Chapter Nine

Hugh Mathias’ secretary took Charles Bonal’s hat and said, “Mr. Mathias would like to see you in the board room, Mr. Bonal.”

Bonal strode toward the door marked, H. Mathias, Manager, and the secretary said quickly, “Not through there, Mr. Bonal, please. Follow me.”

Scowling, Bonal followed the secretary, who left the anteroom, turned right at the corridor and down it, stopped at the second door and opened it. The room was large, holding only a huge table flanked by a dozen chairs. Three large pictures of the Dry Sierras buildings decorated the wall. Hugh Mathias was standing before one of the windows smoking a cigar, and when the door opened he whirled to see who it was. Dropping his cigar, he came swiftly around the table and shook hands with Bonal.

“I couldn’t receive you in the office, Bonal. There’s a man in there I didn’t want you to see until I could talk to you.” His face was drawn, its agitation plain.

“I’ve got to be brief,” Hugh said, talking in a low voice. “You know, of course, about that market flurry last week when they were hammering our stock.”

“You told me about it.” He was quietly curious.

Hugh reached in his pocket and brought out a telegram and handed it to Bonal. “I got this last night, late. It’s from our attorney in Frisco. It simply says that after the smoke cleared on the market the other day a Mr. Barton McCauley showed up with enough Dry Sierras stock and voting proxies that I’d better pay attention to him. It also says McCauley has a man on the way to Tronah.” Hugh gestured toward the office. “He’s in there now. A lawyer—Freehold, by name.”

Bonal read the telegram and handed it back to Hugh and asked quietly, “How does that concern me?”

“He asked me to send for you.”

“What for?”

“All he would say was that it was a business matter of some importance that concerned us both.”

Bonal said, “All right, let’s see him.”

Hugh put down his cigar and showed Bonal to the corridor. In the anteroom once more he held the door to his office open and Bonal walked inside. A spare, tall man was seated at a chair drawn up next to Hugh’s chair. Hugh introduced them and put a chair for Bonal facing the desk. His office was large, pleasant, simple.

Freehold carefully lighted a cigar, not looking at Bonal, who was studying him with a belligerent curiosity.

“Mr. Bonal,” Freehold said in an expressionless voice, “I’ve made this trip for two purposes—to examine the books of this mining company and to talk with you.”

“I’m here,” Bonal said, his voice expressing no pleasure in that fact.

“So are the books,” Freehold replied, gesturing with a burned match to the open ledger on the desk. “These books tell me that the Dry Sierras holds your notes due to be called next week sometime. Is that correct?”

Bonal nodded. “As far as it goes. However, I was assured that any time I wanted a ninety-day extension on it, I could get it, supposing a one-per-cent increase in the rate of interest was agreeable to me. It is.”

“Have you that in writing, Mr. Bonal?” Freehold inquired.

Hugh put in quickly. “No. It was simply a gentleman’s agreement.”

Freehold regarded Hugh with a polite tolerance. “Between whom, may I ask?”

“Bonal and myself.”

“And you acted in what capacity?”

“As chairman of the board,” Hugh said, his irritation mounting. “I’m empowered to make loans with a certain per cent of the surplus, and I act with the consent of two thirds of the directors.”

“Would it interest you to know,” Freehold asked, “that at the meeting of the stockholders next month the personnel of the board will be changed?”

“You mean I’m to be removed?” Hugh asked quickly.

“That depends.”

Hugh came forward in his chair and said, “On what does it depend, Mr. Freehold?”

Freehold said idly, “The group I represent, Mr. Mathias, headed by Barton McCauley, has the voting power to remove you as chairman of the board. If we do so, it will be because you refused to act in accordance with our wishes. We represent the majority of stockholders, of course.”

“And what are your wishes?” Hugh demanded.

Freehold’s gaze touched Bonal and then settled again on Hugh. “That the notes of Bonal, held by us, shall be called on the specified date and not renewed.”

Bonal grunted. His beard hid any expression in his face, and he sat utterly motionless.

Hugh’s face was flushed. “Let me call to your attention, Freehold,” he said quickly, “that I’m chairman until the board meeting following the stockholders’ meeting. That will be some weeks off.” He leaned back in his chair. “Those notes come due before that, and I will certainly renew them.”

“I was afraid of that,” Freehold said. “You will be served with an injunction restraining you.”

“On what grounds?”

“That’s it’s unwarranted gambling with company funds. I already have a stockholders’ petition before the judge. He can’t very well deny the injunction.”

Hugh said hotly, “And my attorney will start suit to make you show cause why—”

Bonal said abruptly, “No, son, no!”

Hugh turned to him, and Bonal raised a hand. “Let me talk, please.” He turned to Freehold and asked, “What objection is there to renewing my notes?”

Freehold smiled thinly. “You asked for it, Mr. Bonal. It’s this. We feel that it would be less risk to back a roulette game without money than to lend it to the Bonal Tunnel scheme.”

“Why?”

Freehold shrugged. “Intrinsically, it’s unworkable, we think.”

“You mean, Janeece thinks so.”

Freehold said evenly, “I don’t recall that his name is listed among the stockholders I represent. We simply refuse to gamble.”

Bonal nodded gently. “All right. There’s no use of your resorting to the courts. I understand that my notes will be called at maturity, with no chance of renewal.”

“But there is!” Hugh said hotly. “They can’t—”

“They can,” Bonal cut in. He spoke to Hugh now, his voice suddenly gentle. “I appreciate your loyalty, Hugh, but there’s no reason to jeopardize your career in a fight you’re sure to lose.” To Freehold he said, “Let’s have your report read that Mathias disagreed with you, but that he’s willing to abide by the decision of the new directors. Shall we?”

Freehold nodded. “I think so.” He rose, shook hands with both men, instructed Hugh that he would receive written orders before two days were up and let himself out.

When he was gone Hugh looked soberly at Bonal, who was sitting back in his chair, his eyes veiled and brooding.

Hugh said bitterly, “And that’s how I keep my word.”

Bonal stirred and sighed. “That’s how most of us do, Hugh. We try, and that’s all.”

“It’s rotten,” Hugh said quietly.

“It’s business.” Bonal rose and took out a cigar and lighted it, and his beard was outthrust, as if he were ashamed to have Hugh witness this moment of defeat. “Well, to hell with it,” he said mildly, as he threw his match on the rug. “I can meet the notes and have some funds left over.”

“But not enough to complete the tunnel?”

Bonal shook his head, and they were both silent. Presently Bonal said, “Don’t take it so hard, son. I’ve fought these scabby rats all my life. I’ve got a few tricks to take yet.”

“But the tunnel.”

Bonal looked up, and his eyes were grim. “They’re still working on it, aren’t they?”

He got his hat in the outer office and went out to the buggy. From here he could look down on the town laid out untidily below him. The morning sun was not kind to it, and it lay ragged in all its hot ugliness. Bonal paid no attention to the activity behind him up the slope, where the dump cars were clanging out of the shaft house. The laboring hoist engine was filling the still air with its bustling, and the sacked ore was being loaded onto the freight teams to one side of the shaft house.

In the buggy, going down the winding grade to the town, he chewed reflectively on his cigar. Strangely, he felt a pity for Hugh Mathias, who had yet to learn that business and friendship do not mix. At any rate, Hugh had helped to tide him over the darkest moments, when the tunnel seemed impossible to get under way. He had loaned money until his directors had called a halt. Tools, equipment, men, money—everything that made the tunnel a fact—Hugh Mathias had gladly given, for he had a faith in the tunnel that was next to his own, Bonal believed. Sharon would hate this, mostly for Hugh’s sake, and Hugh would tell her in an agony of shame. Better tell her before he got the chance, Bonal thought wearily. Back of thought, he wondered with an old man’s surfeit of life if he would ever have rest from trouble. Misfortune dogged the tunnel with an implacability that sometimes frightened him. No, that wasn’t entirely true. There were nine men over the mountain, alive because he had the good fortune—or sense—to hire Phil Seay. The thought of Seay warmed something inside Bonal and gave him a kind of impersonal strength. There was his kind of man, with a hard belly and hard fists and a brain inside his hard skull, a man who would rather fight than eat, and who had the strength to be gentle. Bonal remembered him as they carried him down to the bunkhouse after Hulteen and his men were freed. He lay there in the same clothes he left Maizie Comber’s party in three nights before, and he was already a thousand miles deep in sleep, and yet he contrived to be as stubborn and unyielding in sleeping as some men are in waking. Charles Bonal laughed quietly, so that his driver looked quickly at him and then away. There was a frank envy in Bonal as he thought of it, and he sighed a little remembering that all he could share with Seay was the pleasure of the fight, and none of its healthy lust. Damn the years.

At the Union House he mounted the stairs to his suite with his indomitable deliberation and entered the corner room he called his office. Sharon heard him enter and called to him from another room, and when she came in he was seated at the desk. She kissed him and sat on the desk, and she looked so fresh and lovely that he did not have the heart to tell her of Hugh’s misfortune.

“Dad, will you take me to the tunnel this afternoon?” Sharon was saying, and she had to repeat it before Bonal asked why. “But I’ve heard nothing for five days except about the cave-in. Can’t I see it?”

“Half naked?” Bonal inquired, for Maizie had told him of Seay’s retort.

Sharon blushed and then laughed delightedly, and Charles Bonal felt better.

“So Maizie told you?” Sharon said. “That man has got a horrible mind.”

“He’s got a mind,” Bonal admitted. “It’s not always—”

There was a hammering on the outside door, and it was imperative. Bonal started to rise when Sharon skipped off the desk and went over and opened the door.

Reed Tober strode in. He went straight to Bonal’s desk and leaned both hands on it and said, “Bonal, you’ve got to stop him!”

“Who?” Bonal asked quickly. “Seay?”

“Yes. He’s huntin’ every saloon in town now, kickin’ doors in, and not a man on the streets will touch him.”

“Is he drunk?” Sharon asked swiftly.

Tober turned to her, his eyes wide, staring. “Drunk? No ma’am, I wisht he was. I could hit him then.” He turned back to Bonal. “I can’t stop him. He’d kill me.”

“Who is it he’s looking for?” Bonal said.

“I think it’s Feldhake. When he woke up this mornin’ he dressed and took his gun and rode over here, and he’s on the prod.” Tober shook his head pleadingly. “If you can’t do it, don’t try, Bonal, but we got to stop him.”

“Where is he?” Sharon asked.

“I dunno. One of the saloons. He’ll make them all until he finds him, and when he does he’ll kill him, and that’s all Janeece wants. That’s all he’ll need. He won’t care about witnesses or about a reason. He’ll kill him.”

“Who won’t care?” Sharon cried, exasperated at Tober’s jumbled speech.

Again Tober turned to her, his face almost surprised. “Why him, ma’am.”

“Where is Yates?” Bonal asked harshly. “Can’t he stop him?”

“He don’t want to,” Tober said emphatically. “He’s told him to quit it. Now all he wants is for him to pull that gun—just pull it.”

“But I can’t do anything, Reed,” Bonal said wearily. “For four days he laughed at me whenever I told him to leave the tunnel.” He rose and reached for his hat on the corner of the desk.

“We got to stop him,” Tober said stubbornly. “We got to—”

“Dad, let me do it!” Sharon said swiftly. “The sight of a woman will stop him! You’d only make him worse! So would Tober!”

Reed looked at her as if he had just this moment noticed her.

“Nonsense,” Bonal said sharply. “I won’t have you mixing in street brawls.”

Sharon turned and ran toward the door, and Bonal called her. Tober stood for five irresolute seconds, and then he wheeled and ran after her, and Bonal shouted angrily at him.

On the Union House porch Tober caught up with her.

Sharon said breathlessly, “Which way?”

Tober took her arm and almost carried her along, turning up the street as if hurrying to some momentous appointment. People on the crowded sidewalks turned to stare at them. Little knots of knowing men had already come to stop in eddies near the buildings, waiting for what was going to happen. It was one of these men who reached and hooked Tober’s arm and stopped him, saying, “He’s in Sig Pool’s shop, Reed. Two men took him in.”

“Two—” Reed began, and then he shook loose the man’s restraining arm and ran, leaving Sharon. Sig Pool’s was a barber shop. When Tober crashed in, swinging the door open, he had a gun in one hand, and his momentum carried him close to the chair where Sig was shaving a man. Sig pointed with a razor to the door in the back hall, and Tober strode over to it and flung the door open, Sharon behind him.

Two rough-looking men leaned against the far wall. Seay was standing, legs spread, in front of the window. And close to him, talking to him, was Vannie Shore. They all looked over as the door opened and watched Reed’s face settle into a kind of dogged sheepishness before he holstered his gun.

Sharon, who came close on Tober’s heels, and Vannie regarded each other a long moment, and Sharon felt the blood creeping up into her face.

“I—” she began and stopped, and her impulse was to turn and run, but Tober blocked the door—and besides, her pride would not let her. Her gaze touched Seay’s face, sardonic, determined, shaped by the raging impatience in his eyes. And then Sharon looked back at Vannie, who was smiling now.

“Maybe you can make him listen, Sharon,” Vannie said quietly. She turned to the two men and said, “Come on, boys. And thank you.” The three of them left, and Tober closed the door behind them. Sharon walked slowly over to Seay, who had not moved, whose attitude proclaimed that he could bear this pause, too.

“Father wants to see you at the hotel,” Sharon said falteringly.

“Afterward,” Seay said.

“No, now.” And then suddenly Sharon lost all the stiffness that had gripped her, and some of the pride, too. “Oh, Phil, how can you gamble with so much?” she said passionately. “So much that isn’t yours!”

Seay’s eyes widened a little, but he spoke without heat and with a patience that was unbearable to watch. “Those nine men were mine to keep alive. That tunnel is mine to put through.”

“But can’t you see? This is what they want!” Sharon cried. “Have you got to fall into their clumsy traps like a bullied schoolboy?”

Seay’s face darkened, and his lips drew tight across his teeth. Then slowly he exhaled his breath in a great gust.

“They want you to do this, Phil. Yates is out there with a hundred witnesses. He warned you,” Sharon said desperately.

Seay shifted his wicked gaze to Tober. “Did he?”

“He talked to you for three minutes,” Tober said quietly. “You laughed at him.”

“You haven’t a chance, Phil,” Sharon pleaded. “Don’t you see, it wasn’t the tunnel they were after the other night. It was you! They knew you would do this. And you are. Are you?”

Seay said nothing, his hot eyes still on Tober.

“You’ll never get the chance to meet this man you’re hunting. When you see him Yates will shoot you. He can. And if he does, where will the tunnel be—or Dad, or Reed, or your nine men, or all the men?”

Seay’s glance whipped back to her. “Where are they now? With not a man’s life safe!”

Sharon shook her head, looking into his eyes. “You can’t, Phil! If you kill him, other men like him can be bought! It wouldn’t settle anything—it would only destroy it!”

Seay turned and looked out the window, which opened onto the blank side of the adjoining building. The room was touched with the oversweet scent of barber’s lotions that clung to the discarded bottles and jars heaped in the corner and mingled with the old hot dust of the place. Sharon turned her head to look at Reed, and Reed nodded imperceptibly.

Seay swung around slowly and said, “All right. I—you’re right.”

Sharon put a hand on his arm and smiled a little. “It’s too simple—too open—to walk into.” Seay did not look at her. He reached out for his hat that lay on the dusty packing case and then turned to her, his face contained and normal. “That’s right,” he said quietly.

Sharon was trembling a little, but she managed to say offhandedly, “Dad really does want to see you. Will you go with me?”

Seay nodded. Sharon walked out between them. Once on the sidewalk, Reed was on one side of her and Seay on the other. The knowing men lining the streets turned or looked away, and Sharon flushed deeply at what she knew they were thinking. Seay tramped beside her, face grave, speaking to no one.

In front of the Union House the sidewalk was cleared, and while Sharon was still wondering why, she stepped into the cleared space and then looked at Tober. He was slowing his pace, his glance directed to the hotel porch.

Towering against the pillar, his attitude at once casual and wary, was Chris Feldhake. Sharon had never seen him before, but she immediately sensed that it was he. She felt Tober’s fingers clasp her wrist and pull, but she fought it quietly and with all her strength. Tober came to a stop then, and Seay did too, and Sharon stayed beside him.

“You lookin’ for me, Seay?” Feldhake drawled, his voice insolent, contemptuous, above the street noise.

Sharon waited for what Seay was going to say. She did not look at him, for she did not want to humiliate him before these men, before Feldhake.

She was surprised at the easy readiness of his answer.

“Not yet, Chris.”

Feldhake straightened up. “I heard you wanted to see me,” he drawled. “I thought they must be wrong.” Slowly he raised his hand to put the cigar in his mouth.

“I said, not yet,” Seay said again, the slightest edge on his voice.

Feldhake grinned, raised a finger to his hat in the first sign of recognition he had given Sharon and then swung down off the steps and headed downstreet.

Sharon felt a hand guiding her elbow, and she mounted the steps. It was not until they were in the half-light of the stair well that she dared look at Seay. His face was pale, and the muscles along his jaw line corded with an effort that she understood, but his expression was reserved, remote.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“I learn my lessons well—once I learn ’em,” he answered lightly.

Sharon left him at Charles Bonal’s door and went down to her room and closed the door behind her.

Sinking down on her bed, she stared at the rug and did not try to fight the steady feeling of shame that crept through her, making her angry and disgusted. Only ten brief minutes ago she had come out of a barber shop on the arm of a man whom an hour ago she thought she despised. Now she knew that she had never despised him, and that events had betrayed her and finally trapped her into this final humiliation. She rose and moved restlessly to the window and looked out, and then she remembered that she had seen him do this a little while ago. She came away then and sat on the bed again, waiting for this turmoil to settle in her mind. She wanted to call herself cheap, for she held that what she had just done was unwomanly. Hugh would think so, too, although he would defend her. And then she thought of Vannie Shore, who had done the same thing, and probably with no thought of opinion, and she recalled that pang of bitter jealousy felt as she came up beside Reed Tober in that back room and found Vannie and Seay there. Wanting honestly to understand herself, she went back over every word she had said. She had called him Phil; a day ago she would not have spoken his name. Why? What had changed her save the excitement of that minute when Tober stammered out his helplessness to her father? It was more than that. She had pled with a conviction that appalled her now because she knew it had been sincere.

The answer was slow in dawning on her, because she fought it at every turn, and with all those weapons of scorn and pride that she could command. Later, when she rose and walked over and seated herself in front of the mirror and looked at her reflection, it was to study her face intently, without vanity. It was not the face of a common woman, or an indecisive woman. For one fleeting instant she thought she recognized a new and strange tranquility there, and her memory leaped to Vannie Shore. Yes, Vannie’s face was tranquil, serene.

But when she groped for the reason for it she remembered Vannie and Phil Seay at Maizie’s party. Could Vannie’s serenity have its source in that night? And what that thought led to made Sharon stand up so abruptly that she knocked over the stool she had been sitting on. She went out swiftly, her face dark with shame.