That Monday was hard on Madeira. It was his normal mental habit to come to a conclusion instantly, and cut a way for it across other people’s ideas and notions with the impetus and onslaught of a cannon-ball. That Monday his mentality was below or above normal. He kept telling himself that he was mixed. His desire to crush Steering, pick him up and crumple him and thrust him aside, stood before him constantly, like the picture of the physical thing. Up to the time that he had seen his daughter run out of the dining-room that morning, her face averted, the desire had been steadily taking on colour and size. But, with the girl’s brave broken cry, there had come on to him an intolerable question. For a long time he would not let the question get into words, or in any way define itself within his brain. Still, all morning long, he recognised that the question and that desire of his to crush Steering were ranged before him in some sort of fierce competitive effort. A thousand times he wished that he had had the courage to ask Sally candidly just what she had meant, just where she stood with regard to Steering, but he knew that he could never have asked her. Good friends though he and his daughter were, there was between them the definite reserve that lies between all good friends in the sphere of the big things of life. He could not have asked her, and she could not have told him if he had asked her.

He fretted through a busy morning in a terrible uncertainty. When Sally had come by the bank to tell him of her proposed ride with Steering, he had watched her with painful, anxious scrutiny. But the girl’s control had become perfect by that hour, and Madeira had to go back into the bank with the uncertainty still thickly upon him. Pausing there in the bank at the plate-glass window for a reflectful moment, he came to a swift resolve. He saw that he could not afford to make any mistake. He resolved to give Steering another chance to get right on the company matter. When he had gone out to the curb to make an appointment for the evening with Steering, he had told himself that it was because the boy might as well have the chance as not have it, and, when he had gone back, he had known that, lie to himself about it as he might, it was because he was afraid for Sally Madeira, afraid that this Steering was about to mean something in her life, afraid that he, as the girl’s father, might bring some unhappiness upon her.

All the long afternoon the thing continued to worry him; added to the torment he was suffering from the burning letter in his vest-pocket, it was well-nigh unendurable. He had to work vehemently to make the time pass. Toward six o’clock, he began to realise that he had been shaping the time toward the evening’s appointment with Steering. As he got it shaped he grew more peaceful. He was arranging things so that he could win out with Steering. Little by little he came to accept the winning out as an assured thing, and in accepting it his grievance against Steering lightened, finally appearing to him as an easy thing to dispose of. Even the letter in his pocket grew less scorching. Sometimes he forgot, for minutes together, that it was there. Upon the hypothesis that Steering would “come around” everything smoothed out. Resting securely upon that hypothesis, Madeira even formulated the words with which he would take Steering’s surrender: “God love us, that’s all right! You just trust to me from now on. From now on I’ll look out for you, my boy.” He could hear himself saying that.

At six o’clock, still shaping the day toward the appointment with Steering, he took a great bevy of men, farmers, stockmen, storekeepers, to the Canaan Hotel for supper. Headed by Madeira, who kept close to him a man named Salver, to whom he constantly referred as “our engineering friend from Joplin,” the party stamped into the hotel dining-room. And though various members of the party were heavily booted, big, brawny, and in other ways cut out as assertive, it was much as though they were not there, so completely did Madeira fill the room. In the hotel office, after the supper had been disposed of, though every man had a cigar or a pipe in his mouth, it seemed as though Madeira were really doing all the smoking, so insistently did the smoke wreaths twist about his big face, as the others edged nearer him and closed in upon him. On the outside, on the way back up town, the street seemed full of Madeira. Even when some few of the satellites broke away from him and scattered into other parts of the town, at the livery stable, the drug store, the Grange, talking a little dubiously, the impression was definite that they were only meteoric scraps, cast-off clinkers that could not stand the fire and the fizz and the whirl in Madeira’s orbit.

The superintendent of the Tigmore County schools, a long, lean man with a trick of covert sarcasm, happened to be in Canaan that day, and he cracked a joke about Madeira’s “galley-gang,” as the bevy of men swept past him on their way back to the bank. In Canaan almost any joke had a fair chance to become classic through immediate and long-drawn repetition, and the superintendent’s joke was soon going up and down the street as majestically as though swathed in a Roman toga. By seven o’clock the joke had come on to Madeira’s ears. At eight o’clock the superintendent was one of seven men who sat in conference with Madeira in the private office of the bank. That was Madeira’s way. Besides Salver, the Joplin man, and the superintendent, there were at the conference Larriman, a man who counted his acres by the thousands in We-all Prairie; Heinkel, the German sheep-raiser from the southern part of the county; Shelby, from the cotton lands of the Upper Bottom; Pegram, the Canaan postmaster, and Quin Beasley, from the Grange store.

They were all still there when Steering came in. Fresh from the hills, young, alert, deep-lunged, brown-faced, Steering was a good sort to look at as he strode into the room. He had ridden on into Canaan to the tune of high, purposeful music, after parting with Sally Madeira. His experience with her out there on the hills, his profounder impression of her fineness, had acted upon him like unbearably sweet harmonies, urgent, inspirational. He was this minute keen for something to do, something hard, earnest, momentous. If the whole truth were told, he wanted to fight.

Madeira got up and shook hands with him, the more vigorously and noisily because of a sharp lambent flare that leaped out from the younger man’s consciousness like a warning, and, reaching Madeira, stung and irritated him. As they stood gripping each the other’s hand, both big, both vigorous, both determined, there was yet a fine line of distinction between them. On one side of the line stood the younger man with his ideals. On the other side stood Madeira, without any ideals.

“Come in, Steering, my boy!” In spite of himself, in spite of the “my boy,” Madeira’s voice rang harshly. “Lord love us, we are having a little preliminary meeting here. You know all these gentlemen, I think? I’m just reading to them some matter that I have got ready. I’ll go on reading, if you don’t mind. Sit down over there and listen.”

And, Steering, shaking hands with the men nearest him, and bowing to the men farthest from him, sat down and listened.

As Madeira resumed his chair at his desk, he seemed to brace himself toward some sort of finality. His voice, when he spoke, was ominously quiet for a noisy man’s voice. “Here’s something about the country in general,” he began slowly, dispassionately, “that I think might interest a fellow who is considering coming down here either to mine or to farm. See what you think of this: ’It was in 1874 that the first carload of zinc ore went up to the zinc works in Illinois. That was the beginning. Heretofore Missouri had been supposed to be agricultural only, but here was a new Missouri, whose wheat and corn and fruit wealth was found to be supplemented by a mineral wealth of mammoth greatness. Settlers who wanted to mine began to come in, towns to spring up, and capital to be invested. The country was developed with lightning-like speed. From the Joplin stretch as a nucleus, lines of development have been steadily projected since 1874 to this day. There are not a great many undeveloped big acreages of land left in any of the southern Missouri counties. Of the few that remain by far the largest and most promising is the country known as the Tigmore Stretch. A remarkable feature of this region, besides its great agricultural possibilities, is that the surface exposure in the hillsides shows distinct mineral-bearing horizons, beds of zinc carbonates, whose promise of zinc sulphide at a greater depth is absolutely reliable. That it needs only deep shafting and drilling to unearth more remarkable riches than even Missouri herself has as yet yielded up, is evident from the outcrops’ by the way, gentleman,” Madeira here interrupted himself to say, still in his quiet, dispassionate tone, “Salver has spent a good many days in the hills lately, and he has decided that the deeper-seated sulphides are just as surely in the hills as are the carbonates. He has done a lot of verifying. Aint that right, Salver?”

Salver shuffled his feet and said yes, that was right, and Madeira read again from his notes, picking out bits here and there, and beginning each time, “Now take this. See what you think of this,” his voice staying monotonously even.

“’But, besides the zinc and lead and iron and coal, Missouri’s well-improved farms invite the intending settler.’” (Steering thought of the lean hill farms as he listened.) “’There is an abundance of timber, in itself a great saving to the house-builder, and there are innumerable streams and water-courses and lakes. The altitude is over one thousand feet above the sea-level, and the climate is the healthiest in the United States. Both mining and farming can be carried on the year round.’ ... And now, lastly, about this form letter that I have drafted for intending investors it runs like this: ‘Dear Mr. So-and-So,’ (I mean to have the name filled in in each one, I want it to be a personal letter) ’May I ask you to examine the status of our Canaan Mining and Development Company, as set forth briefly in the enclosed pamphlet. A careful reading will convince you that we are organised for legitimate business and development, rather than for speculation. From personal knowledge, I am able to vouch for all the representations made by the Company. There are a half hundred Tigmore County men already in the Company’ which will, of course, be the fact when the letter is sent,” explained Madeira. “’If you are not already one of them, I should like for you to be. I think you know my record in this part of the country, as well as the record of the enterprises for which I have stood sponsor, and I am confident that when you begin to feel interested in the mining developments through this section, you will investigate the Canaan Company before investing with the other companies that are sure to spring up like mushrooms in our track.’ ... And then, this: ’The chief working properties of the Canaan Company, the Tigmores, can without doubt be made to pay from one hundred to five hundred per cent, on any investment within the first year. The Canaan Company will not have to depend upon shallow sheets of mineral against dead rock, as do many of the speculative enterprises of the mining section. The Canaan Company will not cut blind. It knows its field, it knows its chances, it knows its future’ and so on, and so on how do you think it goes, boys?”

They thought it went rapidly, and they said so with loud endorsement.

“Well, I decided I’d get the thing moving here at home first,” elaborated Madeira; “when all’s said and done, a fellow likes to see his own place and people profit by what’s going on. I’m going to send that letter out first to the Tigmore County people, and then move out in wider circles later. Shouldn’t you think that was the way to work it out?”

Yes, they thought that was the way. Indeed, the way seemed such a good one, and the work was evidently to be so carefully, so conscientiously performed that, to Steering, as he had listened, the crying shame of it all had been not that it wasn’t true, it might be true, there was no telling, but that Madeira, its promoter, didn’t care a rap whether it was true or not. Or, after all, was he, Steering, wrong about that? Had Madeira changed about? Been himself convinced that the actual prospects were so good that it was senseless not to depend upon them, without any of the wings that his fancy might give them? Had the thing become with Madeira, during these more recent days, something larger, something legitimate? All the other men were taking Madeira’s attitude seriously. They showed that they were by the emotionalism, effusive, admiring, with which they hung upon Madeira for a few last words, by their blind dependence, their awe. When the séance broke up finally, they strayed away from him haltingly, like lost sheep.

The impression of Madeira upon the men, as he let them out of the door, was so profound that it came on to Steering with the value of a reflection. He felt himself growing a little hopeful that the thing really was to be right and straight, as he watched Madeira turn from the door.

For his part, Madeira came back toward his desk with a peculiar revulsion of feeling upon him. This effort of his to bring Steering around by strategy was galling him. He resented that any such effort should ever have been saddled upon him. He considered that from the start Steering should have been with him. Most fiercely of all he resented that he, Crittenton Madeira, should have let himself get into the position of trying to mollify Steering. “By God!” he was saying to himself with a convulsive anger, “Me to have to mollify! By God! Me!” Then the thought of Sally came back to him, goading him and confusing him. On a sudden impulse of candour he cried out to Steering, as he came on to his desk.

“Steering! God love you, why do you want trouble between you and me? Don’t you see that I have this thing here under my thumb? Don’t you see that you mustn’t go against me, my boy? Here’s your chance back again. I’m handing it out to you. Stand by me. You won’t be sorry. All my plans are made now. I have once or twice in my life thought the thing to do down here was to stir up a furore over some of the lakes and the springs and the scenery and make a health resort out of the region, but I have settled away from that now, settled straight at zinc. But Lord bless you! zinc or no zinc we can’t fail to make a pile of money out of this. Why do you want to be a fool and hold back from me when I’m willing to pull you along? You ought to see by now that you can’t do anything without me, or go against me. ’Tisn’t everybody I’m willing to pull along, Steering. Why, boy, from the start, I’ve treated you on the square, let you know me on the inside let and, here and now, I’m still willing to pull you along, if you’ll come along! eh, what?”

With Madeira’s words, matching Madeira’s excitement, blazing furiously and whitely, out leaped the slower, stronger fire of the younger man’s personality.

“See here!” shouted Steering, “twice now I’ve done my best to hope that somehow, somewhere you were going to throw me one line of commercial honesty and decency. I haven’t asked you to measure up to very high standards, I’d have been satisfied with damned little; I’ve waited on you and hoped for you and let you try to bull-doze me, but by God! I’m done. You hear, I’m done!” He got up and the lean strength of his determination and the long reach of his body were all-powerful. “Don’t you try this game with me again, Mr. Madeira! Don’t you ever try any game with me again No! Keep back! Not that either!”

Madeira had gone crazy for the time. Possessed only by that desire to crush the thing that opposed him, he lifted his big clenched fists straight up over his head and came at Steering, fiery-eyed, perfervid with relish of the moment when he could close down on his enemy and make an end of him. He panted as he came, and as he came the veins in his temples stood out, purple and knotted. A little line of froth lay upon his lower lip.

“Eh, God! You! Wait there! You! You! ”

Steering, with the old prowess that had made the boys on the gridiron stand aside and howl for him, reached up and brought Madeira’s arms down with a circling, sweeping blow, then caught the bulky, staggering body and thrashed it into a chair, forgetful that it was Madeira, forgetful of Sally Madeira, forgetful of everything for one red instant save a savage masculine joy in his own strength.

Then he took out a cigar and lit it, and his mental readjustment followed quickly. “Mr. Madeira,” he said, puffing slowly at the cigar, the match’s yellow light on his face showing that he was pale, “I am sorry that you made me do that, sir. Still, I must add this to what I’ve said, don’t, please, ever try to pull me along with you again. I guess I’m going in a different direction. This leaves everything settled between us. Our paths aren’t apt to cross again. You aren’t hurt, I hope? There is nothing that I can do for you?”

Madeira made no answer. He was sitting, a wooden figure, in front of his desk where Steering had thrashed him down. His temples were still purplish, but the crazy light was no longer in his eyes. They were dull and fishy. Steering had gone to the office door, then the bank door had clanked to behind him before Madeira moved. He began working his fingers then, watching them questioningly, stupidly. They felt stiff and numb. Suddenly he leaned forward exhausted. His head rolled on the desk. “Sally?” he whimpered, in a furtive, scared way, “Sally?”

Then, all in a moment, he jumped to his feet, clutching at the pocket that held the Grierson letter, while words came from his mouth in vehement staccato yelps:

“Eh, God! He’ll go against me, will he? Wait. I’ll show him. Who’s got the Tigmores? Answer me that now? Who’s got the Tigmores?” Off beyond his window tumbled the long Tigmore line. He crossed the room, all his strength back with him, and looked out upon the high black hills. “Eh, God!” he shouted, and beat at his chest where the letter lay, “Dead men tell no tales! I’ve got the Tigmores!”