Part 35 (2/2)

Lorimer and Brooks deliberately proposed to withhold that stock, to defraud these h

They wanted to let theto serve as an excuse for delay Brooks said to rin; ”The property's in the coot no come-back, anyhow”

That hen I smashed hiood faith Could I go back there and face those ot your claims, and they won't pay for theered crooks put anything like that over on si felloere too honest to protect their own interests frorels who sat in upholstered office chairs while these others ed through six feet of snow for three weeks, living on bacon and beans, to grab a pot of gold for them! It makes my fist double up when I think about it

And I wouldn't be put off or placated by a chance to fatten my own bank roll I didn't care if I broke the Free Gold Mining Company and myself likewise A dollar doesn't terrify nor yet fascinate me--I hope it never will And while, perhaps, it was not what they would call good foro at thehly sensed their dirty project Anyway, it helped bring them to time When you take a man of that type and cuff him around with your two hands he's apt to listen serious to what you say And they listened when I told them in dead earnest next day that Whitey Lewis and his partners must have as due them, or I'd wreck the bunch of them if it took ten years and every dollar I had to do it

And I could have put theers in where they couldn't stand litigation I'h; which they did

But I' to sell my stock and advise Lewis and the others to do the saet full value for it Lorimer and that bunch will manipulate the outfit to death, no matter how the mine produces They'll have a quarter of a million to work on pretty soon, and they'll work it hard They're shysters--but it's after all only a practical demonstration of the ethics of the type--”Do everybody you can--if you can do 'em so there's no come-back”

That's all of that I don't care thoops about the e and other corners of the North, whenever I need it But it nauseated ame And Granville, like most other cities of its kind, lives by and for that sort of thing The pressure of modern life makes it inevitable Anyway, a town is no place for er It's too crairded about with petty-larceny conventions If once you slip and get down, every one walks on you Everything's restricted, priced, tinkered with There is no real freedo cabin in the woods with a big fireplace and a shelf of books for the finest home on Maple Drive--not if I had to stay there and stifle in the dust and smoke and smells That would be a sordid and i code that seeether in an unwieldy social mass

I have said the like to you before By nature and training I'm unfitted to live in these crowded places I love you, little person, I don't think you realize howmyself utterly miserable That would only produce the inevitable reaction But I still think you are essentially enough like round You loved me and you found contentht be waiting there again?

If you really care, if I and the old North stillto you, a few days or weeks, or even months of separation won't ile to go through life on I don't ask you to jump the next train and follow h I would coh if you called me I merely want you to think it over soberly and let your heart decide You knohere I stand, don't you, Hazel, dear? I haven't changed--not a bit--I'm the same old Bill But I'd rather hit the trail alone than with an unwilling partner Don't flounder about in any quicksand of duty There is no ”I ought to”

between us

So it is up to you once more, little person If my way is not to be your way I will abide by your decision without whining And whenever you want to reach e, will eventually find me I'll fix it that way

I don't knohat I'll do after I make that Klappan trip I' when there's nobody but , little person I like you a heap, for all your cantankerous ways

BILL

She laid aside the letter, with a luraph the word that would bring hi back But--some of the truths he had set down in cold black and white cut her deep Of a surety she had drawn her weapon on the wrong side in thetrouble Over-hasty?--yes And sha in it, after all; that is to say, it h that unless she could get back some of the old enthusiasnificent distances, of silent, breathless forests, of contented, quiet days on trail and streaain, they would only defer the day of reckoning, as Bill had said

And she was not prepared to go that far She still harbored a sainst him for his volcanic outburst in Granville, and too precipitate departure He had given her no time to think, to make a choice The flesh-pots still seemed wholly desirable--or, rather, she shrank from the alternative When she visualized the North it uprose always in its round of ruthless, ele in its vast emptinesses It appalled her in retrospect, loomed unutterably desolate in contrast to her present surroundings

No, she would not attempt to call hio--not yet Shepricked her sorely She could not reconcile the roguery of Brooks and Lorimer with the men as she knew them Not that she doubted Bill's word But there must be a mistake somewhere Ruthless competition in business she knew and understood Only the fit survived--just as in her husband's chosen field only the peculiarly fit could hope to survive But she rather resented the idea that pleasant, well-bred people could be guilty of coarse, forthright fraud Surely not!

Altogether, as the first irew less vivid to her she considered her grievances more And she was minded to act as she had set out to do--to live her life as seemed best to her, rather than pocket her pride and rejoin Bill The feminine instinct to compel the ly

Wherefore, she dressed carefully and prepared todown for that day No ht e The chatter over the tea-cups, the cheerful nonsense of that pleasure-seeking crowdwas better than to sit at home and brood

CHAPTER xxxII

THE SPUR

Athat thirty-day period she received a brief note from Bill

Just a few lines to say: