interesting," murmured the girl, recognizing his quality. "I won't take up your time, then, with unnecessary information. I noticed you have been advertising for homesteaders down in Roaring Horse. Of course, I could find out by going directly to newspapers, but perhaps you'll tell me when you first issued the ads."
"Mailed out of here the sixteenth," was Hunnewell's prompt answer. He seemed to wish to emphasize his importance. "I work rapidly. But if you're interested in land don't let the date bother you. Still plenty of it open. Suggest you go to see Mr. Woolfridge."
The girl was hardly able to suppress the mingled anger and satisfaction. "In other words you got up the ads, with all the facts contained in them, two days after you were informed there was to be no dam built in the Roaring Horse."
"Cer—" began Hunnewell, and then leaped to his feet, all abluster with temper and uncertainty. "See here, what are you saying? What do you want? What right have you to come in this office with an insulting statement like that? I do not relish the remarks. Who do you represent, anyhow?"
"Whoever I represent," said Gay calmly, "be sure he is a bigger man than Mr. Woolfridge. Was my statement wrong? Did you know—"
"Never mind that!" snapped Hunnewell. "You've got no business prying into our affairs. I could have you arrested for libel." He ran his fingers through his sandy hair, the uncertainty developing into a feeling of fear. He was not the man to command a situation like this; he was only a dummy, a chore boy instructed to fetch and carry. Woolfridge, confronted with Gay Thatcher's matter-of-fact remark, would have smiled politely and never changed expression, and in good and sufficient time would have taken care of it by other means. But Hunnewell, afraid of the business from the very beginning, now saw the shadow of disaster before him. And he made a grievous error. "Who do you represent?"
"Was my statement correct?" insisted Gay.
"What of it!" cried Hunnewell. He came around the table and faced the girl, poking a forefinger at her. "See here, young woman, if you know what's good for you you'll drop this business and get out of the territory."
"Mr. Hunnewell, you're stepping beyond the mark," said Gay quietly.
"Am I?" snapped Hunnewell, shaking his head. "No I'm not. I've had reason to look you up. I've been digging into a little past history. What I know—and if I air what I know—will bar you from the decent folks you've been traveling with around this town. It'll drive you out. Hear me?"
The girl stepped back from him, hand reaching for the door. She watched his eyes with a kind of tight despair on her own white face and her lips were pressed together until the blood ran out of them. Hunnewell thought she meant to leave and he jammed a foot against the door.
"Come around here and meddle, will you? I'll scorch you. You drop this and shut up. Five years ago you ran away from home with a man. Did, didn't you? Don't dare deny it, do you?"
She said nothing. Hunnewell grinned unpleasantly. "Lived with that man as a common-law wife in another town—"
"That's a lie!"
"So? Try to make Bannock City believe it's a lie. You can't prove you didn't. Anyhow, you went away with him. Disappeared. Where's he now? Where did you live the next three-four years? Back East, uh? Who furnished you the money? And you been traveling around mighty free ever since. Even your best friends here don't know your history. If it's a lie, why didn't you tell them? That man never went back to Bannock City to tell folks it was a lie. And I can produce a party that saw you and the fellow living in a hotel at Red Buttes a week after you skipped. A lie, uh? Why—" and Hunnewell had worked himself into such a state of mind that he almost pushed her against the wall. "You drop this and get out of town. If you don't I'll ruin you. Good and plenty. Not a word, you understand?"
He moved away and gave her a chance to open the door. She almost fell on the stairs. Out in the street she stopped to catch hold of herself. The past had marched across the years to face her again with its grimy shadow; to leer and whisper all of that old and horrible story in her ears, to wreck the later life she had so laboriously and courageously built up. Somebody—-a friend—spoke to her in passing, but she was so blinded by the struggle inside her that she never heard. She was whispering: "Oh, Jim—Jim! I'll never see you again. And you'll find it out some day—you'll hear that tale. I wish you had asked me questions. I wish you had!"
Throughout her life she had been a clear-minded girl, a rigorously self-disciplined girl. So when she came to the town's daily paper she controlled her mind and heart once more. Going in she asked the question uppermost in her head. With the information she returned to the capitol building and was admitted to the governor's office. He saw the drawn expression of her face and became immediately concerned.
"I told you to wrap well. It's cold outside. Here, sit down. Sereno—go rustle up some good hot coffee for us."
She got T. Q. Bangor's letter from her purse and handed it to the governor. He read through it.
"I knew that. What else?"
"Woolfridge sent out his advertisement for settlers two days after he knew the dam wasn't going to be built. That can be proven by the newspapers who received copies of the ad."
The governor's eyes turned chilly. His jaw seemed to shoot outward. "Used the mails to propagate that bunco game I see. I read the ads myself. Didn't actually promise anything definite about the dam. Suggested—inferred—skipped around the edge of the crater." He rose and put a big paw on her shoulder. "You're a better man than the usual last run of shad I've got cluttering my doorstep. I'll talk to the attorney-general about this. Provable fraud—I think." He turned around the room, stopped to study a painting of his predecessor, muttered under his breath. And turned back again to her. "I'm not going to hit him yet. Not through the regular machinery. Never like to hang a man if he'll hang himself. Don't want the opposition to say I'm persecuting an enemy. Don't want to give them any ammunition right now. There is a better way. My dear girl, I must send you off to wind up this business. Willing?"
"Governor, I almost cry when I think of those wagons coming into Roaring Horse with all the women and kiddies—"
"We'll stop him. We'll let his own machinery devour him. Listen carefully. You take this letter and go back to Roaring Horse. Have the weekly paper up there print it. You won't have any trouble about that. Sam Philips owns the sheet and he's too honest to be bought. Sam knows me well and he'll take care of the story. That's the end of the Woolfridge business right there. The county will be full of it in twenty-four hours. And the news will carry on out to the rest of the territory and stop all would-be homesteaders."
Gay left. The governor roamed the vast office again and came to a stand. He was an old campaigner, a scarred veteran, and he knew humble folk inside out—their impulses, their honesty, their angers. And so, perhaps, he knew what he had done; perhaps he understood the upheaval that would follow publication of the story. Perhaps he had some dim foreknowledge of tragedy to come. At heart the governor was kindly and without malice. He played the political game according to accepted rules. Yet once his deep sense of justice was touched he was apt to revert to the laws of the Old Testament. In his earlier days he had seen men hung by vigilante rule, and there was still in him a full approval of that type of elemental justice. So he stared at the picture of his predecessor, eyes narrowing into the future and his cheeks touched by a winter bleakness. Even so, it was not given him to foresee the swift flood of passion about to flow over Roaring Horse, nor to realize how many different characters were to be caught up in the smashing, overwhelming current—to be battered, sucked under, spewed aside.
Gay Thatcher arrived in Roaring Horse a day and a half later. She placed the story in the hands of the veteran newspaperman, Sam Philips, and considered her mission ended. The paper came out on a Saturday; two days removed. Not knowing what to do, and impelled by a queer restlessness, she took up her old room at the Gusher and waited.
XVII. JIM CHAFFEE RIDES BACK
Jim