Hard Money (21 page)

“Is it Phil Seay?” Hugh asked relentlessly, doubt in his eyes.

“He fits that description,” Sharon said steadily. “Because he does, he hates me, I think. He wouldn't acquire me because he's through playing with toys—if he ever did.”

“Sharon!”

Sharon rose, making a weary gesture with her hands. “Leave me alone, Hugh. All I've told you is the truth. But I'm confused.”

Silently Hugh picked up his hat. “Perhaps this is ruthless,” he said in a low voice. “I—I've got to be ruthless, Sharon. Will you marry me?”

“I don't know!” Sharon cried, her voice tormented.

“Good night, my dear.”

“Good night, Hugh.”

When he was gone Sharon went to her own room and immediately hated it and came back to her father's office. The rank fragrance of his black cigars seemed to have washed the room with Charles Bonal's own peculiar smell. Sharon sat down in one of the deep leather chairs and closed her eyes. She had told Hugh as much as she knew herself—except, of course, that she loved Phil Seay. Was that any of Hugh's business? Could he even understand it, much less forgive it? How transparent she must be, to have Hugh settle on the name so easily, so obviously. Suddenly she did not care. She had told only the truth—or three quarters of the truth. Long ago she had given him her word, and some fine-grained honesty that Charles Bonal's daughter could not help but have would not let her break that promise. But if Hugh knew that she didn't love him, couldn't admire him, would he even want her to keep that promise? Sharon hoped not, but she remembered Hugh's stubborn question just before he left. For one frightened moment she realized that this question was a portent, a sign that Hugh might hold her to that promise. The thought was suddenly unbearable.

She heard the door open, and Charles Bonal came in. She waved to him, and he crossed the room to her. His eyes were shining, and, approaching, he stopped to brush the layered dust from his trousers. Too, he chuckled a little, half to himself.

“What've you been doing, Dad?”

“I was over with Phil at the tunnel, watching them push it through.”

“It's through, then, Dad?”

“Absolutely. Tomorrow will see the last timbers in.”

Sharon looked down at his dusty clothes. “But the dust. That isn't mud.”

Bonal laughed again. “I sent the buggy on ahead and drove a freight team home.” Shaking his head with pleasure, he went on, “Your old man isn't a cripple yet. But, my God, that's a job without a rough lock.”

Going over to the taboret, he took out a bottle of whisky and poured himself a drink. His eyes were still shining with the elation of this night as he sat down. “Hugh gone?” he asked, and when Sharon nodded he said, “Sort of early for him, isn't it?”

“I sent him, Dad.”

Bonal looked up at her and then away. “Spat, eh?”

Sharon didn't answer him. Instead, she said, “What's your opinion of a person who'll break his promise, Dad?”

“What did Hugh promise you that he didn't give you?”

“You didn't answer my question.”

Bonal's veiled eyes studied her for a moment and then shrewdness crept into them. “Depends,” he said slowly. “In a business proposition, he'll sink himself sooner or later. In a personal one, he won't be trusted. In an affair of the heart, I dunno.”

“Why don't you?”

“Depends,” Bonal hedged. “If a man is held to all the nonsense he tells a woman, he'd likely wring her neck some night.” He sipped his whisky thoughtfully and then said, “And, contrariwise.”

“Then it works both ways?”

“My dear girl,” Bonal said bluntly, “if you're asking for my advice, and it has to do with Hugh, you won't get it.”

“Did I ask?” Sharon flared up and then laughed.

“No. And you'd better not. I don't know anything about love,” Bonal went on. “When your mother and I were married, it wasn't discussed—or not to the degree it is today. I was a young fella gettin' ahead, and she took a shine to me. She was a pretty thing, with lots of common sense and a sense of humor. We liked each other's company, so we got married.” He paused thoughtfully. “It worked out all right. Fine.”

When Sharon didn't say anything, he asked from around his drink, “That help you?”

“Not much,” Sharon said quietly, “I'm not sure I want to marry Hugh, Dad.” If she thought this would startle her father, it did not. He raised one of his black eyebrows, nodded and took another sip of his whisky.

“All right.”

“But I promised him.”

Bonal smiled meagerly in his beard. “Years ago—back in Illinois, it was—I went to a camp meeting,” he began. “They had a good preacher there, one of these hell-fire boys. This meetin' was to fight the evil of liquor. After the third day of it he got me, and I took the pledge.” He set down his glass. “I was eleven at the time. How could I tell I'd change my mind? I did though.” He added dryly, “I've never thought it necessary to write that estimable gentlemen to tell him I reneged.”

He got up, finished his whisky and, whistling faintly, went into his room, leaving Sharon as confused as he had found her.

Chapter Fifteen

Seay was umpiring one of the interminable arguments between Borg Hulteen and Reed Tober. The three of them were standing at the junction of the Dry Sierras Consolidated shaft and the Bonal Tunnel. The full-timbered walls were seeping water, which runneled down to the floor and flowed sluggishly away, collecting in small pools. The air was cooler now there was a draft of air that flowed through the tunnel and up the shaft. It was so strong that the lanterns overhead swung unsteadily, their flames guttering. Too, it was a cleaner air, freed of all the fetid smells of weeks ago.

Clumping over to a wall, he squatted, bracing his back against it, and contemplated the finished job. The drone of Borg's profanity faded a little. His feet felt hot in the rubber boots, but he looked around him with a grim feeling of pride. This was his job, his work, and he had put it through.

Tober turned to him and then jerked his head toward Borg.

“When is this ape goin' to start drillin' again?”

Seay shook his head. He couldn't hear above the thin cascades of water that were falling down the Dry Sierras shaft and joining to make a small stream that ran down the tunnel floor. Ten years from now, Seay was thinking, there may be a big pump where we are standing, and the Dry Sierras' shaft will drop off here to another two thousand feet of depth. Millions of dollars, thousands of tons of ore, would travel that shaft, would be dragged down this tunnel, and all because Charles Bonal was a man of vision and unconquerable.

He rose and turned to the pair of them, still arguing, and took Reed by the arm. “Come on. Put it in a drawer until you can hear each other.”

Borg stopped his cursing and grinned. The three of them went back to the dump car, climbed on, and Borg whipped up the mule. The long haul out was not dull to Seay. Every foot of this represented blood and bone and muscle and sacrifice and cunning and stubbornness. The lanterns at intervals threw twisted shadows on the wet walls of the tunnel side. They would plunge into its feeble circle of light and then dive into darkness again, the pin points of light ahead stretching in a long row. Only the lantern rigged on the mule's collar gave a steady light, and it bobbed and twisted and flickered.

Soon they came to the work crew, which was digging the deep trench in the floor of the tunnel. Here the water drained from the mines would flow under the tracks on which the ore cars would be hauled. It was easy work now compared to the tunnel drilling, and upon its completion the tunnel would be ready to operate.

Outside the attention of the camp seemed turned away from the tunnel. The foundations of the reduction mill were being put in. The slapping of the double jacks of the workmen filled the hot afternoon air with sound and fury. Already the trenches were dug in orderly rows, lipped with the rock and dirt taken from them. Soon now, Seay thought, Bonal would not need him any more, and then he would drift.

He swung off the car and looked off toward the office. A saddled horse stood hipshot in its shade. One of the guards who paced the tunnel mouth night and day after the cave-in nodded to him, and Seay tramped down the slope.

In his office Vannie was seated in his swivel chair, her booted feet on his desk. She was wearing a pair of miner's dungarees and a khaki shirt open at the neck, and her face had the pleasant freshness of activity.

“I took another look at your tunnel,” Vannie said. “It looks like the Dry Sierras water trouble is over.”

“For good,” Seay said. He sat down and pulled off his rubber boots, and then, still barefooted, he reached in his pocket and brought out his pipe and packed and lighted it. Vannie watched him, tenderness and pride in her eyes.

“You carry your luck with you, don't you, Phil?”

“Seay laughed. “That luck was Bonal's.”

“No. It was yours. Why not admit it? Bonal, with all his hardheadedness, couldn't have pushed the tunnel through.”

Seay shrugged and pulled on his leather boots. The even heat poured in the windows, merciless in its pressing insistence, yet Vannie seemed cool and looked pleasant and only slightly disheveled. A streak of dirt across her chin showed dark on her golden skin, and Seay touched it with his finger. “You didn't go into the tunnel far enough. There's water enough in there to wash with.”

Vannie scrubbed at her chin. “I practically had to kiss the guards to get close enough to look into it.”

Seay regarded her fondly and then laughed and sat down on the desk.

“Come to borrow back your track?” Seay asked.

Vannie shook her head and did not smile. “I came to ask questions, Phil.”

“Like what?”

Vannie didn't answer immediately, but instead took her feet off the table and leaned back in the chair and gazed thoughtfully out the window.

“How many mines have signed up with Bonal yet?” she asked presently.

“Three-four. Why?”

“Why haven't the others?” Vannie asked slowly.

“Some men take a lot of licking.”

“Just that?” Vannie asked, turning to regard him. “When it's inevitable, why do they hold back?”

“Let Bonal worry about that,” Seay told her. “But he's not worrying. Why should he?”

“That's just the trouble,” Vannie murmured. “He's not worrying enough.”

Seay scowled. “How do you mean?”

Vannie's deep, steady gaze settled on Seay a long moment, and then she laughed abruptly, softly. “You'll laugh at me, Phil.”

“About what?”

“I don't know. It's nothing I can pin down. Only, something's underfoot around here, among these mines. It's something they don't want me to know about, because I've always been for Bonal, have helped him.”

“What is it you've seen?”

“Well today I went over to see Benger at the Bucko Queen. He's my next-door neighbor, you know. We've been fighting over our boundary for a couple of months, and Benger got Judge Baily to clap an injunction on me ordering me to quit work in one gallery that was close to the boundary.”

“What about it?”

“This morning was the morning set for Judge Baily to hear the arguments. The hearing was to be held at the Bucko Queen, so the court would be close to the ground in dispute. Baily wasn't there.”

“Why not?”

“When I got there Benger showed me a note from Judge Baily saying that the hearing must be postponed because he had to leave town for an indefinite stay.

“What of that?” Seay asked.

“Nothing. Only when I went over to the Bucko Queen with Waldman, my manager, I thought I recognized four rigs tied outside the office. They belonged to Forsythe over at the Southern Union, Mills at the Petersburg, Trout at the Bismarck and Herkenhoff.”

“A meeting, then?” Seay asked.

“When I came out the teams were gone—as if somebody had left them there by mistake and had hoped I hadn't seen them.”

Seay sucked on his pipe. “Well, what's the matter with that? Can't a bunch of thieves talk business?”

“But two of those three men never liked each other much,” Vannie pointed out. “Why the friendship? And with Benger?”

Seay shrugged. “All right, why?”

“I don't know. There's only one thing that would bring all those men together. Tunnel talk.”

“And why shouldn't it?”

“But why didn't they want me to know it?” Vannie asked. “When I saw Benger he looked as if he'd just stepped on a little chicken. He wouldn't let me in his office, and he hurried me out.”

Seay laughed at her, and Vannie smiled back, but there was still a look of concern on her face.

“All right, Vannie, what could happen?” he asked her. “They've only got to take Bonal's proposition or leave it—and they'll take it later if they don't now.”

Vannie shook her head. “It looks queer, Phil. Then too, Baily is gone. If they tried to do something, where would the court come from that would stop them?”

“Something like what?”

Vannie shrugged. “I said you'd laugh at me, Phil. Still I can't help feeling uneasy. These men haven't signed Bonal's agreement. Maybe they don't intend to.”

Seay lounged off the desk and walked over to his coat and brought out some tobacco. “You're spooky, Vannie. Go back and keep your ears open, and I'll see you again.”

“When?” Vannie said swiftly.

“Tomorrow night. I'll come over. I don't—” Some queer expression on Vannie's face made him pause. “What's the matter?” he asked.

Vannie was smiling in all her loveliness. “I didn't think I'd ever hear you say that again, Phil,” she murmured.

“Say what?”

“That you'd come over to see me.”