Yet it was going to be hard enough — she could see that. She wondered why he didn’t say something.
Finally he coughed — a slight flush mounting his pale face.
“I am quite sure, Sophia,” he said, “that I shall always be most satisfied with what brings you the greatest happiness.”
She noted the puzzled expression on his face, attributing it to a natural desire to learn who had supplanted him in her affections.
“I feel,” she explained, “that we are not exactly suited to one another - our ideals are not the same. You do not find interest in that which interests me most, and so it seems to me that as there may never be any deep-rooted common interest between us that we should soon be most unhappy together.”
The puzzled expression seemed to have been growing upon the handsome face of Mr. Ogden Secor.
“Yes,” he breathed, “I fear that you are quite right.”
“Mr. Pursen, on the contrary,” went on Miss Welles, “feels precisely as I do upon the subjects that are closest to my heart — they are the same that are closest to his. “In fact, Ogden, I am going to ask you to release me from my engagement to you.”
Involuntarily Ogden Secor’s mouth opened but whether in surprise or because of a terrible shock to his love and pride it would have been difficult to say. Miss Welles attributed it to the latter. At last he found words.
“My dear Sophia,” he said, “you know perfectly well that if you love Mr. Pursen I shall be the last person on earth to stand in the way of your realizing to the full every happiness that may be found at his disposal. I congratulate you, Sophia — sincerely — and I beg that you will give no further thought to me other than as a friend and well-wisher.”
“You are very generous, Ogden,” she said, as she bade him good-by, glad that the ordeal was so easily over.
It would have been a much surprised Miss Welles could that young lady have read Ogden Secor’s thoughts as he ran down the broad steps before her home and made his way to the nearest elevated station.
“And to think,” thought he, “that for over a year I have been engaged to Sophia Welles without once recalling the fact! Those cracksmen most assuredly cracked something belonging to Ogden Secor beside his safe.”
It was with a feeling of relief and elation that he had not felt before for months that he strode along the street. Evidently the obligation of his engagement had been weighing upon him heavily through the medium of his subconsciousness without his having once objectively sensed other than an inexplicable call to duty that had drawn him to Sophia Welles when he gladly would have been elsewhere.
As he walked toward the elevated he tried to recall under what circumstances he had become engaged to Miss Welles. As he viewed the matter now it was difficult to realize that any possible contingency could have arisen that would have caused him to look with tender affection upon the cold and calculating Sophia.
The loss of his fortune affected Ogden Secor less than might have been expected. Possibly he did not fully realize the completeness of his financial ruin, or what it was bound to mean to him. In a way he felt principally a certain relief from the galling pressure and annoyances of the past bitter year. No longer was he weighted with burdensome responsibilities and grave apprehensions — the worst had happened. There was no further calamity possible — at least so he thought.
Vaguely he felt that he could again build up a fortune equal to that which was gone; but there was none of the old-time assurance and determination that had marked him in the past — it seemed quite impossible for him to concentrate his mind for a sufficient length of time upon the subject to formulate even the foundation of a well-considered plan.
He sought out old friends upon whose business acumen he might rely with the intention of talking over his plans with them, for at last, and the first time in his life, Ogden Secor felt unequal to the task of reasoning for himself, much less deciding in any matter of importance.
The first man to whom he went was the president of a bank of which Secor was still a director, and with which he had transacted the bulk of his banking business. The president was an old personal friend, a man of about Secor’s own age, a member of the same clubs and the same set. Heretofore he had been wont to drop whatever had been engaging him and come into the anteroom to greet Secor whenever he had chanced to call. today the caller waited thirty minutes before the bank president appeared.
“Well, Secor,” he said, “what can I do for you?” Heretofore it had always been “Ogden.” There was an unquestionable air of haste in his manner, too; nor did he take Mr. Secor familiarly by the arm and drag him into his luxurious private office as formerly. It was just: “Well, Secor, what can I do for you?”
Those who are congenitally inefficient are prone to sensitiveness, and the same is often true of men who, through illness or preposterous circumstance, find themselves temporarily unfit to cope with the stern demands of modern success building. Supersensitiveness ofttimes begets a preternatural and almost uncanny ability to sense the secret motives underlying the acts of others.
Ogden Secor had never been over-sensitive. Until now he had not appreciated the fact that there could possibly be any material difference in the Ogden Secor of yesterday and the Ogden Secor of today. He had never gaged men by their bank accounts, so it is not strange that he should have been unsuspecting that any might have gaged him by such a standard.
The words and manner of the bank president, however, awoke him violently and painfully, for Ogden Secor was now, whatever he might have been in the past, an inefficient, and, accordingly, a supersensitive.
“There is nothing that you can do for me, Norton,” he said. “I just dropped in for a chat. You’re busy, though, and I won’t detain you.” He turned to go.
“I am mighty busy today,” replied the bank president, a trifle more cordially. “Come in again some time, won’t you?”
“Thanks,” replied Secor.
When he reached the street he found himself cold all over — cold with a heart-coldness with which the bleak February northeaster had nothing to do. He did not venture to call upon another friend. Instead he dropped into a bar on La Salle Street and took a stiff drink of whisky. It was the first time he had done that for a longer time than he could recall.
The drink warmed him, sending an intoxicating, if artificial, renewal of hope and confidence surging through him. He took another.
There was a genial stranger drinking alone at the same bar. He commented upon the severity of the storm. Ogden Secor, friends with all the world now, entered into conversation with him.
“Wish I was back in Idaho,” remarked the stranger, “where I could get thawed out and see that the sun was doing business at the same old stand.”
Idaho! It awakened something in Secor’s memory.
“I thought that it was usually pretty cold there,” he said.
“Not where I come from,” replied the stranger. “I got a little fruit- ranch down in the South-Western corner of the State. Greatest little climate in the world, sir; never gets anywheres near zero; and sunshine! Why, man, you ain’t got a bowin’ acquaintance with old Sol back here. Three hundred and sixty days of sunshine out of every three hundred and sixty-five.”
Secor smiled. “You remind me of the boosters of sunny southern California,” he laughed.
“Don’t,” said the Idahoan, raising a deprecating hand. “What I’m tellin’ you is the truth.”
“What part of Idaho did you say you are from?” asked Secor.
“‘Bout ten miles south of Goliath. Goliath’s a division headquarters on the Short Line.”
“Goliath,” repeated Secor. “Why, I’ve got a ranch around there somewhere myself — took it on a trade years ago and forgot all about it. One hundred and sixty acres, I think it was.”
“Sort o’ funny for a man to forget a hundred-and-sixty-acre ranch,” remarked the stranger a bit skeptically.
During the following week Ogden Secor drank a great deal mo
re than was good for him, or for any man. Several times he met old acquaintances on the streets. Ever eager now to discover changes in the attitude of former friends, he was quick to note the seeming coldness of their greetings, and the remarkable stress of unprecedented business which invariably hurried them along.
After each encounter he sought the nearest bar. His mind was much occupied with thoughts of his forgotten ranch, and when a summons to his attorneys’ offices revealed the fact that the final settlement with his creditors would leave him with several hundred dollars of unexpected wealth, he obtained an advance from them, purchased a ticket for Goliath, Idaho, and shook the grimy snow of the Loop from his feet — he hoped forever.
11. A MATTER OF MEMORY
From La Salle Street to Goliath Idaho, is ordinarily a matter of some two days’ travel; but it required the best part of a year for Ogden Secor to perform the journey.
On the train he had become acquainted with an alert and plausible stranger who owned a gold mine in the mountains north of Ketchum. All that was needed for development was a few hundred dollars’ worth of machinery and flumes - then it would make its owners fabulously wealthy.
By the time the train reached Shoshone, Ogden Secor was inoculated with the insidious virus of gold-fever — that mad malady which races white-hot through the veins of its victims, distorting every mental image and precluding the sane functioning of the powers of reason.
In possession of all his faculties at their best, Secor could never have been trapped so easily; but what with weakened mental and physical powers - the result, primarily, of the work of the cracksmen, and later of the effects of alcohol, he fell an easy prey to the highly imaginative enthusiasm of his new acquaintance.
And so it befell that he left the train at Shoshone, and in company with the owner of the gold mine, boarded another for Ketchum, the northern terminus of the branch line.
Ketchum is, or at that time was, a squalid wreck of a place; but, like every other settlement of its stamp it boasted several saloons. To one of these the mine-owner led his victim. Here they discussed ways, means, and barbed-wire whisky until Secor passed over the few hundred dollars remaining to him that his new partner might go forth and purchase the necessary machinery and the outfit that was to transport it and them North into the mountains on the morrow.
Secor, waiting, drank with the proprietor, with the loungers about the place, and with others who drifted in scenting whisky at another’s expense.
Night came, and still the mine-owner had not returned — nor did he ever.
Next morning Secor awoke, partially sobered, to a realization of the truth. He had been fleeced. He was friendless and all but penniless in a strange town; but, worst of all, his nerve was gone.
The year that followed was a hideous nightmare of regret and shame, the sole surcease from which was obtainable only through the stupefying medium of drink.
Often times he was hungry, for there was little chance to earn money in Ketchum. Again he did odd jobs about one or the other of the several saloons when a flash of his waning self pride or the growing desire for whisky goaded him to the earning of money.
Later he was given work as a clerk in the general store, his knowledge of accounting proving of value to the proprietor. This man, realizing that the continuous use of whisky would have no tendency to increase the value of his new clerk, employed him with the understanding that for six months he was to have but a small percentage of his wages weekly — just enough after the store closed Saturday night to permit of a mild orgy from which one might recover over Sunday and be fit for work on Monday.
At the termination of the six months, Secor demanded the balance of his accrued wage, and received it. Much to his employer’s surprise, he failed to spend it immediately for drink. Instead, he did what he had been planning upon — took the first train south for Shoshone and Goliath.
In his mind was a determination to seek his farm and be thereafter independent of any employer. There was, too, the decision to stop drinking; but little did the man realize the hold the sickness had taken upon him.
Secor found Goliath a thriving town of three or four thousand inhabitants. His first inquiry, notwithstanding his good resolutions, was for a saloon, nor did he have any difficulty in locating several.
The tiresome journey from Ketchum had given him far too much leisure with only his own gloomy thoughts and vain regrets for company.
A little drink would do no harm — then he would stop. He would never touch it again; but just now his nerves required the stimulant. Then, too, was it not a well-known fact that in too sudden a cessation of the habit lay grave danger?
Ah, criminal fallacy! To you how many countless thousand graves owe their poor, miserable inmates!
And so it happened that at dusk it was a far from sober man who entered the Palace Lunch Room in time for the evening meal.
As he sat slouched down upon his stool, his befogged vision struggling with the blurred and scrawly purple of the mimeographed bill-of-fare, the girl waiting across the counter from him for his order could scarce conceal the disgust she felt at his slovenly and unkempt appearance. She could not see his face while his head was bent low above the greasy card, but she knew that it must be equally as repulsive as his soiled and disheveled apparel.
Who would have guessed that this object of the contempt of a cheap lunchcounter waitress in a far Western railroad town could have been the spotless Ogden Secor of two brief years ago?
Presently he looked up into the girl’s face. At sight of his features she gave a little involuntary gasp, stepping back at the same time as though to avoid a blow.
“‘Smatter?” asked Mr. Secor.
The girl eyed him intently for a moment, and then with a sigh of relief forced a smile to her white lips. He had not recognized her.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m taken that way occasionally.”
“Heart?” asked Mr. Secor.
June Lathrop looked at Mr. Ogden Secor in silence for a moment.
“I wonder,” she said, half to herself. “I wonder if it is?”
He gave his order and ate in silence, occasionally casting a furtive glance in the girl’s direction. When she brought his dessert he asked where he might find a comfortable hotel.
“I only just arrived,” he explained, “and am not familiar with the town. “The meal had sobered him a bit, so that he could talk a trifle more coherently.
As he ate his pie June stood in front of him, talking. She told him where there was a room in a private family near by that he could probably get. She was filled with wonder at the change that had taken place in him. When his face was in repose the depth of sorrow that it revealed touched her heart. In vain she looked for the one-time radiant smile that had endeared Ogden Secor to many beside herself.
Could it be possible that this was the fastidious society and business man she had known but little more than two years since? It was incredible.
“Are you going to remain here?” she asked.
“I guess so,” he replied. “I have a ranch around here somewhere. I’ve never seen it, but I’m going out tomorrow to have a look at it, and if it’s all right I’ll settle here and go to ranching. Much doing in that line?”
“Alfalfa and fruit ranches pay fairly well,” she replied. “It depends, of course, on several things — soil, water rights and—” she hesitated— “the man who’s ranching. Farming nowadays, you know, is something of an exact science. To be successful a man must understand that haphazard methods won’t work.”
“Can’t a man learn?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied; “but even then he won’t succeed if—” she hated to say it, but oh, how she hated to see him as he was— “but even then he won’t succeed if he drinks.”
Ogden Secor flushed. He was still far from having lost all self-respect. Without another word he paid his check and walked out of the lunch-room. It served him right, he thought, for having entered into familiar conversation
with a waitress.
The following morning he engaged a buck-board and a driver for the trip to his ranch. A half hour’s hunt through the records of the county clerk’s office sufficed to locate his tract.
As he was driving through town he told his guide to stop in front of a saloon.
“We may get dry before the day’s over,” he explained with a grin to the more than willing native — it would never do to stop too suddenly.
As he stepped up to the bar and ordered a flask the words of the waitress came suddenly to his mind: “ — but even then he won’t succeed if he drinks.” They seemed to take the keen edge off his appetite for whisky, but he pocketed the bottle and soon was jogging along through the stifling dust toward the only thing on earth that he might by any twist of the imagination call home.
As they drove along, Secor tried to picture the rolling meadow lands, the shady orchards, the broad, green fields of wheel-high, sweet-scented alfalfa of his ranch. Never before had he given this least valued of his possessions more than a passing thought, but now that it seemed to offer him a peaceful haven of rest and quiet, and utter seclusion from the world that he had known and come to hate, he viewed it through a mind’s eye that glorified and idealized. He could scarce restrain his impatience with the slow, plodding team that wallowed now through sand to their fetlocks, and again labored upward toward the brow of a rough, lava-strewn bluff.
At last they came within sight of a broad, willow-fringed river. Low islands, dense thicketed, clove the strong, swift current with their sharp points. They might have been great, flat ships forging their silent way toward the distant mountains of the northland and whence the mighty river tumbled roaring downward for its thousand-mile journey to the waters of the lesser stream that steals its identity, onward to the sea.
All was greenish-gray or greenish-brown and all was sere and desolate and cold. Here and there little patches of half-melted snow lay in the shadows of the sage-brush that dotted the rolling flat beside the river. Beyond, Secor could see a similar landscape upon the other shore.
Delphi Collected Works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (Illustrated) (Series Four Book 26) Page 717
