The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company stepped from the parlor-car of the Limited at the hour when all wise people are taking life easy after a good dinner.He did not, however, drive to his club, but took a cab straight for his rooms, where he had telegraphed Eaton to meet him with the general superintendent of all his properties and his private secretary, Smythe.For nearly a week his finger had been off the pulse of the situation, and he wanted to get in touch again as soon as possible.For in a struggle as tense as the one between him and the trust, a hundred vital things might have happened in that time.He might be coming back to catastrophe and ruin, brought about while he had been a prisoner to love in that snow-bound cabin.
Prisoner to love he had been and still was, but the business men who met him at his rooms, fellow adventurers in the forlorn hope he had hitherto led with such signal success, could have read nothing of this in the marble, chiseled face of their sagacious general, so indomitable of attack and insatiate of success.His steel-hard eyes gave no hint of the Arcadia they had inhabited so eagerly a short twenty-four hours before.The intoxicating madness he had known was chained deep within him.Once more he had a grip on himself; was sheathed in a cannonproof plate armor of selfishness.No more magic nights of starshine, breathing fire and dew; no more lifted moments of exaltation stinging him to a pulsating wonder at life's wild delight.He was again the inexorable driver of men, with no pity for their weaknesses any more than for his own.
The men whom he found waiting for him at his rooms were all young Westerners picked out by him because he thought them courageous, unscrupulous and loyal.Like him, they were privateers in the seas of commerce, and sailed under no flag except the one of insurrection he had floated.But all of them, though they were associated with him and hoped to ride to fortune on the wave that carried him there, recognized themselves as subordinates in the enterprises he undertook.They weremerely heads of departments, and they took orders like trusted clerks with whom the owner sometimes unbends and advises.
Now he heard their reports, asked an occasional searching question, and swiftly gave decisions of far-reaching import.It was past midnight before he had finished with them, and instead of retiring for the sleep he might have been expected to need, he spent the rest of the night inspecting the actual workings of the properties he had not seen for six days.Hour after hour he passed examining the developments, sometimes in the breasts of the workings and again consulting with engineers and foremen in charge.Light was breaking in the sky before he stepped from the cage of the Jack Pot and boarded a street-car for his rooms.Cornishmen and Hungarians and Americans, going with their dinner-buckets to work, met him and received each a nod or a word of greeting from this splendidly built young Hermes in miners' slops, who was to many of them, in their fancy, a deliverer from the slavery which the Consolidated was ready to force upon them.
Once at his rooms, Ridgway took a cold bath, dressed carefully, breakfasted, and was ready to plunge into the mass of work which had accumulated during his absence at the mining camp of Alpine and the subsequent period while he was snowbound.These his keen, practical mind grasped and disposed of in crisp sentences.To his private secretary he rapped out order sharply and decisively.
"Phone Ballard and Dalton I want to see them at once.Tell Murphy I won't talk with him.What I said before I left was final.Write Cadwallader we can't do business on the terms he proposes, but add that I'm willing to continue his Mary Kinney lease.Dictate a letter to Riley's lawyer, telling him I can't afford to put a premium on incompetence and negligence; that if his client was injured in the Jack Pot explosion, he has nobody but himself to blame for it.Otherwise, of course, I should be glad to pension him.Let me see the letter before you send it.I don't want anything said that will offend the union.Have two tons of good coal sent up to Riley's house, and notify his grocer that all bills for the next three months may be charged to me.And, Smythe, ask Mr.Eaton to step this way."Stephen Eaton, an alert, clear-eyed young fellow who served as fidusAchates to Ridgway, and was the secretary and treasurer of the Mesa Ore- producing Company, took the seat Smythe had vacated.He was good- looking, after a boyish, undistinguished fashion, but one disposed to be critical might have voted the chin not quite definite enough.He had been a clerk of the Consolidated, working for one hundred dollars a month, when Ridgway picked him out and set his feet in the way of fortune.He had done this out of personal liking, and, in return, the subordinate was frankly devoted to his chief.
"Steve, my opinion is that Alpine is a false alarm.Unless I guess wrong, it is merely a surface proposition and low-grade at that.""Miller says--"
"Yes, I know what Miller says.He's wrong.I don't care if he is the biggest copper expert in the country.""Then you won't invest?"
"I have invested--bought the whole outfit, lock, stock and barrel.""But why? What do you want with it if the property is no good?" asked Eaton in surprise.
Ridgway laughed shortly."I don't want it, but the Consolidated does.Two of their experts were up at Alpine last week, and both of them reported favorably.I've let it leak out to their lawyer, O'Malley, that Miller thought well of it; in fact, I arranged to let one of their spies steal a copy of his report to us.""But when they know you have bought it "
