The Man from the Bitter Roots

by Caroline Lockhart

  XIV

  HIS ONLY ASSET

  It would be a pleasure to record that Capital found Bruce's personalityso irresistible that his need of funds met with instant response, thatthe dashing picturesqueness of his appearance and charm of hisunconventional speech and manner was so fascinating that Capitalviolated all the rules observed by experienced investors and handed outits checks with the cheery "God bless you m' boy!" which warms the hearttoward Capital in fiction. Such, however, was not the case.

  It took only one interview to disabuse Bruce's mind of any faint,sneaking idea he may have had that he was doing Capital a favor forwhich it would duly thank him. The person whom he honored with his firstcall strongly conveyed the impression after he had stated his case thathe considered that he, Bruce, had obtained valuable time under falsepretenses. Certainly the last emotion which he seemed to entertain forthe opportunity given him was gratitude, and his refusal to beinterested amounted to a curt dismissal.

  The second interview, during which Bruce was cross-examined by acold-eyed gentleman with a cool, impersonal voice, was sufficient tomake him realize with tolerable clearness his total unpreparedness. Whatengineer of recognized standing had reported upon the ground? None! Towhat extent, then, had the ground been sampled? How many test-pits hadbeen sunk, and how far to bed-rock? What was the yardage? Where werehis certified assay sheets, and his engineer's estimate forhydro-electric installation? What transportation facilities?

  Bruce, still dazed by the onslaught, had turned and looked at the doorwhich had closed behind him with a briskness which seemed to say "Goodriddance," and muttered, thinking of the clerk's one sanguinesuggestion: "Personality! I might as well be a hop-toad."

  But in his chagrin he went to extremes in his contemptuous estimate ofhimself, for there was that about him which generally got him a hearingand a longer one than would have been accorded the average "promoter"with nothing more tangible upon which to raise money than hisunsupported word. His Western phraseology and sometimes humoroussimiles, his unexpected whimsicalities and a certain naivete secretlyamused many of those whom he approached, though they took the best ofcare not to show it lest he mistake their interest in himself forinterest in his proposition.

  One or two went so far as to pass him on by giving him the name of afriend, but, mostly, they listened coldly, critically, and refused withsome faint excuse or none. There was no harder task that Bruce couldhave set himself than applying to such men for financial help for,underneath, he was still the sensitive boy who had bolted from thedinner-table in tears and anger to escape his father's ridicule, and,furthermore, he was accustomed to the friendly spirit and manner of thefar West.

  The chilling stiffness, the skepticism and suspicion, the curtness whichwas close to rudeness, at first bewildered, then hurt and humiliatedhim, finally filling him with a resentment which was rapidly reaching apoint where it needed only an uncivil word or act too much to produce anexplosion.

  But if he was like that boy of other days in his quick pride, neitherhad he lost the tenacity of purpose which had kept him dragging onesore, bare foot after the other to get to his mother when the gulches hehad to pass were black and full of ghostly, fearsome things that thehired man had seen when staying out late o' nights. This trait now kepthim trudging grimly from one office to another, offering himself atarget for rebuffs that to him had the sting of insults.

  He had come to know so well what to expect that he shrank painfully fromeach interview. It required a strong effort of will to turn in at thegiven number and ask for the man he had come to see, and when he saw himit required all his courage to explain the purpose of his call. Bruceunderstood fully now how he was handicapped by the lack of data and thefact that he was utterly unknown, but so long as there was one glimmerof hope that someone would believe him, would see the possibilities inhis proposition as he saw them, and investigate for himself Bruce wouldnot quit. The list of names the clerk had given him and many others hadlong since been exhausted. Looking back it seemed to him that he was ababe in swaddling clothes when he started out with his telegram and hisaddresses, so full of high hopes and the roseate expectations ofinexperience.

  Day after day he plodded, his dark face set in grim lines of purpose,following up clews leading to possible investors which he obtained hereand there, and always with the one result. What credentials had he? Towhat past successes could he point? None? Ah, good-day.

  One morning Bruce opened his eyes and the conviction that he had failedleaped into his mind as though it had been waiting like a cat at a mousehole to pounce upon him the instant of his return to consciousness.

  "You have failed! You have got to give up! You are done!" The wordspounding into his brain affected him like hammer blows over the heart.He laid motionless, inert, his face grown sallow upon the pillow, and hethought that the feelings of a condemned man listening to the buildingof his gallows must be something like his own.

  Those who have struggled for something, tried with all their heart andsoul, fought to the last atom of their strength, and failed, knowsomething of the sickening heaviness, the dull, aching depression whichtakes the vitality and seems actually to slow up the beating of theheart.

  Out in the world, he told himself, where men won things by their brains,he had failed like any pitiable weakling; that he had been handicappedby unpreparedness was no palliation of the crime of failure. Ignorancewas no excuse. In humiliation and chagrin he attributed the mistakes ofinexperience to lack of intelligence. His mother had over-estimated him,he had over-estimated himself. It was presumption to have supposed hewas fitted for anything but manual labor. Sprudell had been right, hethought bitterly, when he had sneered that muscle was his only asset.

  He could see himself loading his belongings into Slim's old boat, hisblankets and the tattered soogan and bobbing through the rapids with theblackened coffee-pot, the frying pan, and lard cans jingling in thebottom, while Sprudell, with his hateful, womanish smile, watched hisignominious departure. Bruce drew his sleeve across his damp forehead.If there was any one thing which could goad him to further action it wasthis picture.

  He arose and dressed slowly. Bruce had known fatigue, the weakness ofhunger, but never anything like the leaden, heavy-footed depressionwhich comes from intense despondency and hopelessness.

  As his finances had gone down he had gone up, until he was now locatedpermanently on the top floor of the hotel where the hall carpets andfurniture were given their final try-out before going into the discards.The only thing which stopped him from going further was the roof. He hadno means of judging what the original colors in his rug had been save byan inch or two close to the wall, and every brass handle on the drawersof his dresser came out at the touch. The lone faucet of cold waterdripped constantly and he had to stand on a chair each time he raisedthe split green shade. When he wiped his face he fell through the holein the towel; he could never get over a feeling of surprise at meetinghis hands in the middle, and the patched sheets on his bed looked likecity plots laid out in squares.

  He loathed the shabbiness of it, and the suggestion of germs, decay,down-at-the-heel poverty added to his depression. He never had any suchfeelings about his rough bunk filled with cedar boughs and his pinetable as he had about this iron bed, with its scratched enamel and tinknobs, which deceived nobody into thinking them brass, or the wobblydresser that he swore at heartily each time he turned back a fingernailtrying to claw a drawer open.

  Bruce had vowed that so long as a stone remained unturned he would stayand turn it, but--he had run out of stones. Three untried addresses wereleft in his note-book and he looked at them as he ate his frugalbreakfast speculating as to which was nearest.

  "If I'd eaten as much beef as I have crow since I came to this man'stown," he meditated as he dragged his unwilling feet up the street, "I'dbe a 'shipper' in prime A1 condition. I've a notion I haven't put onmuch weight since it became the chief article of my diet. If thirty daysof quail will stall a man what will six weeks of crow do to
him? I doubtif I will ever entirely get my self-respect back unless," he added withthe glimmer of a smile, "I go around and lick some of them before Ileave."

  "I suppose," his thoughts ran on, "that it's a part of the scheme oflife that a person must eat his share of crow before he gets in aposition to make some one else eat it, but dog-gone!" with a wry face,"I've sure swallowed a double portion." Then he fell to wondering if--heconsulted his note-book--J. Winfield Harrah had specialized at all uponhis method of serving up this game-bird which knows no closed season?

  As he sat in Harrah's outer office on a high-backed settee of teak-woodornate with dragons and Chinese devils, with his feet on a rug whichwould have gone a long way toward installing a power-plant, looking atpictures of Jake Kilrain in pugilistic garb and pose, the racing yachtShamrock under full sail, and Heatherbloom taking a record smashingjump, the spider-legged office boy came from inside endeavoring to hidesome pleasurable excitement under a semblance of dignity and officereticence.

  "Mr. Harrah has been detained and won't be here for perhaps an hour."

  "I'll wait," Bruce replied laconically.

  The office boy lingered. He fancied Bruce because of his size and hishat and a resemblance that he thought he saw between him and hisfavorite western hero of the movies; besides, he was bursting with aproud secret. He hunched his shoulders and looked cautiously behindtoward the inner offices. Between his palms he whispered:

  "He's been arrested."

  It delighted him that Bruce's eyes widened.

  "Third time in a month--speedin' in Jersey--his new machine is 80horse-power--! A farmer put tacks in the road and tried to kill him wit'a pitchfork. Say! my boss _et_ him. I bet he'll get fined the limit."His red necktie swelled palpably and he swaggered proudly. "Pooh! hedon't care. My boss, he--"

  "Willie!"

  "Yes ma'am." The stenographer's call interrupted further confidencesfrom Willie and he scuttled away, leaving Bruce with the impression thatthe boy's admiration for his boss was not unmixed with apprehension.

  The hour had gone when the door opened and a huge, fiery-bearded,dynamic sort of person went swinging past Bruce without a glance and onto the inner offices. The office boy's husky "That's him!" was notneeded to tell him that J. Winfield Harrah had arrived. The air suddenlyseemed charged electrically. The stenographer speeded up and dapperyoung clerks and accountants bent to their work with a zeal andassiduity which merited immediate promotion, while "Willie," Brucenoticed, came from a brief session in the private office with the dazedlook of one who has just been through an experience.

  When Bruce's turn came Harrah sat at his desk like an expectant ogre;there was that in his attitude which seemed to say: "Enter; I eatpromoters." His eyes measured Bruce from head to foot in a glance ofappraisement, and Bruce on his part subjected Harrah to the same swiftscrutiny.

  Without at all being able to explain it Bruce felt instantly at hisease, he experienced a kind of relief as does a stranger in a strangeland when he discovers someone who speaks his tongue.

  Harrah appeared about Bruce's age, perhaps a year or two older, and hewas as tall, though lacking Bruce's thickness and breadth of shoulder.His arms were long as a gorilla's and he had huge white fists withfreckles on the back that looked like ginger-snaps. Fiery red eyebrowsas stiff as two toothbrushes bristled above a pair of vivid blue eyes,while his short beard resembled nothing so much as a neatly trimmedwhisk broom, flaming in color. His skin was florid and his hair, whichwas of a darker shade than his beard, was brushed straight back from ahigh, white forehead. A tuft of hair stood up on his crown like thecrest on a game-cock. Everything about him indicated volcanictemperament, virility, and impulsiveness which amounted to eccentricity.

  Harrah represented to Bruce practically his last chance, but there wasnothing in Harrah's veiled, non-committal eyes as he motioned Bruce to achair and inquired brusquely: "Well--what kind of a wild-cat have _you_got?" which would have led an observer to wager any large amount thathis last chance was a good one.

  Bruce's eyes opened and he stared for the fraction of a second at therudeness of the question, then they flashed as he answered shortly.

  "I'm not peddling wild-cats, or selling mining stock to widows andorphans--if you happen to be either."

  Capital is not accustomed to tart answers to its humor caustic, frompersons in need of financial assistance for their enterprises. Harrahraised his toothbrush eyebrows and once more he favored Bruce with asweeping glance of interest, which Bruce, in his sensitive pride,resented.

  "Who sent you?" Harrah demanded roughly.

  "Never mind who sent me," Bruce answered in the same tone, reaching forhis hat which he had laid on the floor beside him, "but he had hisdog-gone nerve directing me to an ill-mannered four-flusher like you."

  The color flamed to Harrah's cheek bones and over his high, whiteforehead.

  "You've got a curious way of trying to raise money," he observed. "Isuppose," dryly, "that's what you're here for?"

  "You suppose right," Bruce answered hotly as he stood up, "but I'm nodamn pauper. And get it out of your head," he went on as the accumulatedwrath of weeks swept over him, "that you're talking to the office boy.I've found somebody at last that's big enough to stand up to and tell'em to go to hell! Sabe? You needn't touch my proposition, you needn'teven listen to it, but, hear me, you talk civil!"

  As Harrah arose Bruce took a step closer and looked at him squarely.

  A lurking imp sprang to life in Harrah's vivid eyes, a dare-devil lookwhich found its counterpart in Bruce's own.

  "I believe you think you're a better man than I am."

  "I can lick you any jump in the road," Bruce answered promptly.

  Harrah looked at him speculatively, without resentment, then his lipsparted in a grin which showed two sharp, white, prominent front teeth.

  "On the square," eagerly, "do you think you can down me?"

  "I know it," curtly--"any old time or place. _Now_, if it suits you."

  To Bruce's amazement Harrah took his hand and shook it joyfully.

  "I wouldn't be surprised if you could! You look as hard as nails. Do youbox or wrestle?"

  Bruce wondered if he was crazy.

  He answered shortly: "Some."

  "Bully!" excitedly. "The best luck ever! We'll have a try-out in privateand if you're the moose I think you are you can break him in two!"

  "Break who in two?"

  "The Spanish Bull-dog! Eureka!" he chuckled gleefully. "I'll back you tothe limit!"

  "What's the matter with you?" Bruce demanded. "Are you loco?"

  "Close to it!" the eccentric capitalist cried gaily,--"with joy! Hebested me proper the other night at the Athletic Club--he dusted the matwith me--and I want to play even." Seeing that Bruce's face did notlose its look of mystification he curbed his exuberance: "You see I'vegot some little reputation as a wrestler so when Billy Harper ran acrossthis fellow in Central America he imported him on purpose to reduce theswelling in my head, he said, and he did it, for while the chap hasn'tmuch science he's so powerful I couldn't hold him. But you, by George!wait till I spring _you_ on him!"

  "Say," Bruce answered resentfully, "I came East to raise money for ahydro-electric power plant, not to go into the ring. It looks as ifyou're taking a good deal for granted."

  "That's all right," Harrah answered easily. "How much do you want? Whatyou got? Where is it?"

  Bruce told him briefly.

  Harrah heard him through attentively and when he was done Harrah saidcandidly:

  "Perhaps you've been told before that without a qualified engineer'sreport it isn't much of a business proposition to appeal to a businessman."

  "Once or twice," Bruce answered dryly.

  "Nevertheless," Harrah continued, "I'm willing to take a chance onyou--not on the proposition as you've put it up to me but on youpersonally, because I like you. I'll head your inscription list with$5000 and introduce you to some men that will probably take a 'flyer' onmy say-so. If you're still short
of what you think you'll need I'll makeup the remainder, all providing"--with a quick grin--"that you go in andwallop that Greaser!"

  Bruce's expression was a mixture of many.

  Finally he replied slowly:

  "Well, it isn't just the way I'd figured out to interest Capital and Ireckon the method is unique in mine promotion, but as I'm at the end ofmy rope and have no choice, one more meal of 'crow' won't kill me." Hewent on with a tinge of bitterness, thinking of Sprudell: "Since muscleis my only asset I'll have to realize on it." Then his dark face lightedwith one of the slow, whimsical smiles that transformed it--"Unchain the'Spanish Bull-dog,' feller!"

  Harrah rang for the office boy and reached for his hat.

  "William," he said sternly when the quaking youth stood before him,"tell those people outside not to wait. I'm called away onbusiness--urgent, important business and I can't say when I'll beback."