The check “struck” MacFarlane just as the chairman had said it would, wiping out his losses by the flood with something ahead for his next undertaking.
That the verdict was a just one was apparent from the reports of both McGowan's and the Railroad Company's experts. These showed that the McGowan mortar held but little cement, and that not of the best; that the backing of the masonry was composed of loose rubble instead of split stone, and that the collapse of his structure was not caused by the downpour, but by the caving in of culverts and spillways, which were built of materials in direct violation of the provisions of the contract. Even then there might have been some doubt as to the outcome but for Holker Morris's testimony. He not only sent in his report, but appeared himself, he told the Council, so as to answer any questions Mr. McGowan or his friends might ask. He had done this, as he said openly at the meeting, to aid his personal friend, Mr. MacFarlane, and also that he might raise his voice against the slipshod work that was being done by men who either did not know their business or purposely evaded their responsibilities. “This construction of McGowan's,” he continued, “is especially to be condemned, as there is not the slightest doubt that the contractor has intentionally slighted his work—a neglect which, but for the thorough manner in which MacFarlane had constructed the lower culvert, might have resulted in the loss of many lives.”
McGowan snarled and sputtered, denouncing Garry and his “swallow-tails” in the bar rooms and at the board meetings, but the decision was unanimous, two of his friends concurring, fearing, as they explained afterward, that the “New York crowd” might claim even a larger sum in a suit for damages.
The meeting over, Morris and Jack dined with MacFarlane and again the distinguished architect won Ruth's heart by the charm of his personality, she telling Jack the next day that he was the only OLD MAN—fifty was old for Ruth—she had ever seen with whom she could have fallen in love, and that she was not sure after all but that Jack was too young for her, at which there was a great scrimmage and a blind-man's-buff chase around the table, up the front stairs and into the corner by the window, where she was finally caught, smothered in kisses and made to correct her arithmetic.
This ghost of damages having been laid—it was buried the week after Jack had called on his uncle—the Chief, the First Assistant, and Bangs, the head foreman, disappeared from Corklesville and reappeared at Morfordsburg.
The Chief came to select a site for the entrance of the shaft; the First Assistant came to compare certain maps and documents, which he had taken from the trunk he had brought with him from his Maryland home, with the archives resting in the queer old courthouse; while Foreman Bangs was to help with the level and target, should a survey be found necessary.
The faded-out old town clerk looked Jack all over when he asked to see the duplicate of a certain deed, remarking, as he led the way to the Hall of Records,—it was under a table in the back room,—“Reckon there's somethin' goin' on jedgin' from the way you New Yorkers is lookin' into ore lands up here. There come a lawyer only last month from a man named Breen, huntin' up this same property.”
The comparisons over and found to be correct, “starting from a certain stone marked 'B' one hundred and eighty-seven feet East by South,” etc., etc., the whole party, including a small boy to help carry the level and target and a reliable citizen who said he could find the property blindfold—and who finally collapsed with a “Goll darn!—if I know where I'm at!”—the five jumped onto a mud-encrusted vehicle and started for the site.
Up hill and down hill, across one stream and then another; through the dense timber and into the open again. Here their work began, Jack handling the level (his Chief had taught him), Bangs holding the target, MacFarlane taking a squint now and then so as to be sure,—and then the final result,—to wit:—First, that the Maryland Company's property, Arthur Breen & Co., agents, lay under a hill some two miles from Morfordsburg; that Jack's lay some miles to the south of Breen's. Second, that outcroppings showed the Maryland Mining Company's ore dipped, as the Senior Breen had said, to the east, and third, that similar outcroppings showed Jack's dipped to the west.
And so the airy bubble filled with his own and Ruth's iridescent hopes,—a bubble which had floated before him as he tramped through the cool woods, and out upon the hillside, vanished into thin air.
For with Ruth's arms around him, her lips close to his, her boundless enthusiasm filling his soul, the boy's emotions had for the time overcome his judgment. So much so that all the way up in the train he had been “supposing” and resupposing. Even the reply of the town clerk had set his heart to thumping; his uncle had sent some one then! Then came the thought,—Yes, to boom one of his misleading prospectuses—and for a time the pounding had ceased: by no possible combination now, either honest or dishonest, could the two properties be considered one and the same mine.
Again his thoughts went back to Ruth. He knew how keenly she would be disappointed. She had made him promise to telegraph her at once if his own and her father's inspection of the ore lands should hold out any rose-colored prospects for the future. This he had not now the heart to do. One thing, however, he must do, and at once, and that was to write to Peter, or see him immediately on his return. There was no use now of the old fellow talking the matter over with the director; there was nothing to talk over, except a bare hill three miles from anywhere, covering a possible deposit of doubtful richness and which, whether good or bad, would cost more to get to market than it was worth.
They were on the extreme edge of the forest when the final decision was reached, MacFarlane leaning against a rock, the level and tripod tilted against his arm, Jack sitting on a fallen tree, the map spread out on his knees.
For some minutes Jack sat silent, his eyes roaming over the landscape. Below him stretched an undulating mantle of velvet, laid loosely over valley, ravine and hill, embroidered in tints of corn-yellow, purplings of full-blossomed clover and the softer greens of meadow and swamp. In and out, now straight, now in curves and bows, was threaded a ribbon of silver, with here and there a connecting mirror in which flashed the sun. Bordering its furthermost edge a chain of mountains lost themselves in low, rolling clouds, while here and there, in its many crumplings, were studded jewels of barn stack and house, their facets aflame in the morning light.
Jack absorbed it all, its beauty filling his soul, the sunshine bathing his cheeks. Soon all trace of his disappointment vanished: with Ruth here,—with his work to occupy him,—and this mighty, all-inspiring, all-intoxicating sweep of loveliness spread out, his own and Ruth's every hour of the day and night, what did ore beds or anything else matter?
MacFarlane's voice woke him to consciousness. He had called to him before, but the boy had not heard.
“As I have just remarked, Jack,” MacFarlane began again, “there is nothing but an earthquake will make your property of any use. It is a low-grade ore, I should say, and tunnelling and shoring would eat it up. Wipe it off the books. There are thousands of acres of this kind of land lying around loose from here to the Cumberland Valley. It may get better as you go down—only an assay can tell about that—but I don't think it will. To begin sinking shafts might mean sinking one or a dozen; and there's nothing so expensive. I am sorry, Jack, but wipe it out. Some bright scoundrel might sell stock on it, but they'll never melt any of it up into stove plate.”
“All right, sir,” Jack said at last, with a light laugh. “It is the same old piece of bread, I reckon, and it has fallen on the same old buttered side. Uncle Peter told me to beware of bubbles—said they were hard to carry around. This one has burst before I got my hand on it. All right—let her go! I hope Ruth won't take it too much to heart. Here, boy, get hold of this map and put it with the other traps in the wagon. And now, Mr. MacFarlane, what comes next?”
Before the day was over MacFarlane had perfected his plans. The town was to be avoided as too demoralizing a shelter for the men, and barracks were to be erected in which to house them. Locations of the principal derricks were selected and staked, as well as the sites for the entrance to the shaft, for the machine and blacksmith's shops and for a storage shanty for tools: the Maryland Mining Company's work would require at least two years to complete, and a rational, well-studied plan of procedure was imperative.
“And now, Jack, where are you going to live,—in the village?” asked his Chief, resting the level and tripod carefully against a tree trunk and seating himself beside Jack on a fallen log.
“Out here, if you don't mind, sir, where I can be on top of the work all the time. It's but a short ride for Ruth and she can come and go all the time. I am going to drop some of these trees; get two or three choppers from the village and knock up a log-house like the one I camped in when I was a boy.”
“Where will you put it?” asked MacFarlane with a smile, as he turned his head as if in search of a site. It was just where he wanted Jack to live, but he would not have suggested it.
“Not a hundred yards from where we sit, sir—a little back of those two big oaks. There's a spring above on the hill and sloping ground for drainage; and shade, and a great sweep of country in front. I've been hungry for this life ever since I left home; now I am going to have it.”
“It will be rather lonely, won't it?” The engineer's eyes softened as they rested on the young fellow, his face flushed with the enthusiasm of his new resolve. He and Ruth's mother had lived in just such a shanty, and not so very long ago, either, it seemed,—those were the happiest years of his life.
“No!” exclaimed Jack. “It's only a step to the town; I can walk it in half an hour. No, it won't be lonely. I will fix up a room for Uncle Peter somewhere, so he can be comfortable,—he would love to come here on his holidays; and Ruth can come out for the day,—she will be crazy about it when I tell her. No, I will get along. If the lightning had struck my ore beds I would probably have painted and papered some musty back room in the village and lived a respectable life. Now I am going to turn savage.”
The next day the contracts were signed: work to commence in three months. Henry MacFarlane, Engineer-in-Chief, John Breen in charge of construction.
It was on that same sofa in the far corner of the sitting-room that Jack told Ruth,—gently, one word at a time,—making the best of it, but telling her the exact truth.
“And then we are not going to have any of the things we dreamed about, Jack,” she said with a sigh.
“I am afraid not, my darling,—not now, unless the lightning strikes us, which it won't.”
She looked out of the window for a moment, and her eyes filled with tears. Then she thought of her father, and how hard he had worked, and what disappointments he had suffered, and yet how, with all his troubles, he had always put his best foot foremost—always encouraging her. She would not let Jack see her chagrin. This was part of Jack's life, just as similar disappointments had been part of her father's.
“Never mind, blessed. Well, we had lots of fun 'supposing,' didn't we, Jack. This one didn't come true, but some of the others will and what difference does it make, anyway, as long as I have you,” and she nestled her face in his neck. “And now tell me what sort of a place it is and where daddy and I are going to live, and all about it.”
And then, to soften the disappointment the more and to keep a new bubble afloat, Jack launched out into a description of the country and how beautiful the view was from the edge of the hill overlooking the valley, with the big oaks crowning the top and the lichen-covered rocks and fallen timber blanketed with green moss, and the spring of water that gushed out of the ground and ran laughing down the hillside, and the sweep of mountains losing themselves in the blue haze of the distance, and then finally to the log-cabin he was going to build for his own especial use.
“And only two miles away,” she cried in a joyous tone,—“and I can ride out every day! Oh, Jack!—just think of it!” And so, with the breath of this new enthusiasm filling their souls, a new bubble of hope and gladness was floated, and again the two fell to planning, and “supposing,” the rose-glow once more lightening up the peaks.
For days nothing else was talked of. An onslaught was at once made on Garry's office, two doors below Mrs. Hicks, for photographs, plans of bungalows, shanties, White Mountain lean-tos, and the like, and as quickly tucked under Ruth's arm and carried off, with only the permission of the office boy,—Garry himself being absent owing to some matters connected with a big warehouse company in which he was interested, the boy said, and which took him to New York on the early train and did not allow his return sometimes, until after midnight.
These plans were spread out under the lamp on the sitting-room table, the two studying the details, their heads together, MacFarlane sitting beside them reading or listening,—the light of the lamp falling on his earnest, thoughtful face,—Jack consulting him now and then as to the advisability of further extensions, the same being two rooms shingled inside and out, with an annex of bark and plank for Ruth's horse, and a kitchen and laundry and no end of comforts, big and little,—all to be occupied whenever their lucky day would come and the merry bells ring out the joyful tidings of their marriage.
Nor was this all this particularly radiant bubble contained. Not only was there to be a big open fireplace built of stone, and overhead rafters of birch, the bark left on and still glistening,—but there were to be palms, ferns, hanging baskets, chintz curtains, rugs, pots of flowers, Chinese lanterns, hammocks, easy chairs; and for all Jack knew, porcelain tubs, electric bells, steam heat and hot and cold water, so enthusiastic had Ruth become over the possibilities lurking in the 15 X 20 log-hut which Jack proposed to throw together as a shelter in his exile.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg