by Dean Owen
“It w’udn’t do you one mite of good,” said Sandy. “Plimsoll didn’t own those claims. Didn’t have an interest in ’em. Tried to jump ’em, an’ did the jumpin’ himse’f. I’ve got an idea you might have been through here some time back. I heard some eastern folk had been samplin’ ore an’ I saw some signs up on the Casey claims. Those are the claims Plimsoll tried to sell you, I reckon, for cash, figgerin’ on the deal goin’ through quick. He ’lowed he’d grubstaked Casey, which was a plumb lie. Casey had a constitutional objection about bein’ grubstaked, an’ he had none too much use fo’ Plimsoll. Plimsoll’s got nothin’ to prove his end. From now on he won’t try to. The claims belong to Molly Casey, the same bein’ my legal ward.”
“Ah!” Wilson Keith’s eyes grew keen and cold. “Have you any interest in them yourself, Mr. Bourke?”
“Me an’ my two partners of the Three Star Ranch own one-half interest, equal with Molly,” said Sandy easily. His eyes matched those of the promoter and held them for a second or two.
The thought passed through Keith’s mind that Sandy’s interest, and that of his partners, might have been obtained from the girl under false pretenses, but he was very far from a fool and, among the things he saw in Sandy’s eyes, it was clearly written that here was a man who was both absolutely fearless and absolutely honest. He had not seen many such.
“I’ll be glad to talk with you later,” he said. “Just now I’m ravenous. Any place to eat? And does the camp get up early or just go to bed late?”
The remark raised a laugh in the crowd, now milling good-naturedly about the machine.
“Want to buy any more claims?” asked a voice.
“I might. I’ve looked over the ground once, I may as well admit, and I’ve had an expert report upon it. I’d like to have a talk with all of you after I’ve had some coffee. This is a camp where it will take a great deal of money, of labor and of time to develop it, whether you try to drill and blast yourselves, or pool your interests and install machinery. Did you say which was the best place to eat, Mr. Bourke?”
Sandy recommended Simpson’s and pointed it out. Keith, the man with him, his secretary, and the chauffeur, got out and walked stiff-legged to their coffee. The crowd once more had sleep discounted by excitement. Keith had shrewdly said just enough. The seed that he had planted in the suggestion that they pool interests fell in such rich ground that it began sprouting immediately.
Sandy introduced Sam as his partner, Westlake as a mining engineer and assayer. Keith gave Westlake a shrewd appraising glance, and a nod.
“I’m too sleepy myse’f to talk business,” said Sandy. “My two pardners are in the same boat. So, if you-all want to look oveh the camp ag’in, Mr. Keith, an’ talk business with any one you find awake an’ willin’, I’ll prob’bly see you befo’ nightfall. You know where the claims are.”
Keith stood for a moment in the door of Simpson’s, looking after Sandy.
“A fairly slick article, the man with the two guns, Blake,” he said to his secretary. “But he’s straight.”
“And mighty hard to bend,” added Blake with a yawn.
The chauffeur ate apart, devouring enormous quantities of food with as much emotion as a hopper taking in grain. Keith talked matters over with Blake, not because he valued his secretary’s opinion, able as he was in his appointed duties, but because it helped Keith to clarify conditions in his own mind.
“There were only a few old-timers in the crowd, Blake,” he said. “The rest of them will want to be going back to wherever and whatever they came from as soon as they find this is not a placer proposition. A heap of people heard of a gold rush and think it’s always a Tom Tiddler’s Ground, like washing out the rich sands of Nome. They’ll be glad to sell and take shares for cash.”
“Ought to change the name of the camp,” suggested Blake. “Dynamite is known as an exploded prospect.”
“Thought of that,” said Keith. “This is damned good coffee. I’ll have another cup.… How about Casey Town, after the original discoverer who always believed in the place, but lacked the money for development and wouldn’t take in a partner? Picturesque and good stuff for the prospectuses. You might send off some stuff about that, Blake, work in this Sandy Bourke and Plimsoll affair and find out what this all-night racket was about. Good, lively publicity stuff we can use again later on. Romance of Casey’s daughter. Wonder where she is?”
He lapsed into silence, swallowing his third cup of coffee in gulps. Blake, who admired his employer’s successes, whatever he thought of his methods, did not interrupt him. Keith was planning a campaign, figuring out the best bait for gulls.
Sandy and his companions found Mormon asleep on the Bailey claims. Miranda brewed coffee, and they told her the news of Plimsoll and the arrival of Keith.
“It’s too bad you didn’t run Plimsoll out of the county, or the state,” remarked the spinster. “He’ll not rest until he does you some sneakin’ injury, soon as he figgers out what’ll do you the most harm.”
“An’ him the least risk,” remarked Sam.
“Since the excitement is temp’rarily over,” said Miranda dryly, looking at where Mormon snored beneath blankets, “I reckon we better all foller his example. If that man Keith wants to buy my claims I’m willin’ to sell. Milkin’ is more in my line than minin’, I’ve decided. I had a fool idea we’d pick up nuggets, top of the ground. From what Mr. Westlake tells me, you got to put out a lot of money before you even find out whether you’re goin’ to see the color of gold.”
“Let’s hold a pow-wow before we turn in,” said Sandy. “Westlake, what do you know about Keith? Anything?”
“I’ve heard of him. I imagine he started out as a promoter rather than a developer. He has made some lucky strikes. There is no doubt but that he can float this proposition on a large scale, induce others to put money into it. The least likely-looking properties he’ll put on the market and tie them up with the reports of any strikes he, or others, may make. He’ll put the camp on a working basis. If the gold’s here that will be a sound one. You see, Miss Bailey, not every porphyry dyke is going to have a gold lining.”
“Do you figger it w’ud pay best to sell him outright or let him form a company?” asked Sandy.
“For your claims, or these of Miss Bailey and her nephew?”
“All of ’em. Didn’t you say they were all on the same syncline?”
“Yes. You really want to go by my opinion? I am not too experienced.”
“You know a darn sight mo’ about it than we do. I’m not takin’ Keith’s opinion on anything he wants to buy. He’s tipped his hand already in showin’ how far an’ fast he came here. Probably had Plimsoll tied up on an option or he w’udn’t have said ’s much as he did.”
“Then—there is no doubt in my mind that Patrick Casey picked the best side of the gulch. The indications are in sight there. This side the exposed reef may have been ground down below the sylvanite. There are glacial signs all around here. I would say sell these for cash, holding out on price until Keith refuses to offer more. He’ll come back for a final bid. But let him organize with your claims.”
“The Molly Casey Mine? With fifty-one percent of the shares, if we can’t get more?”
“He’ll squeal like a pig before he grants that,” said Westlake. “But he’ll have to come through to your terms. Those claims are the big bet of this camp, and he knows it.”
It would have surprised Keith had he known how accurately the young engineer he had glanced at and dismissed as almost an amateur at the game, followed the trend of his scheming. There is not much variation in the methods of Mining Promotion, and Westlake was an observer and a conserver of the pith of what he had seen.
“Fifty-one percent, an’ the name’s Molly Casey, then,” said Sandy. “What’s more, you’re to be consulting engineer or whatever they call the fat job, Westlake. I’m dawg-tired.
Sam, let’s you an’ me shack over to our claims. We’ll leave Mormon where he is till he gits his sleep out, if you’ve no objection, marm?”
* * * *
Sandy, Sam and Mormon returned to the Three Star with the papers drawn and signed and the shares of stock issued that gave twenty-six percent of the Molly property to her and twenty-five to the three partners. Keith returned to New York with his forty-nine percent to weave his plans for the full development of the claims he had acquired.
While he lacked the controlling interest, there was always, he fancied, a chance of division between the four who held control. Either he could get the girl to vote apart from the three partners or he might split them some way or another. But, wisely, he did not count on this. And he took up the task of exploitation with zest, Blake, primed with material and notes gathered on the spot, a ready and expert assistant.
When Wilson Keith made up his mind there was money in a plan—money for Wilson Keith—he lost no time in planning and carrying out all details. He loved the excitement of the gamble, he loved to evolve some play for which he could pat himself upon the back and tell himself how much cleverer he was than the public, swimming up to his golden-baited hooks like so many fish. Thornton, expert mining engineer, believed the prospects good for the new camp at Casey Town; but Keith, with Blake, who was a wizard at publicity, delighted most in the way it lent itself to exploitation.
Blake, nosing here and listening there, while Keith satisfied himself as to the legality of Sandy’s guardianship of Molly and the powers that had been granted him to look after all her interests, assuring himself of the speciousness of Plimsoll’s claim for grubstake interest. Blake, weaving fact into fiction, compiled the romance of Molly Casey, daughter of the wandering prospector, Patrick Casey; her father’s trail-chum by mountain and desert; the death of Casey, the rescue of Molly, the strike at Dynamite.
Much about Sandy’s part in it all Blake did not use. He learned little and said nothing of Plimsoll’s attempt to get the girl under his control, of the wild ride across the county line. Blake’s general canniness concentrated wherever his personal interests were concerned and he had made up his mind that Sandy Bourke was a man whom it would not pay to offend. He might never see the story in print, then again he might, and Blake, very likely, would return to Casey Town once in a while with Keith.
But it was a good story. A Sunday feature story if he could strengthen it a little. If the mine made the girl a millionairess it would carry the yarn as sheer news, but Blake wanted the story to help to carry the mine, to bring in the money from the outside to exploit Casey Town and the Keith holdings.
Keith had the capital and was willing enough to put it into developing the Molly Mine if necessary, but it was a business principle of his never to use his own money when he could get hold of some one else’s. His stock in the Molly Mine he meant to hold on to, not to sell, but, with the profits from the sale of his promoter’s shares of the “Groups,” he expected to mine the Molly claims.
He had turned his eyes toward oil of late, scenting quick turns and this took money. His wife took more, his son, just out of college, took all that he could get. Mrs. Keith seemed to regard her husband’s bank-account much as the wife of a farmer might regard the spring in the meadow. With the extravagance of the post-war period, the advance in prices, the amounts she spent were staggering even to Keith, who set no limits on his own ability to make money. To suggest retrenchment would not merely have had small effect upon his wife, but any curtailment would infallibly hurt the standing of the Keith investments. New York was full of people with money to invest. Profiteering, easy-come money, a lot of it. Easy-go money, too, when the profiteers, still dazzled by their riches, totally unconscious of real values, would meet Keith, thinking their money an open sesame to equality with such financiers.
Then Keith entertained them, taking them to his clubs—not his best—to his home where he dazzled them, fogged them in an atmosphere where they were ill at ease though striving to cover it; Keith, drawing them aside when the time was ripe, would tell them of their shrewdness, confess a liking, almost an admiration for them—and let them in on the ground floor.
There were the many who could not be touched personally and, for these, Blake prepared the literature and laid his schemes for real newspaper publicity. Submitting them to Keith, the latter approved. Mrs. Keith was to look Molly up at her school, take her into the Keith home on vacations, introduce her into the social whirl. The right newspapermen would see her, meet her, get the story from Blake of her romantic childhood, with photographs of the Western Heiress in the Park on Horseback. There would be drawings by staff artists of the way she and her father appeared wandering through the desert, discovering the claims, her father’s grave, anything to round out the human interest. Moreover, she could be introduced to the right people, that was Mrs. Keith’s end of it.
Then would come the prospectuses with these extracts of the best paragraphs, tied up with views of Casey Town, with engineers’ reports, with semi-scientific stuff about sylvanite, a masterpiece of romance and fiction, peppered with fact. The whole to be titled White Gold.
Advertisements, headed White Gold, offering the shares. Personal letters to those on the carefully selected lists of Preferred Investors. Offices of the Casey Town Mining Company with alluring specimens behind glass cases, with models of mining machinery and of sections of mines, framed maps and drawings, blue-prints, a chunk of sylvanite ore in a railed-off enclosure with the legend of its marvelous value. Many, most, of these lures, had done service in previous enticements of Keith, but they still held good. They were a good deal like the fake mermaids, the skulls and odds and ends in the window of a palmist, all bait, of better quality, more deftly arranged and displayed, part of the fakir’s kit, bait for goldfish. Also brass rails, fine rugs, mahogany furniture, a ticker, busy and pretty stenographers.
Blake submitted his clever campaign, worthy of better things, and Keith approved of it. That the partners of the Three Star as fifty-one percent owners, or Molly Casey herself with them, should be consulted or informed, never entered his head.
Of course there was always a chance of the investors realizing heavily if Casey Town turned up big production. Keith hoped it would. Provided he made all the money he wanted, he was always willing to have others get hold of some, especially when he would be regarded by them as the benefactor who had given them the golden opportunity. He would reap the major harvest, and success would open up the way for other fields—perhaps in oil. Keith had some associates who rather scoffed at his gold-mining promotion as out-of-date. Oil was quicker, more in the public eye. Every time the price of gasoline or kerosene went up the American automobile-owning public thought of oil, they were primed perpetually toward its possibilities.
But Keith was still in gold. He knew all the technique of that branch of speculation and Blake’s campaign was carried out most successfully. Mrs. Keith descended overwhelmingly upon Molly at her school, chauffeur and footman on the driving seat of her luxurious sedan; gasped a little when she saw that Molly was a beauty, could be made an unusual one with the right dressing, the right setting.
Her brain, which was keen enough in business matters, told her that she could improve her husband’s program of using Molly as an attraction to bring investors to the Keith residence. It might be a good thing—Mrs. Keith was quick at dealing with the future—if her son, Donald, fell in love with Molly, the heiress. She wrote to the Three Star Ranch, to Sandy Bourke, guardian of Molly Casey, without Molly’s knowledge. Sandy read the letter aloud to his partners.
Dear Mr. Bourke:
I feel that I should write this letter to you although I have never met you, rather than my husband, since the question is one that a woman can handle better than a man,—that only a woman can understand and appreciate.
I have seen your Molly and she has entirely captivated me. She is really wonderful, with wonderful p
ossibilities. She is more than pretty, she is talented and she possesses character in a marked degree that sets her aside from the rest. It is this difference, this broadness of view, perhaps a certain intolerance of conventionality, that make me feel that, much as it has done for her, and that has been largely due to her own endeavors, this school, or any school, is not the place for her best development.
I want to take her into my home, Mr. Bourke. She is practically a woman grown, much more so than the girls with whom she associates. This, I suppose, is due to her early experiences. There she would be under my own eye, which will be a maternal one, and she can have private tutoring in what she still lacks. I think she feels the need of the companionship and advice of an older woman, rather than that of the girls at the school.
I wish I could talk with you personally about this. Letters are such inadequate things. But I know, from Mr. Keith, that you have her interests at heart—and so have I. I shall dearly love to have her with me. I have, of course, said absolutely nothing to her about this plan before I hear from you, but I feel confident from what I have seen of her, that she will be happier in a home, with some one, who, however poorly, may take the place of the mother she must have missed all these years.
Let me hear from you soon. If my health and other matters permit, I must try to come out with Molly before very long. Mr. Keith has seen this letter and approves of my suggestion to have Molly with us.
Most sincerely yours,
Elizabeth Vernon Keith.
It was a clever letter. There were several touches about it that almost amounted to genius. The hints of Molly’s unhappiness so cleverly suggested, the mother suggestion, the need of companionship and advice from an older woman, Molly’s intolerance of conventionalities, all went home; though it was some time before the trio entirely absorbed the meaning of the glossy phrases and glib vocabulary. The letter passed about in silence after Sandy had read it, Sam and Mormon plowing through the maze of the fashionable script.
