Hard Money (8 page)

The plant of the General Milling and Mining Company lay below town and to the south. It was one building, huge in proportions, and built in the shape of a Greek cross. The stamps of its mills boomed heavily into the night.

A quarter mile from it they left the rutted freight road and took a smooth graveled one. This approach to the mill was cared for, with iron lamp posts spaced at regular intervals into the grounds. The mill building itself was a paradox. The north wing of it contained the offices, and fronting this wing was an artificial lake, around which the drive circled. In the middle of the lake was a fountain of cast bronze, Neptune with trident on an elaborate conch shell half smothered in waves. A wide border of precious grass edged the lake, and young shrubs edged the grass. This was Tronah, Hugh thought wearily, with so much free money that it lavished a pretty artificial lake on the ground of a stamp mill, the heaviest, most awesomely businesslike industry of the whole camp. It was typical, for a tasteless ostentation was the mark of success here. Wasn't he driving a team of chestnuts from his suite in the Union House to his offices two miles away?—A thoroughbred team that was absurdly expensive and a monstrous care in this town where every bale of hay, every measure of oats, must be freighted over two mountain ranges. Didn't he have champagne with lunch, followed by a three-dollar cigar which the dry air had already ruined?

Tronah was no city; it was desert, but it was more profligate with money than any city since Rome. And with plain dirt miners, freighters, cheap gamblers and storekeepers for its peerage, its taste was that of a brothel. It bred strong men only to mock them with their own vulgar actions. Money bought anything, except a few women like Sharon. And strangely, Hugh considered, he was wanting money so he could have her. Right now, he had a tiny toehold in the big feed trough of bonanza, and with luck and a little shrewdness, he would end up with both feet in it. If Janeece willed it. The thought of the man curdled Hugh's disgust. It wasn't the fact that this man, also self-made, had all the power of the west-coast banks concentrated in his frail hands that angered him; it was the fact that with him, Charles Bonal's enemy, Hugh was almost sure to cast his lot.

He said curtly, “Stop,” as they reached the massive iron gates in front of the office, and he alighted from the gig.

“Wait for me here,” he added.

He walked slowly around the lake, feeling its almost cool emanation. One section of the north wing had lights in the windows, and he knew Janeece was inside. Conquering his reluctance, he approached the entrance.

The night watchman at the big door said, “Evening, sir,” and held the door open. Hugh walked down the softly lighted, more softly carpeted corridor, a rank of inscribed doors on his right. Beyond the corridor the great stamps were thundering, and the building vibrated lightly under his feet. Back there, men were working like demons, the smell of sweat and steam and acid and hot ore in their noses, the crashing of the huge stamps rocking the air to heavy bedlam. Here, only the faint perfume of expensive cigars seduced the senses—and this was the more savage part of the whole.

He entered Janeece's waiting room without knocking. The door to the inner office was open, and Hugh put his hat on a chair and walked to the door and knocked softly.

He was bid enter, and he stepped inside, closing the door behind him. This was a rich room, its leaded windows opening out onto a view of the lake. An ornate crystal lamp sat at one corner of the huge desk by the window; Servel Janeece, a frail ghost, sat on the other corner.

“Hello, Hugh.” Janeece waved a hand toward a humidor on the desk and said, “This is inconvenient, I'm afraid.”

“Not at all, sir,” Hugh said quietly. He took a cigar and sat down in one of the deep leather chairs and did not light his cigar immediately, but watched Janeece.

He wondered idly if Janeece was consumptive, and then immediately he remembered that he had asked himself that same thing before, and that he had never heard him cough. The pallor of the man's face was almost luminous, heightened by dead-black clothes and a loosely knotted black tie. Janeece was a small man, and he had a small tired voice, but his was not the small man's way, for it was the opposite of aggressive. He was utterly reasonable, quietly and apologetically logical and ruthless as death. His dark eyes always held a sardonic reserve which he never voiced. Playing men and money one against the other apparently gave him little pleasure. Hugh did not know what drove him, nor did he know a man who could tell him. Janeece, of course, never would.

“Dinner at the Bonals'?” Janeece inquired, and when Hugh nodded, he added, “A lovely girl, with most of Bonal's qualities.”

“His good ones?” Hugh murmured.

Janeece laughed. “Most of his are good, Hugh. It just happens he's made the mistake of wanting too much.”

Hugh said nothing, but let the peace of the room hold him.

“I understand you were a party in the poker game the other night which has already become famous,” Janeece said, his smile gentle, his eyes speculative.

“A crude trick,” Hugh said. “I'm surprised it would be resorted to.”

“You put that nicely,” Janeece said and laughed. “It happens it was an idea of Chris', not mine.”

“I could tell that. Robbery seldom has a finesse unless it's pulled by a good stage robber or a better banker.”

Janeece smiled to himself and went around his desk and sat down. “You're a little sharp tonight, Hugh.”

“I don't like what I'm going to hear,” Hugh replied frankly.

Janeece said, “Doubtless.” He was silent a moment, looking out the window. “I have information,” he began slowly, “that Charles Bonal did not get on the boat that was to take him to Mexico.” He looked lazily at his thin hands. “Either he's in no hurry, or he's not going to Mexico City.”

“It won't make much difference if he gets there or not, will it?”

Janeece still looked at his hands. “No. How did you know that?”

“I guessed it. You've probably arranged to destroy his reputation and credit there long since,” Hugh said.

“Of course,” Janeece paused. “I wish I knew where he was.”

“I can't tell you,” Hugh said. “I wouldn't if I could.” He smiled faintly. “I'm for giving him a fighting chance, anyway.”

“You won't be in a position to,” Janeece murmured.

Hugh sighed. “All right. Let's hear it.”

“I want you to call in your loans to Bonal,” Janeece said idly. “There's a chance in a million he'll be in with more money soon. I'm going to start turning the screw.”

“Afraid of Seay?”

“He's a man with imagination. Why not be careful?”

“I could put up a scrap about this,” Hugh said presently.

“You won't though,” Janeece replied. He looked out the window again. “I'm in a position to trade with you.”

“What could you give me that would be worth what I'm giving you?”

“Money.”

Hugh flushed. “How much?”

“As much as you can turn it into,” Janeece answered. “Tomorrow my agents in San Francisco can start dumping Dry Sierras Consolidated stock—reason unnamed. My men are pretty shrewd guessers,” he added. “People follow them.”

Hugh was attentive.

“I have enough of your stock—or I can get enough—that it will look serious. It will start a considerable market flurry.” He shifted his gaze to Hugh now. “I'll lend you the money to buy all of it that your men can pick up for you.”

Hugh laughed uncomfortably. “Which is just another way of buying Consolidated stock for yourself, seeing as you'll have my note for the money loaned.”

“No. That note will never be collected if you're willing to go all the way with me. You can have your own lawyer write the ticket, so it'll be air tight. If you come through for me when I really need you—and I think you know when that will be—then we'll cancel my loan. You'll have undisputed control of the Dry Sierras Consolidated, then.” He waited a moment and then added, “Isn't that a fair trade?”

Hugh was silent a long moment, and Janeece didn't bother to observe him. Presently, Hugh said, “You know, Janeece, I wonder at you. Surely you know these mines can't go much deeper without Bonal's tunnel. If I got control of the Dry Sierras, it would be a pity that it turned
borrasca
because it was filled with the water Charles Bonal could have drained from it.”

Janeece said, “There are pumps.”

“Big enough to care for another five hundred feet of water. What then?”

“Others will be invented. When we first hit water there wasn't a pump made that could lift it high enough. One was invented. The same thing will happen again.”

“You forget gravity,” Hugh murmured.

“The engineers have never let it stop them.”

Hugh was silent. Slowly, Janeece turned his chair and put both elbows on the desk. “You're sure of another five hundred feet of ore free of water, Hugh. I've got pretty accurate information that your veins are widening and that in another two months you'll almost double your take. Is that right?”

Hugh inclined his head.

“All right. You'll be in control before you have gone another hundred feet deeper.” Janeece spread his hands. “That will leave you another four hundred feet of bonanza. With this stock you'll acquire, that's enough to make you a rich man. When pumps are developed that can pump water from another five hundred feet lower, you'll be a very rich man.”

“But will they?” Hugh asked insistently.

Janeece put both hands on his desk. “They will, Hugh. I tell you, that mine and all its wealth will be yours. I'm handing it to you in return for your cooperation.” He raised a thin finger then. “Mind, it's not my belief that Bonal can put that tunnel through. It can't be done—not with money even, and I've seen to it that he can't get that. But if—‘if' I said—the tunnel by some wild chance will be put through, then I'll need your help. And I pay for the help I get. That's why I'm doing this for you.”

Hugh finally lighted his cigar. The two men sat in comfortable silence long enough to let Hugh finish his smoke. The quiet had grown enormous, so that every movement of the stamps back in the mill seemed magnified a hundred times.

Hugh rose. “All right. Give me time to put my agents in San Francisco on the job.”

“I knew you'd see it that way,” Janeece said quietly. “I'll never need to resort to your help to break Bonal, for the tunnel will never go through. But if I do need to, you won't fail me, Hugh.”

Hugh understood the innuendo, and he smiled wryly. “Hardly. You've seen to that.”

“Haven't I?” Janeece murmured. He stood up and put out his hand.

“Good night, Hugh. You've made a wise decision.”

Chapter Six

Borg Hulteen, the shift boss and head driller, looked suspiciously at the new timbering and mopped the water out of his eyes. It was staunch, of ten-by-ten pine beams, and it tightly sealed the roof and wall of the tunnel for a space of forty feet. Borg glanced over at Seay, who was naked to the waist, too, his body smeared with dirt and runneled with sweat, his mouth open to get all the good out of this hot and fetid and stinking air.

The drill crew and the muckers stood in a loose circle eying the work, then glanced at the pile of rock and rubble which almost blocked the tunnel and which an hour before had thundered down to the tunnel floor, leaving a gaping hole in the tunnel roof. The small slide had dammed the floor of the tunnel, so that the water which ran beside the double tracks had backed up to the drill some fifty feet away at the tunnel head.

Seay felt the water around his knees warm and viscous with mud. Five Cornish timbermen, their tools still in their hands, squinted up in the steaming lantern light at their work.

“All right, you bloody limeys,” Borg growled. “Is it safe?”

The Cornishmen nodded, and Borg glanced over at Seay. “All right?”

“Put off a shot, and we'll see,” Seay told him. The muckers shoveled away the rock and rubble from the track, and a dump car was brought up to the drill. The flexible hose from the drill to the receiving tank a ways down the tunnel was uncoupled, the drill loaded on the dump car, and the dump car hauled back away from the tunnel head.

Seay and Borg placed the dynamite, lighted the fuses and went back where the muckers and the Cornishmen were waiting. Soon the explosion boomed through the tunnel, and they went forward again. The timbers had held easily; only a faint rattle of rock on them indicated that any dirt and rock in the fault had been displaced by the vibration.

Borg Hulteen turned to the muckers and said, “Get busy, boys. Move it.” He looked over at Seay. For an hour now they had been working furiously, getting the timbers up, their thoughts on only one thing, to check the slide before it poured half the mountain into the tunnel. Now, looking at Seay, Borg's homely Scandinavian face lost some of its tenseness.

“I don't like that,” he said fervently.

“That was your mistake, Borg,” Seay said. “You should have spotted that and timbered it.”

Borg nodded wearily. “That's right.”

“No alibi?” Seay asked sharply.

Borg shook his head, and only then did Seay smile. This head driller was a big rawboned man with the pale flesh of a man who works out of sunlight. But his eyes were rimmed with sleeplessness, and his every movement was weary.

“The devil you haven't,” Seay said quietly, and in complete friendliness. “You're coming off at noon, Borg, and get twelve hours' sleep. Tomorrow, you'll drop the midnight shift to Lueter. If he can stand the heat, you'll divide the shifts.”

“That damn squarehead,” Borg said contemptuously. “You want to order a half-dozen new drills? Last night McCarty caught him with the drill so far back from the face that the piston'd of kicked the end out of the cylinder. Why, he don't—”