Hard Money

by Short, Luke;

  “Hugh!” Sharon cried. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Hugh was already pulling Sharon’s chair out of the way. “Easy, darling. They’re both on the other side.”

  Sharon ran out into the corridor, and Hugh strode behind her. At the stairs the whole gallery was draining down to the main floor, and soon Sharon was in this jostling, riotous mob. Somehow, Hugh managed to wedge himself between her and the crowd, and the very panicked momentum of the mob carried them down stairs and out the side exit. Once on the street, Sharon, disheveled, breathless and frightened, took hold of Hugh’s arm and let him lead her across the street and to the hotel.

  Once in the parlor, Sharon sank down in a chair and stared at Hugh. Hugh’s face showed first concern, and then faint amusement, and then he burst into laughter. Sharon’s eyes danced with cold anger as she watched him, but Hugh could not restrain himself.

  “Hugh!” Sharon said angrily, stamping her foot. “Stop that!”

  Hugh subsided gradually and drew out his handkerchief and wiped the tears from his eyes, while Sharon looked on coldly.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” Hugh said faintly. “The combination was too much.”

  “Is a person’s genuine fright a laughing matter to you?” Sharon demanded icily.

  “Not at all,” Hugh said soberly. “It was—well, everything, the whole ridiculous thing.”

  “If you knew it would be ridiculous, why did you insist that I go?” Sharon asked hotly.

  “I’m sorry,” Hugh said apologetically.

  “But why did you, Hugh?” Sharon persisted. She knew she was being unreasonable, but then she felt an unreasonable anger, an anger that was as hot as it was humiliating.

  Hugh’s face changed subtly, and he reached in his breast pocket for a cigar. “Now calm down, dear,” he said soberly, almost warningly. “The whole affair is over, and I’m very sorry I dragged you to it. I thought it would amuse you.”

  “Since when has the spectacle of two animals tearing each other to shreds amused me?” Sharon said coldly.

  “All right, it never has,” Hugh said, a little edge to his voice. For a moment they stared at each other, Sharon with a quiet malevolence that amazed Hugh. Slowly, he laid down his unlighted cigar and rose and came across to her. Facing her, he spread his legs and put his hands on his hips.

  “In heaven’s name, Sharon, what has got into you lately?” he asked with quiet urgency. “You were looking at me then as if you hated me.”

  Sharon only shook her head and bit her lip.

  “It’s my turn to ask questions now,” Hugh said. “I repeat, what has got into you?”

  “The devil of doubt,” Sharon murmured almost inaudibly.

  “What did you say?” Hugh asked, bending over a little.

  “Nothing. I don’t know.”

  “Nor do I. Nothing I do seems to please you any more. You—aren’t the same.”

  “How not the same, Hugh?” Sharon asked softly.

  Hugh hesitated, wondering if he detected a note of flippancy in her voice. He decided he didn’t; Sharon was never flippant in serious moments, and this was a serious moment.

  “Why—it used to be easy to amuse you, Sharon. We liked the same things, enjoyed the same people, went the same places and had a good time.” He laughed shortly. “Lord knows, this camp is dull enough for a woman. But you’ve money, darling. You’ve the same sort of friends you’re used to. You have comforts. You have—”

  “Maybe that’s just the trouble, Hugh,” Sharon put in quietly.

  Hugh frowned. “I don’t understand. What more could you want?”

  “Oh nothing,” Sharon sighed. “I—I’ve changed, Hugh. I don’t think the end and aim of life is to be amused any more, that’s all. Everything is the same; I’m different.”

  “But why?”

  “I can’t think it’s a virtue to be idle. Hugh. I can’t see the holiness of having a lot of money. I don’t think a man is a swine because he wears a soiled shirt. I don’t think people who sleep at night instead of playing are dull and somehow vicious.” She raised her hands in a gesture of inarticulate and unknowing pleading. “This isn’t the real thing, Hugh. I’m on a bridge looking down at the water. I’m dry and comfortable, but I have a terrible longing to swim.”

  “Then swim.”

  “I can’t.”

  Hugh said dryly, “If I smelled of sweat when I called every night, if I left at ten because I need sleep to work, if my hands were horny with calluses, if I resented the good fortune of other people and cursed them, would it make you admire me more, Sharon?”

  “Yes!” Sharon said quickly, with such violence that she surprised even herself. “None of those things are virtues in themselves, Hugh, but they point to one thing. That the man who has them is human! Even the resentment at good fortune! Envy is human. You haven’t it! Sweat is vulgar, and it’s human too, Hugh. Weariness is human. Discouragement is human. Lust and cruelty and foolishness and brawling and cowardice and bravery are all human, Hugh. And you are without them.”

  Hugh’s face flushed. “I’m greedy enough to want ten million dollars for you, Sharon. I lust enough to want you terribly. I’m cruel enough to use every method I can to get on top. I’m coward enough to be afraid of a street brawl. And I’m brave enough to admit this all to you, Sharon. Am I not human enough now?”

  Sharon had one impulsive moment of affection for him, a moment which she fought with all her will. She wanted to kiss him and make up, to be safe in his arms, safer in the knowledge that he loved her. But a wild and untamable hope stirred within her, and she instinctively knew that this was too easy, and because it was, it was also cheap.

  She shook her head gently. “No, Hugh. Don’t ask me why. You—you just aren’t.”

  Hugh’s anger was gone. He said gently, “Tonight, Sharon, I was going to remind you of a promise. Do you remember? You must have been expecting it. Don’t you remember what I was pledged to ask when the tunnel went through?”

  “Yes,” Sharon said in a small voice. “You were going to ask me to set the date for our wedding.”

  “Yes.” Hugh looked steadily at her, and Sharon had no answer for him. He turned away and went over to the table and picked up his cigar and dropped it again. Then he said, without turning around, “Is there someone else, Sharon?”

  “Who could there be?” Sharon asked wearily.

  Hugh pivoted on one heel to face her. “The only man I know who meets those requirements is a man you know too, Sharon. He brawls, and he’s cruel and he’s—he’s human enough, God knows.” He paused. “It’s Phil Seay.”

  Sharon felt her pulse quicken at the mention of that name, but she was not afraid to hear it. She regarded Hugh levelly, silent.

  “Is it Phil Seay?” Hugh asked relentlessly, doubt in his eyes.

  “He fits that description,” Sharon said steadily. “Because he does, he hates me, I think. He wouldn’t acquire me because he’s through playing with toys—if he ever did.”

  “Sharon!”

  Sharon rose, making a weary gesture with her hands. “Leave me alone, Hugh. All I’ve told you is the truth. But I’m confused.”

  Silently Hugh picked up his hat. “Perhaps this is ruthless,” he said in a low voice. “I—I’ve got to be ruthless, Sharon. Will you marry me?”

  “I don’t know!” Sharon cried, her voice tormented.

  “Good night, my dear.”

  “Good night, Hugh.”

  When he was gone Sharon went to her own room and immediately hated it and came back to her father’s office. The rank fragrance of his black cigars seemed to have washed the room with Charles Bonal’s own peculiar smell. Sharon sat down in one of the deep leather chairs and closed her eyes. She had told Hugh as much as she knew herself—except, of course, that she loved Phil Seay. Was that any of Hugh’s business? Could he even understand it, much less forgive it? How transparent she must be, to have Hugh settle on the name so easily, so obviously. Suddenly she did not c
are. She had told only the truth—or three quarters of the truth. Long ago she had given him her word, and some fine-grained honesty that Charles Bonal’s daughter could not help but have would not let her break that promise. But if Hugh knew that she didn’t love him, couldn’t admire him, would he even want her to keep that promise? Sharon hoped not, but she remembered Hugh’s stubborn question just before he left. For one frightened moment she realized that this question was a portent, a sign that Hugh might hold her to that promise. The thought was suddenly unbearable.

  She heard the door open, and Charles Bonal came in. She waved to him, and he crossed the room to her. His eyes were shining, and, approaching, he stopped to brush the layered dust from his trousers. Too, he chuckled a little, half to himself.

  “What’ve you been doing, Dad?”

  “I was over with Phil at the tunnel, watching them push it through.”

  “It’s through, then, Dad?”

  “Absolutely. Tomorrow will see the last timbers in.”

  Sharon looked down at his dusty clothes. “But the dust. That isn’t mud.”

  Bonal laughed again. “I sent the buggy on ahead and drove a freight team home.” Shaking his head with pleasure, he went on, “Your old man isn’t a cripple yet. But, my God, that’s a job without a rough lock.”

  Going over to the taboret, he took out a bottle of whisky and poured himself a drink. His eyes were still shining with the elation of this night as he sat down. “Hugh gone?” he asked, and when Sharon nodded he said, “Sort of early for him, isn’t it?”

  “I sent him, Dad.”

  Bonal looked up at her and then away. “Spat, eh?”

  Sharon didn’t answer him. Instead, she said, “What’s your opinion of a person who’ll break his promise, Dad?”

  “What did Hugh promise you that he didn’t give you?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Bonal’s veiled eyes studied her for a moment and then shrewdness crept into them. “Depends,” he said slowly. “In a business proposition, he’ll sink himself sooner or later. In a personal one, he won’t be trusted. In an affair of the heart, I dunno.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Depends,” Bonal hedged. “If a man is held to all the nonsense he tells a woman, he’d likely wring her neck some night.” He sipped his whisky thoughtfully and then said, “And, contrariwise.”

  “Then it works both ways?”

  “My dear girl,” Bonal said bluntly, “if you’re asking for my advice, and it has to do with Hugh, you won’t get it.”

  “Did I ask?” Sharon flared up and then laughed.

  “No. And you’d better not. I don’t know anything about love,” Bonal went on. “When your mother and I were married, it wasn’t discussed—or not to the degree it is today. I was a young fella gettin’ ahead, and she took a shine to me. She was a pretty thing, with lots of common sense and a sense of humor. We liked each other’s company, so we got married.” He paused thoughtfully. “It worked out all right. Fine.”

  When Sharon didn’t say anything, he asked from around his drink, “That help you?”

  “Not much,” Sharon said quietly, “I’m not sure I want to marry Hugh, Dad.” If she thought this would startle her father, it did not. He raised one of his black eyebrows, nodded and took another sip of his whisky.

  “All right.”

  “But I promised him.”

  Bonal smiled meagerly in his beard. “Years ago—back in Illinois, it was—I went to a camp meeting,” he began. “They had a good preacher there, one of these hell-fire boys. This meetin’ was to fight the evil of liquor. After the third day of it he got me, and I took the pledge.” He set down his glass. “I was eleven at the time. How could I tell I’d change my mind? I did though.” He added dryly, “I’ve never thought it necessary to write that estimable gentlemen to tell him I reneged.”

  He got up, finished his whisky and, whistling faintly, went into his room, leaving Sharon as confused as he had found her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Seay was umpiring one of the interminable arguments between Borg Hulteen and Reed Tober. The three of them were standing at the junction of the Dry Sierras Consolidated shaft and the Bonal Tunnel. The full-timbered walls were seeping water, which runneled down to the floor and flowed sluggishly away, collecting in small pools. The air was cooler now there was a draft of air that flowed through the tunnel and up the shaft. It was so strong that the lanterns overhead swung unsteadily, their flames guttering. Too, it was a cleaner air, freed of all the fetid smells of weeks ago.

  Clumping over to a wall, he squatted, bracing his back against it, and contemplated the finished job. The drone of Borg’s profanity faded a little. His feet felt hot in the rubber boots, but he looked around him with a grim feeling of pride. This was his job, his work, and he had put it through.

  Tober turned to him and then jerked his head toward Borg.

  “When is this ape goin’ to start drillin’ again?”

  Seay shook his head. He couldn’t hear above the thin cascades of water that were falling down the Dry Sierras shaft and joining to make a small stream that ran down the tunnel floor. Ten years from now, Seay was thinking, there may be a big pump where we are standing, and the Dry Sierras’ shaft will drop off here to another two thousand feet of depth. Millions of dollars, thousands of tons of ore, would travel that shaft, would be dragged down this tunnel, and all because Charles Bonal was a man of vision and unconquerable.

  He rose and turned to the pair of them, still arguing, and took Reed by the arm. “Come on. Put it in a drawer until you can hear each other.”

  Borg stopped his cursing and grinned. The three of them went back to the dump car, climbed on, and Borg whipped up the mule. The long haul out was not dull to Seay. Every foot of this represented blood and bone and muscle and sacrifice and cunning and stubbornness. The lanterns at intervals threw twisted shadows on the wet walls of the tunnel side. They would plunge into its feeble circle of light and then dive into darkness again, the pin points of light ahead stretching in a long row. Only the lantern rigged on the mule’s collar gave a steady light, and it bobbed and twisted and flickered.

  Soon they came to the work crew, which was digging the deep trench in the floor of the tunnel. Here the water drained from the mines would flow under the tracks on which the ore cars would be hauled. It was easy work now compared to the tunnel drilling, and upon its completion the tunnel would be ready to operate.

  Outside the attention of the camp seemed turned away from the tunnel. The foundations of the reduction mill were being put in. The slapping of the double jacks of the workmen filled the hot afternoon air with sound and fury. Already the trenches were dug in orderly rows, lipped with the rock and dirt taken from them. Soon now, Seay thought, Bonal would not need him any more, and then he would drift.

  He swung off the car and looked off toward the office. A saddled horse stood hipshot in its shade. One of the guards who paced the tunnel mouth night and day after the cave-in nodded to him, and Seay tramped down the slope.

  In his office Vannie was seated in his swivel chair, her booted feet on his desk. She was wearing a pair of miner’s dungarees and a khaki shirt open at the neck, and her face had the pleasant freshness of activity.

  “I took another look at your tunnel,” Vannie said. “It looks like the Dry Sierras water trouble is over.”

  “For good,” Seay said. He sat down and pulled off his rubber boots, and then, still barefooted, he reached in his pocket and brought out his pipe and packed and lighted it. Vannie watched him, tenderness and pride in her eyes.

  “You carry your luck with you, don’t you, Phil?”

  “Seay laughed. “That luck was Bonal’s.”

  “No. It was yours. Why not admit it? Bonal, with all his hardheadedness, couldn’t have pushed the tunnel through.”

  Seay shrugged and pulled on his leather boots. The even heat poured in the windows, merciless in its pressing insistence, yet Va
nnie seemed cool and looked pleasant and only slightly disheveled. A streak of dirt across her chin showed dark on her golden skin, and Seay touched it with his finger. “You didn’t go into the tunnel far enough. There’s water enough in there to wash with.”

  Vannie scrubbed at her chin. “I practically had to kiss the guards to get close enough to look into it.”

  Seay regarded her fondly and then laughed and sat down on the desk.

  “Come to borrow back your track?” Seay asked.

  Vannie shook her head and did not smile. “I came to ask questions, Phil.”

  “Like what?”

  Vannie didn’t answer immediately, but instead took her feet off the table and leaned back in the chair and gazed thoughtfully out the window.

  “How many mines have signed up with Bonal yet?” she asked presently.

  “Three-four. Why?”

  “Why haven’t the others?” Vannie asked slowly.

  “Some men take a lot of licking.”

  “Just that?” Vannie asked, turning to regard him. “When it’s inevitable, why do they hold back?”

  “Let Bonal worry about that,” Seay told her. “But he’s not worrying. Why should he?”

  “That’s just the trouble,” Vannie murmured. “He’s not worrying enough.”

  Seay scowled. “How do you mean?”

  Vannie’s deep, steady gaze settled on Seay a long moment, and then she laughed abruptly, softly. “You’ll laugh at me, Phil.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s nothing I can pin down. Only, something’s underfoot around here, among these mines. It’s something they don’t want me to know about, because I’ve always been for Bonal, have helped him.”