The Way of the Strong

Angus pointed at the newspaper. Its headlines were staring up from the desk in all their painful crudity.

"See that?" he demanded, in his sharp way. Then he picked the paper up, and held it out to her. "Read it. There." He pointed at the paragraph relating to the transport of passengers. "I don't just see how he's to get back here with a doctor or anything else. He's wanted right here for other things, too, but – "

"Other things?"

The man nodded.

"We'll have a strike here of our own – to-night. All hands. Over three hundred of 'em."

But the girl was devouring the news. As she read, her heart sank, and all hope was completely dashed. The threatening tears overflowed down her cheeks. For the first time in her life she felt utterly helpless.

"But he must, he must, he must come?" she cried desperately. "Don't you understand? It means Mrs. Hendrie's life if he doesn't bring help. Oh, don't sit there staring. Do something. You – you've got to get him here, somehow – with a – a surgeon. Strike? Do you think we can let strikes stand in the way – when her life depends on it? Let him come by 'special' – anything so we get him here. Oh!"

Her hands flung together in an impotent gesture of desperation with her final exclamation, and even the cold heart of the manager was moved.

He leaned forward in his seat.

"Easy, girl," he cried. "You're talking foolish. You got to keep cool, and we'll think this thing out. I guess Mrs. Hendrie's turn was sudden," he said thoughtfully. "And the Doc's let her run to the last before he guessed how things were. It's their way – some of 'em. How long's she got? You see, Hendrie's hung up – same as other folks. It's no use talking of 'specials,' but the wire's still open. Now, see here, if we've got time, maybe he can make it in an automobile. It's up to him, and I don't guess much'll stop him when he knows how things are. You find out what time the Doc gives her, and I'll wire. You see, sometimes these things – What's that?"

Angus held up a hand and sat listening.

Far away it seemed, a low, soft note droned in through the open window. It was a deep, purring sound like the hum of the wind in overhead telegraph wires.

Suddenly the man sprang from his seat. He went to the outer door and flung it open. The girl followed, and stood beside him. The sound grew louder. At last the man turned. His excitement had given place to his usual taciturn expression. He shook his head ominously.

"That's Hendrie's automobile," he said. "If he's in it – there's a hell of a poor chance of getting a surgeon from Winnipeg."

But Phyllis made no answer. She was staring out down the trail, watching, watching for the coming of the vehicle, in the hope that Hendrie was not with it.

The moment passed. Then all of a sudden she cried out, and stood with outstretched arm pointing.

"Look," she cried. "Look, look! It is – Mr. Hendrie."

A few moments later the great machine rolled up. The millionaire, at sight of Angus and Phyllis, signed to the driver, and, instead of going on to the front of the house, the machine drew up at the office door. He leaped to the ground and came over to them at once.

"I just made it," he cried. "Got the last train out of Winnipeg. They've closed down tighter than hell. There's not a locomotive running in the country to-day – except to carry mails. Just the loco and caboose – that's all. I was dead in luck. Inside information put me wise. Say – there's going to be the devil to pay."

"There sure is," replied Angus grimly. "Say, just come right in. There's things – doing."

Hendrie glanced sharply into the man's face. Then his eyes turned quickly upon Phyllis. But he followed his manager into the office without a word.

Inside Angus pushed a chair forward for the millionaire's accommodation. But the latter made no attempt to use it.

"Well?" he demanded, looking from one to the other. "What's – doing?"

Angus shrugged and picked up the message he had written out. He handed it to him.

"Guess that'll tell you – quickest," he said.

The millionaire took the paper. As he read the long message it contained, his eyes lit, and a half smile stirred the corners of his mouth.

Finally he looked up into the Scot's face.

"Well?" he said. "We've guessed that all along. That's not worrying any of us. You got my message? The deal's through. Every grain of wheat on Deep Willows is sold in the ear. I've sold no more, but I stand a personal guarantee for the rest. You see, I've a notion that the risk lies in my property – only. Nowhere else. My guarantee for the rest of the trust farmers, which includes your property, goes. The trust must get the full benefit of the market. This is its first year of operation, and I want to show a good result. Strike or no strike, we've got them beaten to a mush. The trust just gets to work as per schedule. Say, they can't hurt us a thing. Even this railroad strike can't seriously interfere. All it will do, if it only lasts long enough, is to send up the price of the crop. That's not going to worry us a little – "

At that moment Phyllis, unable to contain herself longer, made a move towards the millionaire. Angus saw the movement, and Hendrie became aware of it as his manager's eyes were turned upon the girl.

"Ah, my dear," he cried, still buoyant in his confidence, "guess I'd forgotten you. Eh?"

Phyllis was holding up her message. The message she had brought for Angus to dispatch.

"What, more trouble?" cried Hendrie, taking the paper with a laugh.

Phyllis made no answer. She felt sick at heart. Her unaccustomed eyes had not yet adjusted their focus to matters involving life and death. Besides, since she had first encountered Monica upon the trail, a great affection had steadily grown up in her heart for the woman, who, later, she had learned, was the woman whom Frank had always regarded as his mother. Now, to her inexperienced mind, there seemed to be no hope for her, whichever way she looked. She was pinning her faith to this man whose strength and dominating force alone seemed possible in such an emergency. She waited, scarcely daring to breathe, watching for that ray of hope she dared to think his expression as he read might afford her.

But her hopes fell completely, still further below the zero at which they had stood. First, as she watched, she saw that ominous drawing together of the man's heavy brows, then, the naturally cold gray of his eyes seemed to change. Their stony gleam shone like the pinnacles of an iceberg in the light of a winter sun. Then they lit with a sudden violent emotion, and it seemed to her that the strength she was relying upon was about to fail her.

He looked up from the paper which fluttered to the floor from fingers which no longer seemed to obey the controlling will. He looked at Angus for a moment in a sort of dazed inquiry. Then his gaze sought the girl, and the storm burst.

"God in heaven!" he cried.

It was the exclamation of a mind which scarcely grasps the reality of the position, and yet has received the full shock.

"Why was I not told?" he demanded fiercely. "Why, in God's name, was it left till now? You Angus! You girl!" He turned furiously from one to the other. "Do you know what you've done? Do you?" He laughed wildly. "Of course you do? You've timed it. Timed it, do you hear? So it's impossible to get poor Mon the help she needs. Oh, as if I can't see. Am I blind? Am I an imbecile? You, you rotten Scot, you've always hated her. I saw it from the first. And now maybe you're satisfied. As for you, girl" – he turned upon Phyllis with upraised arms, as though about to strike her to the ground – "you're as bad. You wanted your revenge for what your man has been made to suffer. That's it. Oh, God, that I should have been so blind! Was there ever such a devilish vengeance? You, with your mild ways and simple air, you've stolen into my house that you might break my heart to square with me for your man's sufferings. And between you my Monica, my poor Mon, is lying in extremity, waiting for the help you would deny her. You thought to hurt me, and by God! you have succeeded," he cried, his voice rising to greater violence. "Oh, yes, you've succeeded, between you. You've done more. You've – you've killed her!"

He brought one great fist crashing down upon the desk. Then he rushed on —

"That fool doctor talks of hope. How can there be hope? I tell you there's none – not a shadow. There's not a train to go through. North, South, East and West, we are cut off as if those cursed plains were an ocean. Hope?" he laughed harshly. "There's as much hope as there is in hell. That woman'll be left to die. Do you hear me? Die! And between you, some of you, you've killed her!"

His frenzy was the frenzy of a madman. It was a frenzy such as, once before in his life, he had displayed. All this man's strength was swept aside by the passionate torrent of his dreadful feelings. All power of reason was lost to him. No hysterical child could have been weaker in its mental balance than this great savage man was at that moment.

Phyllis understood something of this. Angus simply eyed him watchfully. His was not the discerning eye of the girl. His attitude was the outcome of a nature which understood violence only at its face value, therefore he was physically and mentally alert. But the girl, a mere child, saw deeper. And her observation roused her own latent courage and mentality to activity.

She saw that she must fling herself into the arena that he might be brought up to the only fighting pitch that could serve them all, that could serve Monica. She seized upon his final charge to attack him almost as fiercely as he had attacked them.

"You are talking like a child," she cried recklessly. "You're talking out of a yellow strain that lies somewhere in your own wicked heart. How dare you say such things to us – to me? It's you – you who've laid poor Monica on her bed of sickness. You, with your cruel wickedness. Your vile suspicions. It is you, alone, who's responsible, and you know it.

"Say, Mr. Hendrie," she went on, her tone changing from passionate anger to one of taunting mockery. "You're a great man. There's no one can beat you when they get up against you. That's why you can stand there bullying and accusing us. You think to crush us right into the dust, like – like slimy reptiles. Oh, you're a great man. You're so strong."

Then, in a flash, her mockery was merged into a fierce challenge, the more strong for her very youth and girlishness.

"Prove it! Prove it!" she cried. "Prove your power against the fate barring your way. Don't stand there accusing folks who're right here to help you all they know. Save your Monica. There's time – yes, I tell you there's time – if you've the heart and courage to do it!"

She stood before him, her slim figure palpitating with the fierce emotion his madness had stirred in her. Her dark eyes flashed into his with all the courage of her young heart shining in their depths. And before it the man's insane frenzy died abruptly.

Angus, watching, beheld this girl's – this child's – victory. His cool Scotch brain marveled, and reluctantly admired, while he waited for the millionaire's reply.

It came after a long pause. It came in the hard, cold tones to which he was used, when stress of affairs demanded the concentrated force which lay behind his methods.

"Run away, girl," he cried harshly. "Run away, and leave me to think this thing out. Guess I'm sorry for what I said – Now I just want to think."

CHAPTER XV

PHYLLIS GOES IN SEARCH OF FRANK

Hendrie's return home became something like an epoch in the life of Phyllis Raysun. It was the moment of her passing from girlhood to the full maturity of a woman. She began to see with eyes more widely open, and a mind whitted to the keenest understanding of the actions and motives of those about her.

Ever since her first coming to Deep Willows, Hendrie, with all her reason for abhorrence of him, had never failed to interest her. Nor was it long before this interest begat forgiveness, and even liking. His colossal powers for dealing with affairs excited her youthful imagination and impelled admiration. But more than all else, his evident passionate devotion to Monica appealed to her.

When he had first learned that Monica was to yield him her woman's pledge of love and devotion, he had displayed a side of character she had deemed impossible in one of his obvious characteristics. His boisterous, almost youthful joy was quite unrestrained. She had never dreamed of such a display in anybody, much less in Hendrie, the hard, stern financier. It became painful and even pathetic in such a man.

But now, since the latest scene in Angus's office, she had read the real truth of his personality. She had always watched and studied him closely, she had detected many almost unaccountable weaknesses, but when the climax in her observations was reached in his insane outburst, she felt she held the key to the driving force which hurled him so frequently blundering down the path of life.

To her he appeared a complex mechanism tremendously organized in one definite direction, which left all other directions utterly uncontrolled. All his life, it seemed to her, he had concentrated his mind and energies upon the process of accumulating wealth, and the power of wealth. Nothing else had been permitted to appeal to him. He had rigorously torn every other inclination up by the roots and flung them aside, to be left behind him in the race to win his ambitions. He had treated himself like a mere thinking machine, a machine to be driven in the only direction in which he desired to think. He had utterly forgotten that he was a human being, created with a hundred and one feelings, all of which must be duly cared for, and used, and controlled. The only control over his more human passions he had ever attempted to use must have been of a nature which endeavored to crush them out of existence.

Now the result was manifest. Human nature had rebelled. Human nature was fighting for its existence. The human nature in him all uncontrolled by careful, studied training, drove him whithersoever it listed. All his great, machine-made brain broke down before its tremendous flood-tide, and he was swept along upon its bosom toward the brink of disaster. His passions once stirred, there was no telling where they might bring him up. She believed that under their influence he would stop at nothing.

Fortunately it seemed that all his passions were wrapped up in Monica. She was certainly their guiding star, and from this thought she drew comfort and hope. She felt that if Monica could only be saved, all would be well with him. While, on the other hand, her loss suggested to her imagination possibilities all too dreadful to contemplate.

Thus was her fevered anxiety stirred to its limits during the rest of the day, and the following morning, Doctor Fraser was to make his final examination of his patient, and give his definite verdict to the husband. Phyllis dreaded that verdict. Whatever it might mean for Monica, it was the man for whom she most feared.

Her mind was kept fully alert for all that was passing during the time of waiting. She knew that Hendrie kept himself tremendously busy. She knew that the wires were speeding messages from the house at Deep Willows, and it required little trouble to find out that Professor Hinkling, of Winnipeg, was in direct communication with the master of Deep Willows. She ascertained, too, that he was the greatest surgeon in the country for all matters to do with Monica's condition.

Then Angus had disappeared, and Hendrie was left at the head of affairs at the farm. Here, too, she soon learned that he had been speeded to Calford in the automobile to endeavor, by every means known to the power of money, to arrange for a special train to be allowed to run from Winnipeg to Calford, and bring the great surgeon to Monica's aid.

All these things left an atmosphere of suppressed excitement and anxiety pervading the whole place, and, coupled with the strike of farm hands, which, as promised, began at sundown, a chaotic state seemed to reign everywhere.

The real crisis arrived with the hour of the noonday meal. The entire household was aware that Doctor Fraser's report was due at any moment. Phyllis and the millionaire sat down to their meal together. Neither required anything to eat, and only Phyllis made any pretense. Hendrie sat at the head of the great table, surrounded by all the luxury he had heaped upon his wife, wrapped in morose silence. His attitude was such that even Phyllis feared to arouse the storm she felt to be brooding behind his sullen eyes.

It was in the midst of the final course that Doctor Fraser made his appearance. Phyllis felt her head whirl at sight of his pale, grave face. Then, with an effort, she pulled herself together, and covertly watched the millionaire.

A strange light had crept into his eyes, as the thin, clever face appeared in the doorway. It was a light of desperate hope, of a heart yearning for some trifling encouragement where conviction made all hope impossible. She pitied this man of millions from the bottom of her heart.

But Fraser was speaking in slow, deliberate tones. He was reciting the medical aspect of the case, and, though only understanding half of what he said, the girl listened acutely. Finally he summed up the situation.

"It means this, Mr. Hendrie," he said, with a gesture, the significance of which was quite unmistakable. "Nominally, I suppose, there are two lives at stake. I contend there is only one. I think we can put the child's life out of the question. The complications are such that there is little doubt the child would be still-born. Everything points that way. Anyway, in my opinion, the complications are such that it would be absolutely fatal to allow Mrs. Hendrie to face the labors of child-birth. In a younger woman there might have been a shadow of hope. In her case I am convinced there is none. In my opinion – mind it is but one man's opinion – you have only one alternative. The child must be sacrificed by operation."

Phyllis's eyes were upon Alexander Hendrie's set face. She beheld the strong, drawn mouth twitch nervously. She also noted that one great fist was clenched tightly as it rested upon the white cloth of the table.

She sighed as she awaited his reply.

Suddenly he raised his head, and his passionate eyes shot a swift inquiry into the doctor's face.

"And the time limit – for the operation?" he asked.

He was thinking only of his wife. Phyllis understood.

The doctor deliberated.

"A week. Perhaps less."

Phyllis caught her breath.

"How much less?"

The exactness of Hendrie's mind demanded satisfying.

"Safety in five days. Risk in seven. That's the utmost limit."

Again the girl caught her breath. Hendrie did not move a muscle. Presently he spoke again.

"Failing – all else – will – you undertake the operation?"

Doctor Fraser cleared his throat.

"It is my duty," he said slowly.

Then he passed one hand quickly across his forehead as though striving to remove a weight from his mind.

"For God's sake, don't let it come to that, Mr. Hendrie," he cried. "I am an ordinary practitioner. This is a desperate case for a specialist. If you offered me a fee of one hundred thousand dollars I'd gladly refuse it. Surely you can get Hinkling here in time."

Suddenly Hendrie's fist lifted and crashed down upon the table.

"Yes, by God, yes!" he cried.

Then he sat quite still. A moment later he ran his fingers through his hair, and they remained there while he spoke very quietly.

"I'd pay you half a million," he said, in a low, deep voice, "if I thought you could do this – successfully. As it is I wouldn't offer you ten cents. I'm sorry – Doc – but – "

He rose from the table and walked heavily out of the room.

Phyllis followed his example. As she passed the doctor she paused.

"Is there no – hope?" she asked pleadingly.

The man shook his head.

"None – unless Hinkling can be got here – in time."

She passed on out of the room without a word. There was nothing more to be said. Anyway she was quite beyond words.

Phyllis went straight to her bedroom. She could not go to Monica yet, with the knowledge of what she had just heard. It was dreadful. It seemed utterly, utterly hopeless. Five days. Seven at the most. Seven – and the railroad completely shut down. Monica's life must be sacrificed because some wretched workman was not satisfied, or some equally absurd thing. It was too awful to contemplate.

In the extremity of her grief her thoughts strayed to Frank. It was the natural womanly impulse causing her to turn to the man she loved. As the boy's image rose before her distraught mind she remembered that he belonged to those who had brought this desperate state of things about. And in her moment of realization she cried out her bitterness —

"Oh, Frank, Frank, how could you?"

The words echoed through the silent room, and came back to her with startling effect. She shivered at their sound, and flung herself upon her bed in a passion of grief. She remained there sobbing for many minutes. The strain had been too much for her, and now the hopelessness of it all wrung her heart.

But after a while the storm passed, and she sat up. Then, once more, she abandoned herself to thought. Curiously enough, Frank was still uppermost in her mind. A wild longing, quite impossible to resist, to see him, and tell him of all that had happened, possessed her, and she tried to think where he might be found.

She did not know. She could not think. He was in the neighborhood. That was certain. But where, where? She paced the room puzzling her brains as to how she might find him. Then, quite without realizing her actions, she opened a drawer in her bureau and drew out the riding suit Monica had given her. She had only worn it a few times before Monica had been taken seriously ill. She looked it over. It had been her great pride – once. Its divided skirt and beautiful long coat had been a positive joy.

Suddenly an irresistible impulse made her lay it out on her bed. The next moment she began to remove her own costume.

Far out on the outskirts of those wheat lands which acknowledged the direct control of the master of Deep Willows, at a point where the cultivated land yielded to the wood-lined slopes of the river valley, a great crowd of men, made to look almost insignificant by comparison with their wide surroundings, were listening eagerly to a speaker, perched upon the prostrate form of a huge tree trunk.

It was evening, and the westering sun lolled heavily upon the skyline, cradled in a cauldron of fiery cloud rising to bear it upon its long night journey. Everywhere was the profound peace when Nature composes itself for repose at the close of day. The air was sweet with the perfume of ripening foliage, blended with the dank which rose from the racing waters below. It was a moment for peace and good-will; it was a moment when all life should yield its thanks for blessings bestowed by the unseen hand of Nature; it was a moment when the heart of man should bow before the Creator of a beneficent life.

Yet neither peace nor good-will reigned. The arrogant heart of man was stirred by passions of discontent, and even evil. Life and all its benefits and blessings they possessed, and possessing them they cared nothing for such possession. These things were forgotten in a craving for more. This crowd was foregathered that it might learn how best to satisfy its discontent, which had been stirred by mischievous tongues in hearts hitherto contented.

The man on the tree trunk was no mere flamboyant orator preaching a doctrine of profound socialism. He was not talking "principle," so beloved of the tub-thumper. He was there with a mind packed full of venom against one man, a venom he was spitting into the ears of these workers for that one man's undoing.

This man had traveled far to satisfy his hatred. He had put himself at enormous inconvenience to address this meeting. His coming, too, had been heralded by other talkers, who were his satellites. His audience had been promised the joy of listening to the words of the greatest labor leader in the country; the privilege of hearing what the most powerful figure in the country's labor movement had to promise them; what he could do to wrest from their employer a bettering of their lot.