I don’t know what you see in this outlandish place to compensate for what you miss at home.”
The girl did not look around. “A man on a black horse, Aunty,” she said. “He has passed here twice. I have never seen such a horse. I don’t remember to have ever seen a man quite like the rider. He looks positively – er —heroish! He is built like a Roman gladiator, he rides the black horse as though he had been sculptured on it, and his head has a set that makes one feel he has a mind of his own. He has furnished me with the only thrill that I have felt since we left New York!”
“He hasn’t seen you!” said Agatha, coldly; “of course you made sure of that?”
The girl looked mischievously at the older woman. She ran her fingers through her hair – brown and vigorous-looking – then shaded her eyes with her hands and gazed at her reflection in a mirror near by. In deshabille she looked fresh and bewitching. She had looked like a radiant goddess to “Brand” Trevison, when he had accidentally caught a glimpse of her face at the window while she had been watching him. He had not known that the lady had just awakened from her beauty sleep. He would have sworn that she needed no beauty sleep. And he had deliberately ridden past the car again, hoping to get another glimpse of her. The girl smiled.
“I am not so positive about that, Aunty. Let us not be prudish. If he saw me, he made no sign, and therefore he is a gentleman.” She looked out of the window and smiled again. “There he is now, Aunty!”
It was Agatha who parted the curtains, this time. The horseman’s face was toward the window, and he saw her. An expression of puzzled astonishment glowed in his eyes, superseded quickly by disappointment, whereat Rosalind giggled softly and hid her tousled head in a pillow.
“The impertinent brute! Rosalind, he dared to look directly at me, and I am sure he would have winked at me in another instant! A gentleman!” she said, coldly.
“Don’t be severe, Aunty. I’m sure he is a gentleman, for all his curiosity. See – there he is, riding away without so much as looking back!”
Half an hour later the two women entered the dining-room just as a big, rather heavy-featured, but handsome man, came through the opposite door. He greeted both ladies effusively, and smilingly looked at his watch.
“You over-slept this morning, ladies – don’t you think? It’s after ten. I’ve been rummaging around town, getting acquainted. It’s rather an unfinished place, after the East. But in time – ” He made a gesture, perhaps a silent prophecy that one day Manti would out-strip New York, and bowed the ladies to seats at table, talking while the colored waiter moved obsequiously about them.
“I thought at first that your father was over-enthusiastic about Manti, Miss Benham,” he continued. “But the more I see of it the firmer becomes my conviction that your father was right. There are tremendous possibilities for growth. Even now it is a rather fertile country. We shall make it hum, once the railroad and the dam are completed. It is a logical site for a town – there is no other within a hundred miles in any direction.”
“And you are to anticipate the town’s growth – isn’t that it, Mr. Corrigan?”
“You put it very comprehensively, Miss Benham; but perhaps it would be better to say that I am the advance agent of prosperity – that sounds rather less mercenary. We must not allow the impression to get abroad that mere money is to be the motive power behind our efforts.”
“But money-making is the real motive, after all?” said Miss Benham, dryly.
“I submit there are several driving forces in life, and that money-making is not the least compelling of them.”
“The other forces?” It seemed to Corrigan that Miss Benham’s face was very serious. But Agatha, who knew Rosalind better than Corrigan knew her, was aware that the girl was merely demurely sarcastic.
“Love and hatred are next,” he said, slowly.
“You would place money-making before love?” Rosalind bantered.
“Money adds the proper flavor to love,” laughed Corrigan. The laugh was laden with subtle significance and he looked straight at the girl, a deep fire slumbering in his eyes. “Yes,” he said slowly, “money-making is a great passion. I have it. But I can hate, and love. And when I do either, it will be strongly. And then – ”
Agatha cleared her throat impatiently. Corrigan colored slightly, and Miss Benham smothered something, artfully directing the conversation into less personal channels:
“You are going to build manufactories, organize banks, build municipal power-houses, speculate in real estate, and such things, I suppose?”
“And build a dam. We already have a bank here, Miss Benham.”
“Will father be interested in those things?”
“Silently. You understand, that being president of the railroad, your father must keep in the background. The actual promoting of these enterprises will be done by me.”
Miss Benham looked dreamily out of the window. Then she turned to Corrigan and gazed at him meditatively, though the expression in her eyes was so obviously impersonal that it chilled any amorous emotion that Corrigan might have felt.
“I suppose you are right,” she said. “It must be thrilling to feel a conscious power over the destiny of a community, to direct its progress, to manage it, and – er – figuratively to grab industries by their – ” She looked slyly at Agatha “ – lower extremities and shake the dollars out of them. Yes,” she added, with a wistful glance through the window; “that must be more exciting than being merely in love.”
Agatha again followed Rosalind’s gaze and saw the black horse standing in front of a store. She frowned, and observed stiffly:
“It seems to me that the people in these small places – such as Manti – are not capable of managing the large enterprises that Mr. Corrigan speaks of.” She looked at Rosalind, and the girl knew that she was deprecating the rider of the black horse. Rosalind smiled sweetly.
“Oh, I am sure there must be some intelligent persons among them!”
“As a rule,” stated Corrigan, dogmatically, “the first citizens of any town are an uncouth and worthless set.”
“The Four Hundred would take exception to that!” laughed Rosalind.
Corrigan laughed with her. “You know what I mean, of course. Take Manti, for instance. Or any new western town. The lowest elements of society are represented; most of the people are very ignorant and criminal.”
The girl looked sharply at Corrigan, though he was not aware of the glance. Was there a secret understanding between Corrigan and Agatha? Had Corrigan also some knowledge of the rider’s pilgrimages past the car window? Both had maligned the rider. But the girl had seen intelligence on the face of the rider, and something in the set of his head had told her that he was not a criminal. And despite his picturesque rigging, and the atmosphere of the great waste places that seemed to envelop him, he had made a deeper impression on her than had Corrigan, darkly handsome, well-groomed, a polished product of polite convention and breeding, whom her father wanted her to marry.
“Well,” she said, looking at the black horse; “I intend to observe Manti’s citizens more closely before attempting to express an opinion.”
Half an hour later, in response to Corrigan’s invitation, Rosalind was walking down Manti’s one street, Corrigan beside her. Corrigan had donned khaki clothing, a broad, felt hat, boots, neckerchief. But in spite of the change of garments there was a poise, an atmosphere about him, that hinted strongly of the graces of civilization. Rosalind felt a flash of pride in him. He was big, masterful, fascinating.
Manti seemed to be fraudulent, farcical, upon closer inspection. For one thing, its crudeness was more glaring, and its unpainted board fronts looked flimsy, transient. Compared to the substantial buildings of the East, Manti’s structures were hovels. Here was the primitive town in the first flush of its creation. Miss Benham did not laugh, for a mental picture rose before her – a bit of wild New England