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"What place is this?"
"Snake's Fall."
The announcement set Gordon laughing.
"What's amiss with Snake's Fall?" inquired the other sharply.
"Why, nothing. I was just thinking. You see, the conductor told me 'most everybody was making for Snake's Fall on the train. I'm sorry that 'sharp' wasn't. Say – "
"What?"
Gordon laughed again.
"I remember you in the smoker, only – you seemed to have a – a patch over your left eye."
"Sure."
"Now you haven't got it?"
"No."
"I'm not curious, only – "
The stranger's eyes lit ironically.
"Sure you ain't. That's the hotel. Peter McSwain's. He's the boss. He's a friend of mine, an' I guess he'll fix you right for the night."
The snub was decided but gentle. The man's deep, musical voice contained no suggestion of displeasure. However, he had made the other feel that he had been guilty of unpardonable rudeness.
He was reduced to silence for the rest of the journey to the hotel, and gave himself up to consideration of this new position in which he now found himself. The one great fact that stood out in his mind was that he had gained another day on the wrong side of his ledger, and, however wrong he had been in his first attempt at fortune, his course had been hopelessly diverted into a still more impossible channel. The absurdity of the situation inclined him to amusement, but the knowledge of the real seriousness of it held him troubled.
As they neared the hotel his curiosity further made itself felt. The place was an ordinary frame building with a veranda. It was square and squat, like a box. It was two-storied, with windows, five in all, and a center doorway. These were dotted on the face of it like raisins in a pudding. Its original paint was undoubtedly white, but that seemed to have long since succumbed to the influence of the weather, and now suggested a hopeless hue which was anything but inspiriting.
Leaning against the door-casing, in his shirt-sleeves, was a smallish, florid man with ruddy hair. His waistcoat was almost as cheerful as his face, and, judging by the sound of his voice as he talked to a number of men lounging on the veranda, the latter quite matched the pattern of his violently checked trousers.
"That's Peter," remarked One Eye, the name, failing a better, Gordon still thought of his companion by. "He's a bright boy, is Peter," he added, chuckling.
"The proprietor of the – hotel?" said Gordon, interested.
"Sure."
Then a hail reached them from the veranda.
"Got back, Silas?" cried the loud-voiced hotel-keeper.
"Just what you say yourself," retorted Silas amiably. "Seems to me I bought a ticket and just got off the train. Still, ther' ain't nothing certain in this world except – graft."
"That's so," laughed the other. "Still, ther' ain't much of a shadow 'bout you, so we'll take it as real. Who's your friend?"
The hotel-keeper eyed Gordon with a view to trade. The man called Silas laughed and turned to Gordon.
"Guess I didn't get your name. Mine's Mallinsbee – Silas Mallinsbee. I'm a rancher, way out ther' in the foothills."
Gordon thought for a moment. Then he decided to use two of his given names in preference to his father's.
"Mine's Gordon Van Henslaer. Glad to meet you."
"Van Henslaer?" Mallinsbee's eyes twinkled. "Guess the first and last letters on your grip are spare. Kind of belong back east. How-do?" Then, without waiting for a reply, he turned to McSwain and the men on the veranda who were interestedly surveying Gordon. "This is Mister Gordon Van Henslaer from New York. Thought he'd like to break his journey west and get a look around Snake's Fall."
Gordon laughed.
"I was persuaded at the last minute," he added. "Can you let me have a room?"
McSwain became active.
"Sure. Guess we're pretty busy these times, with the town gettin' ready to boom. But I guess I ken fix any friend of Silas Mallinsbee. Ther's a room they calculated makin' into a bathroom back of the house, but some slick Alec figured the boys of Snake's Fall were prejudiced, so cut it out. It's small, but we got a bed fixed ther', an' you ken clean yourself at the trough out back. Come right along in."
Gordon was half inclined to protest, but Mallinsbee's voice came opportunely —
"I told you Peter 'ud fix you right. I've slept in that room myself, and you'll find it elegant sleepin', if you don't get a nightmare and get jumping around. We'll go right in."
Gordon's protest died on his lips. Mr. Mallinsbee had a persuasion all his own. There was a humorous geniality about him that was quite irresistible to the younger man, nor could he forget the manner in which he had helped him after the debacle on the train. He felt that it would have been churlish to refuse his good offices.
They passed into the building. The office was plainly furnished. A few Windsor chairs, a table, an empty stove, a few nigger pictures on the walls, and a large register for guests' names. This was the whole scheme.
Gordon flung down his grip.
"Well, I'm thankful to be off that train, anyway," he said. "Sign here, eh?" as Peter threw the book towards him. "Say," he added, glancing at the list of names above his, "you sure are busy."
Peter grinned complacently, while Mallinsbee looked on.
"You've hit this city at the psychological moment in its history, sir," he declared expansively. "You've hit it, sir, when, if I ken be allowed to use the expression, the snow's gone an' all the earth's jest bustin' with new life. You've hit it, sir, when fortunes are just going to start right into full growth with all the impetus of virgin soil. Snake's Fall, sir, is about to become the greatest proposition in the Western States, as a sure thing for soaking dollars into it. And here, sir, standing right at your elbow, is the courage, enterprise and intellect that's made it that way. Mr. Silas Mallinsbee is the father of this city, sir; he's more – he's the creator of it. And, sir, I congratulate you on the friendship of such a man, a friendship, sir, in which I have the honor to share."
He grabbed a filthy piece of blotting-paper and dabbed it cheerfully over Gordon's name in the book, while the latter smiled at the monument of enterprise himself.
"I was quite unaware – " he began. But Mallinsbee cut him short.
"Peter's a good feller," he declared, "but some seven sorts of a galoot once told him he ought to go into Congress, and he's been talking ever since. Ther's jest one thing 'll stop Peter talking, and that's orderin' a drink. Which I'm doin' right now. Peter, you'll jest hand us two cocktails. Your specials. And take what you like yourself."
Peter accepted the order with alacrity. His admiration of and friendship for Mallinsbee could not be doubted for a moment. And somehow Gordon felt it was a good sign. He returned in a few moments with the cocktails, and a glass of rye whiskey for himself.
"I know a better play than my special cocktails," he said, a huge wink distorting most of his ginger-hued features. "They're all right for customers, but I ain't no use fer picklin' my liver. How?"
"Here's to the extermination of all 'sharps,'" said Mallinsbee in his deep, rolling voice, and with a meaning glance in Gordon's direction.
Gordon nodded.
"And here's to the confusion of graft and grafters."
All three drank and set their glasses down.
"Graft?" said Mallinsbee thoughtfully. Then he shrugged his massive shoulders and laughed. "It's not a heap of use blaming grafters for their graft. They can't help it, any more than you can help scrappin' when a feller hits your wad on the crook. Graft – why, I just hate to think of the ways of graft. But you can't get through life without it; anyway, not life on this earth. I used to think graft a specialty of this country, but guess I was wrong. I'd localized. It don't belong to any one country more than another. It belongs to life; to our human civilization. It's the time limit of life causes the trouble. Nature makes it a cinch we've all got to be rounded up in the get-rich-quick corral. We start life foolish. Then for a while we get a sight more foolish. Then for a few mousy years we take on quite a nice bunch of sense. After that we start getting foolish again, and then the time limit comes right down on the backs of our necks like an ax. Well, I guess those years of sense are so mighty few we've got to get rich quick against the time we start on the foolish racket again, and graft, of one sort or another, is the short cut necessary.
"You see, there's every sort of graft. All through life we're looking around for something we ain't got. Did you ever see a kid around his parents? Graft; it's all graft. No kiddy ever acted right because he fancied that way. He's lookin' ahead fer something he's needing, and his pop or his momma are the folks to pass it along to him. Did you ever know a kid take his physic without the promise of candy, or the certainty it would come his way? That's graft. Say, ain't the gal you fancy the biggest graft of all? You don't get nowhere with her without graft. She'll eat up everything you can hand her, from automobiles and jewels down to five-cent candy. Then when you've started getting old and sick and foolish again, having grafted a pile out of life yourself, don't every grafter you ever knew come around an' hand you cures and listen to your senile wisdom just as though they thought you the greatest proposition ever and hated to see you sick? That's graft. You've got a pile and they're needin' it."
The twinkle in the big man's eyes while he was talking found a joyous response in Gordon's. The tongue in the cheek of this native of Snake's Fall pleased him mightily. But the wide-eyed sunset of Peter McSwain's features was one of sober earnestness and admiration.
"Gee!" he cried, with prodigious appreciation. "He orter write a book!"
CHAPTER V
A LETTER HOME
The bathroom proved to be a veritable rabbit hutch, though clean. But Gordon was astonished to find how far the old life had fallen away behind him. The bareness of the room did not disturb him in the least, and, after a wash in the trough at the back of the hotel, and having dried himself on a towel that may have seen cleaner days, and refused to be inveigled by the attraction of an unclean comb, securely tied to a defective mirror in the passage to the back door, he came back to his bedroom with an added appreciation for its questionable luxury.
Mallinsbee had ridden off on a great chestnut horse, nor, until Gordon saw him in the saddle, was he definitely able to classify him in his mind. Big as the amiable stranger was, he sat in the saddle as though he had been born in it, and he handled his horse as only a cattle man can.
At supper-time he had an opportunity of studying something of his fellow guests in the house. They were a mixed gathering, but every table in the dining-room was full to overflowing. Certainly McSwain was justified in his claim to a rush of business.
It was quickly obvious to Gordon that these people were by no means natives of the place. The majority were undoubtedly business men. Shrewd, keen men of the speculative type, judging from the babel of talk going on about him. As far as he could make out the whole interest of the place was land. Land – always land – and again land.
In view of Mallinsbee's friendship Peter McSwain had requested him to sit beside him at his especial table. And he forthwith began to question his host.
"Seems to be a big talk of land going on," he said, as he ate his macaroni soup.
Peter gulped violently at a long tube of macaroni and nearly choked.
"Sure," he said, his eyes wide with an expression the meaning of which Gordon was never quite certain about. It might have meant mere astonishment, but it also suggested resentment. "Sure it's land. What else, unless it's coal, would they talk in Snake's Fall? Every blamed feller you see settin' around in this room is what Silas Mallinsbee calls a ground shark. Which means," he added, with a grin, "they're out to buy or steal land around Snake's Fall. We guess they prefer stealing. The place is bung full with 'em."
Gordon's interest deepened.
"But why, if you'll forgive me, around – Snake's Fall?"
"Young man," said Peter severely, "you're new to the place, and that's your excuse for such ignorance." He pushed his half-finished soup aside and adopted an impressive pose with both elbows on the table, his hands together, and one finger describing acrobatic gyrations to point his words. The manner of it fascinated his hearer. "Let me tell you, sir, that Snake's Fall is the new coalfield of this great country. Sir," he added, with great dramatic effect, "Snake's Fall is capable of supplying the coal of the world! There's hundreds of billions of tons of high-grade coal underlying these silly-lookin' hummocks they call the foothills. All this land around Snake's Fall was Silas Mallinsbee's ranch, and he found the coal. That's why I said Silas Mallinsbee was the father of Snake's Fall. He sold this land to a great coal corporation, and bought land away further up in the hills, where he still runs his ranch. He's a great man with a pile of dollars. And he's clever, too. He's kep' for himself all the land either side of the railroad, except this town. And that's why all these land pirates, or ground sharks, are around. The railroad ain't declared their land yet, and everybody's waiting to jump in. The coal's five miles west of here, and the railroad has got to say if they'll keep the depot where it is, or build a new one further along, right on the coal seams. That's the play we're all watching. We want to buy right. We want to buy for the boom. These guys here are out to get in on the ground floor, and see prices go sky high – when they've bought. There'll be some dandy piles made in this play – and lost."
By the time he had finished Gordon was agog with excitement. It had stirred as the man began to talk, without his fully understanding the meaning of it. Then, as he proceeded, it grew, and with its growth came enlightenment. Vaguely he saw the hand of Providence in the affairs of the last few days.
He had planned his own little matters, or rather he had drifted into them, and then the gods of fortune had taken a hand. And the way of it. He began to smile. A strangely impish mood must have stirred them. His journey. His discovery of the absurdity of his own plans in the nick of time. His visit to the smoker. His play with a "sharp." His fight, and his sudden and uncalculated arrival at Snake's Fall. Here he was, quite without the least intention of his own, landed into the only sort of place in which it could be reasonably hoped he might pick up a fortune quickly. He wondered how he was likely to fare in competition with these ground sharks about him. And the thought made him begin to laugh.
McSwain eyed him doubtfully.
"Amusin', ain't it?" he said, without appreciation.
Gordon shook his head.
"If you only knew – it is."
Peter went on with his food for a few moments in silence.
"I s'pose the boom will come big when it does start?" hazarded Gordon presently.
"Big? Say, you ain't got a grip on things yet. Snake's Fall could supply the whole – not half – world with high-grade stove coal. Does that tell you anything? No? Wal, it jest means that when the railroad says the word, hundred-dollar plots 'll fetch a thousand dollars in a week, and maybe ten thousand in a month or less. I tell you right here that in six months from the time the railroad talks there'll be fifty thousand speculators right here, and we'll most of us rake in our piles. We only got to jump in at the start, maybe a bit before, and the game's right in our hands. Get me? I tell you, sir, this is bigger than the first Kootenay rush and nigh as big as the Cobalt boom in Canada."
Gordon was impressed.
"And to think I came here by accident."
"Accident?"
"You see, I was persuaded – against my will."
His eyes were twinkling.
"Ah, Mallinsbee persuaded you – being a friend of his."
"No. As a matter of fact I think it was the train conductor who persuaded me."
"He's a wise guy, then."
"Ye-es. I don't guess I'll see him again. I surely owe him something for what he did."
Peter nodded seriously as he gazed at the humorous eyes of his companion.
"He's given you the chance of – a lifetime, sir. And that's a thing ther' ain't many in this country yearning to do."
After that the meal progressed in silence until the pie was handed round.
Gordon was thinking hard. He was wondering, in view of what he had heard, what he ought to do. Land. What did he know about land? How could he measure his wits against the wits of such land speculators as he saw about him? He studied the faces of some of the clamorous crowd in the dining-room. They were a strangely mixed lot. There were undoubtedly men of substance among them, but equally surely the majority were adventurers looking to step into the arena of the coming boom and wrest a slice of fortune by hook, or, more probably, by crook. What did he know? What could he do? And his mind went back to the sharp on the train, and the way he had fallen to the man's snare. Again he wanted to laugh. He had counted the bills which Mallinsbee had handed him, in the privacy of his bathroom. He only remembered to have lost about two hundred dollars to the gambler. The dollars handed to him amounted to well over three hundred. The miracle of it all. He had nearly killed the gambler, and, instead of losing, he had made over a hundred dollars on the deal. The miracle of it!
"Do you believe in miracles?" he laughed abruptly.
Peter glanced up from his plate suspiciously. Then he promptly joined in the other's amusement. He always remembered that this newcomer was a friend of Silas Mallinsbee.
"Meracles?" he said reflectively. "I can't say I always did. But one or two things have made some difference that way. Takin' one extra drink saved my life once. The takin' of that drink wasn't jest a meracle," he added dryly. "It was more of a habit them days. Still, it was a meracle in a way. Me an' my brother wer' on a bust. We were feeling that good we was handin' out our pasts in lumps to each other, same as if we was strangers, and wasn't raised around the same cabbige patch. Wal, he'd borrowed an automobile and left the saloon to wind it up, and get things fixed. While he was gone the boys handed me another cocktail. Then the bartender slung one at me, an' I hadn't no more sense than to buy another one myself. Then some damn fool thought rye was the best mix for drinkin' on top o' cocktails, an' so they put me to bed. Guess I never see my brother get back from that joy ride." He sighed. "I allow they had to bury a lot of that automobile with him, he was so mussed up. Sort o' meracle, you'd say? Then there was another time. Guess it was my wife. She was one o' them females who make you feel you want to associate with tame earthworms. Sort o' female who never knew what a sick headache was, an' sang hymns of a Sunday evening, and played a harmonium when she was feelin' in sperits. Sort o' female who couldn't help smellin' out when you was lyin' to her, an' gener'ly told you of it. A good woman though, an' don't yer fergit it. Wal, I got sick once an' when I got right again she guessed it was up to 'em to insure myself in her favor. Guess I'd just paid my first premium when she goes an' takes colic an' dies. I did all I knew. I give her ginger, an' hot-water bags, an' poultices. It didn't make no sort o' difference. She died. I ain't paid no premiums since. Sort o' meracle that," he added, with a satisfied smile. "Then there's this coal. I hadn't started this hotel six months when Mallinsbee gets busy an' makes his deal with the corporation. You ain't goin' to make a pile out of a bum country hotel without a – meracle."
The man's gravity was impressive, and Gordon strove for sympathy.
"Yes," he declared, with smiling emphasis. "There are such things as miracles. One has happened this day – and here. My arrival here was certainly a miracle. A peculiarly earthy miracle, but, nevertheless, a – miracle. Say, I'll have to write some in the office. See you again."
Gordon pushed back his chair and hurried away through the crowded room towards the office. But here again was a crowd. Here again was "land" – always "land." And in desperation he betook himself to his bathroom. He felt he must write to his mother. He felt that on this his arrival in Snake's Fall he could do no less than reassure her of his well-being.
Mrs. James Carbhoy sighed contentedly as she raised her eyes from the last of a number of sheets of paper in her lap. Her husband turned from his contemplation of the scorching streets, and the parched foliage of the wide expanse of trees beyond the window.
"Well?" he inquired. "Where is the boy?"
There was the faintest touch of anxiety in his inquiry, but his face was perfectly controlled, and the humor in his eyes was quite unchanged.
Mrs. Carbhoy sighed again.
