as we have are obeyed.”

  Foster moved to the window and stood looking down again on the city lights. Presently he said: “I presume you will see the President while you are in Washington.”

  “Probably. He is always interested in the field work up there, and this season's reconnaissance in the Matanuska coal district should be of special importance to him just now. The need of a naval coaling station on the Pacific coast has grown imperative, and with vast bodies of coal accessible to Prince William Sound, the question of location should soon be solved.”

  There was another silence, while Poster walked again to the end of the room and returned. “How soon do you start east?” he a
sked.

  “Within a week. Meantime, I am going over the Cascades into the sage-brush country to look up that land of Weatherbee's.”

  “You intend then,” said Foster quickly, “to take that piece of desert off Mrs. Weatherbee's hands?”

  “Perhaps. It depends on the possibility of carrying out his project. I have just shipped a steam thawing apparatus in to the Aurora, and that, with supplies for a winter camp, has taken a good deal of ready money. Freighting runs high, whether it's from the Iditarod or south from Fairbanks. But spring should see expenses paid and my investment back.”

  “From all I've heard,” responded Foster dryly, “you'll get your investment back with interest.”

  “Of course,” said Tisdale after a moment, “Mrs. Weatherbee will be eager to dispose of the tract; the only reason it is still on her hands is that no one has wanted to buy it at any price.”

  “And that's just why you should.” Foster paused, then went on slowly, controlling the emotion in his voice, “You don't know her, Hollis. She's proud. She won't admit the situation, and I can't ask her directly, but I am sure she has come to the limit. I've been trying all day, ever since I knew I must go north again, to raise enough money to make an offer for that land, but practically all I have is tied up in Alaska properties. It takes time to find a customer, and the banks are cautious.”

  Tisdale rose from his chair. “Foster!” he cried and stretched out his hands. “Foster—not you, too.”

  Then his hands dropped, and Foster drew a step nearer into the circle of light and stood meeting squarely the silent remonstrance, accusation, censure, for which he was prepared. “I knew how you would take it,” he broke out at last, “but it's the truth. I've smothered it, kept it down for years; but it's nothing to be ashamed of any longer. I'd have been glad to exchange places with Weatherbee. I'd have counted it a privilege to work, even as he did, for her; I could have suffered privation, the worst kind, wrung success out of failure, for the hope of her.”