Hard Money (19 page)

When Maizie thought she had waited the proper time, she came in and congratulated Bonal. Later, they all started up to the tunnel mouth. As Bonal approached the crowd he was cheered wildly. He was puzzled to find himself regarded now as something of a saint, the savior of the Tronah field. He could have told them he would be and had been telling them so for years now, but he accepted their homage without rancor. Workmen who saw him crowded around, and finally, overriding his good-humored protests, they hoisted him to their shoulders and paraded with him.

Sharon did not get to see the tunnel that day. Separated from her father and surrounded by that rough and riotous mob, she and Maizie went back to the office to wait for him. All of Tronah seemed to be pouring over the hills to the tunnel camp.

An hour later Seay came in, Tober behind him. He stopped short at the door, pleasure overlaying the quiet elation in his face as he saw them. His clothes were almost dry, but he was wet with sweat, and his face was runneling it.

His gaze settled on Sharon, who was smiling happily, and he grinned at her. “Bonal's Bonanza,” he laughed. “Do you believe in fairies now?”

Sharon laughed warmly and nodded. “Don't you?”

“How much of this are you responsible for, young man?” Maizie asked.

“Only the drill that made the hole that held the dynamite that blew in bonanza,” Seay said, still laughing. Sharon had never seen his eyes so wild and free, and they almost frightened her.

“Where is Dad?” she asked.

“Six feet off the ground, seated on the shoulders of two Irishmen who won't let him down till dark.” For emphasis, the roar of the celebrating crowd poured down from the slope.

Seay asked, “Is your carriage here?” and Maizie nodded.

He turned to Tober and said, “See if you can find it, Reed, and bring it around in back.”

“Are we being ordered home?” Maizie asked, after Reed had gone.

For answer, Seay drew her to a window and pointed out. A huge freight wagon with a three-team hitch was just sloping off the higher road down to the camp. All the men who could find a hold were braking its wheels, while the horses fought against them to get it down the slope. The driver, cursing wildly, was snaking his buckskin whip at the revellers. And the cause of it rode high and eloquent atop the load. The wagon was loaded with beer kegs and perched on them sat three of the town women, shrieking at their precarious position. Back of the wagon were several carriages, all loaded down with shrill and already convivial honky-tonk girls.

Maizie chuckled at the sight. Sharon, behind her, laughed too, but a little shyly, and Seay turned to look at her.

“In another hour the top will blow off. I've put a dozen sober men to guard the tunnel. All the warehouses are locked.” He looked out at the mob now, which was breaking for the beer wagon. “They can't do much more than raze the bunkhouses.”

Sharon was a little disgusted with the sight, and she turned away. Tober found Ben and the carriage, and Seay showed them to it.

“We'll have a little party tonight,” Sharon told Seay. “Can you come? Just Dad and you and Maizie and Abe and myself.” She felt her throat a little tight as she finished, but Seay said only, “Glad to.”

But if Sharon hoped for a quiet intimate celebration of their good fortune, she did not get it. No sooner had the five of them sat down to dinner than the maid informed Bonal that neither the office nor the parlor would hold all the callers. Bonal, who knew his West and its ways, left at once. Without him, the dinner was pointless. Afterward, Sharon surrendered the suite, retired to her room and locked her door. And till far beyond midnight all the friends and acquaintances and a good many strangers called on Bonal to congratulate him and to drink his whisky and to make this a long night of hilarious revelry. Bonal, tired and exhilarated by all the drinks he acknowledged, laughed in his beard and occasionally looked over at Seay, who was bearing this same treatment with all the tolerance he could muster. Bonal knew who deserved the credit. And he took a grim and boyish delight in watching Seay suffer for success.

Chapter Thirteen

The meeting was called for evening and was held in Charles Bonal's suite office. Most of those invited arrived promptly, decorously, and as soon as their hats were taken were shown into the large room which now held two large tables set together and flanked by seats for some twenty persons. A buffet loaded with liquors and ice was set against the inside wall. Two hanging kerosene lamps threw light on the table, which was bare save for several ash trays and two boxes of cigars.

As far as Bonal could tell, they were all here—except Janeece, who was represented, of course, by Ames Herkenhoff, the Pacific Shares manager. It was a strange meeting, and only Hugh Mathias' easy affability saved it from becoming embarrassing.

Seay was fortunate in that he did not know these men, had met less than half of them, and therefore did not hold Charles Bonal's contempt for them. Hugh introduced him, and these mining men regarded him with considerable interest. For weeks now, Seay had been driving the tunnel through, day and night, and not once had he left the camp. It was as they had guessed; the drilling was mostly over. All that remained was the mucking and some drilling. The hard part had been the timbering; in some places it had been like trying to tunnel through quicksand. The whole of Tronah had followed the work after the premature announcement of the tunnel's completion, but the luck had held. These mining men had followed it, too, ready to admit that Seay was near to finishing a tough job neatly.

Bonal called them to their seats finally and indicated to Seay to sit on his right. Seay did, covertly regarding the faces of these men around him. When Bonal rose the group became quiet.

Bonal carefully placed his cigar in the tray before him, and began to speak. “I won't pretend this is to be a friendly meeting, gentlemen,” he announced. “You've fought me too hard for me to hold any affection for you.”

There was an uneasy muttering at this introduction.

“I'm privileged to make this announcement in spite of you, so to speak,” he went on. “The announcement is no secret to any of you. The Bonal Tunnel is now reality, or soon will be—definitely.”

The going was a little easier now, and Bonal picked up his cigar.

“Hugh Mathias, of the Consolidated, tells me that the water in his main shaft has disappeared. Apparently”—and his voice took on an astringent quality—“my predictions were not as wild as you gentlemen were led to suppose.”

A square-faced man in his fifties, with the jowls of a bulldog and the twisted hands of a one-time workman, cleared his throat and leaned forward on the table. This was Ames Herkenhoff, of the Pacific Shares.

“We're all eating humble pie, Bonal,” he said shortly. “Let's get down to the proposition.”

“Good,” Bonal said, iron creeping into his voice. “At one time in the history of this tunnel I offered you shares in it and a reasonable proposition for ridding your mines of water. You laughed at it. You won't laugh at this, but you'll take it.” He paused, eyeing them with a lazy insolence. “My original proposition was that you pay me two dollars for every ton of your ore that was drained of water by the Bonal Tunnel. My proposition now is exactly double that.”

“Nonsense,” Herkenhoff blurted out.

“It's no nonsense, Herkenhoff,” Bonal said easily. “You'll take it and like it, and I'll tell why. You'll do it because you can't afford not to. If you don't, you'll hit
borrasca
in another month, and you know it.”

Herkenhoff said quietly, “That remains to be seen.”

Bonal said in all good humor, “If the rest of you gentlemen persist in sticking to this same absurdity, I'll wait another month until the Pacific Shares, which has a deep shaft, is flooded. Perhaps you'll see the light then.”

There was a low murmur of protest. “Go on,” someone said.

“I intend to. We'll give Herkenhoff the right to dissent.” He looked around the faces watching him. “Maybe we'll get through this sooner if you ask me questions. There's a lot of ground to cover.”

Waldman, the Golgotha manager, spoke up, his voice reasonable. “How do you intend to drain all our shafts, Bonal? The water won't seep out.”

“I'll cut lateral drifts to them from the tunnel,” Bonal answered. “You'll start your own drifts toward me. When we meet, your water problem is finished.”

“That's expensive,” someone objected.

“Who said it wasn't?” Bonal countered quickly. He eyed them steadily, waiting for someone to contradict him, and when they did not, he went on. “Gentlemen, the pumps you are now using will lift water two thousand feet, no more. Most of you are close to two thousand—and the ore gives no sign of pinching out. Is that right?

They said it was.

“Then provided I can handle the water from your shafts, you can install these same pumps at a depth of two thousand feet—at present, the bottom of your shafts. That will let you take out ore, free of any danger from water, for another two thousand feet. Four thousand in all.” He looked around him, and Seay saw the corners of his eyes wrinkle a little, as if he were smiling. “That ought to give you enough profits, gentlemen, to finance a lateral drift to my tunnel.”

The company held a noncommittal silence.

“That,” Bonal reterated, “is not a matter of choice for you. It's necessity, as I've said before.”

He lighted his cigar now and puffed it to life. Seay could see the sardonic delight in Bonal's face. He was enjoying this to the last unrecorded word.

“And now,” Bonal said presently, “there's the matter”—he paused and looked at his chair and said to no one in particular—“there's no reason why I can't sit down to this.” He did so and then took up the conversation again. “There's the matter of my reduction mill.”

They were watching him again.

“The mill which you gentlemen are going to finance for me,” he added smoothly.

He waited until the storm of talk subsided a little, leaning back in his chair and cuddling the cigar in his mouth. Once he winked at Seay, who could not smother his grin of delight.

Suddenly he pounded his flat hand on the table, demanding silence.

“Yes, you'll finance it,” he said grimly, “and again it will be because you have to. Do you want to know why? I'll tell you, then. It's because any man with a lick of sense—and you've all got that, only you're modest about showing it—can see that it's cheaper to hoist tons of ore a hundred feet, put it in cars, haul it to my tunnel and let it roll out than it is to hoist it twenty-five hundred feet, put it in wagons and haul it five miles. There's the proposition—so simple it's idiotic.”

“Why should we finance your mill for you, Bonal?” Bengler, of the Bucko Queen, asked hotly. “It's
your
mill! It's
your
profits!”

“You'll finance it because in the long run it will save you money!” Bonal said shortly. “You'll get your loans back. How can you help it when it's you that will give me my business? And my reduction costs will be a third less than Janeece charges you now. Figures don't lie. The cost of getting the ore to me is negligible. My process is identical to Janeece's. Then why in hell wouldn't you finance my mill and give me your business?” he asked arrogantly. “The more money you save on milling, the more you make on your bullion!”

His words fell on a wrathful silence. Hugh looked over at Seay and shook his head slightly, grinning around his cigar.

“Bonal,” someone at the foot of the table said, “it strikes me that we pay you through the nose. You get a cut off every move we make.”

“You're damn right I do,” Bonal said grimly. “You're getting off lucky, at that.”

Herkenhoff rose and pulled his coat across his barrel chest. “Gentlemen,” he said, a wry expression ground into his face. “I, for one, refuse to pay tribute to a robber. Good night, all.”

Bonal chuckled and said, “Anybody else?”

“I'll see this through,” someone said. “How do you propose to do this, Bonal? How do you propose to take our ore out?”

“You'll be levied according to the grade of your ore at present and your output,” Bonal said. “I'll settle that with you separately. As for my methods, I'll simply haul your ore through the laterals to the tunnel, dump it in cars and shoot it to my mill.”

“What about the water, though?”

“The water will run in a channel below the tracks. It's being dug now.”

Bonal settled back and peacefully sucked his cigar, his eyes on the faces of these men, taking quiet pleasure in their expressions.

“You've overlooked one thing, Bonal,” Waldman said finally. “It's this. You've got to put your laterals through our land. What do you intend to pay us for that right of way?”

“Not a cent,” Bonal said cheerfully. “If the laterals don't go through, if you don't help to put them through, matching yard for yard of rock my crew takes out, then you'll cut your own throats. You will have won, but you'll also have bullheaded yourselves into
borrasca
.”

He rose slowly and threw his cigar into the ash tray and said, “Think it over, gentlemen. There's no hurry. The Dry Sierras is working right now on a dry shaft bottom. It's only a matter of hours before their shaft and my tunnel meet. It's simply a question of how fast the muckers can take the stuff out. Tomorrow—next day—come over and see how it works. It really”—his speech was thrusting, dry, cutting—“is so simple that I think you can understand it.”

He dismissed them then with a nod that was a little contemptuous.

Chapter Fourteen

“But this is absurd, Hugh. It's absolutely insane,” Sharon murmured.

“Patience,” Hugh replied.