You haven’t got her, that’s sure and worse luck. And now, while
we’re on touchy subjects, I’m going to open another one with you.
And you needn’t get touchy about it, for it’s not really your
business at all.”
She waited in the pause that followed, eyeing him almost
suspiciously.
“It’s about that brother of yours. He needs more than you can do
for him. Selling that mare of yours won’t send him to Germany.
And that’s what his own doctors say he needs–that crack German
specialist who rips a man’s bones and muscles into pulp and then
molds them all over again. Well, I want to send him to Germany
and give that crack a flutter, that’s all.”
“If it were only possible” she said, half breathlessly, and
wholly without anger. “Only it isn’t, and you know it isn’t. I
can’t accept money from you–”
“Hold on, now,” he interrupted. “Wouldn’t you accept a drink of
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water from one of the Twelve Apostles if you was dying of thirst?
Or would you be afraid of his evil intentions”–she made a
gesture of dissent “–or of folks might say about it?”
“But that’s different,” she began.
“Now look here, Miss Mason. You’ve got to get some foolish
notions out of your head. This money notion is one of the
funniest things I’ve seen. Suppose you was falling over a cliff,
wouldn’t it be all right for me to reach out and hold you by the
arm? Sure it would. But suppose you ended another sort of
help–instead of the strength of arm, the strength of my pocket?
That would be all and that’s what they all say. But why do they
say it. Because the robber gangs want all the suckers to be
honest and respect money. If the suckers weren’t honest and
didn’t respect money, where would the robbers be? Don’t you see?
The robbers don’t deal in arm-holds; they deal in dollars.
Therefore arm-holds are just common and ordinary, while dollars
are sacred–so sacred that you didn’t let me lend you a hand with
a few.
“Or here’s another way,” he continued, spurred on by her mute
protest. “It’s all right for me to give the strength of my arm
when you’re falling over a cliff. But if I take that same
strength of arm and use it at pick-and-shovel work for a day and
earn two dollars, you won’t have anything to do with the two
dollars. Yet it’s the same old strength of arm in a new form,
that’s all. Besides, in this proposition it won’t be a claim on
you. It ain’t even a loan to you. It’s an arm-hold I’m giving
your brother–just the same sort of arm-hold as if he was falling
over a cliff. And a nice one you are, to come running out and
yell ‘Stop!’ at me, and let your brother go on over the cliff.
What he needs to save his legs is that crack in Germany, and
that’s the arm-hold I’m offering.
“Wish you could see my rooms. Walls all decorated with horsehair
bridles–scores of them–hundreds of them. They’re no use to me,
and they cost like Sam Scratch. But there’s a lot of convicts
making them, and I go on buying. Why, I’ve spent more money in a
single night on whiskey than would get the best specialists and
pay all the expenses of a dozen cases like your brother’s. And
remember, you’ve got nothing to do with this. If your brother
wants to look on it as a loan, all right. It’s up to him, and
you’ve got to stand out of the way while I pull him back from
that cliff.”
Still Dede refused, and Daylight’s argument took a more painful
turn.
“I can only guess that you’re standing in your brother’s way on
account of some mistaken idea in your head that this is my idea
of courting. Well, it ain’t. You might as well think I’m
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courting all those convicts I buy bridles from. I haven’t asked
you to marry me, and if I do I won’t come trying to buy you into
consenting. And there won’t be anything underhand when I come
a-asking.”
Dede’s face was flushed and angry. “If you knew how ridiculous
you
are, you’d stop,” she blurted out. “You can make me more
uncomfortable than any man I ever knew. Every little while you
give me to understand that you haven’t asked me to marry you yet.
I’m not waiting to be asked, and I warned you from the first that
you had no chance. And yet you hold it over my head that some
time, some day, you’re going to ask me to marry you. Go ahead
and
ask me now, and get your answer and get it over and done with.”
He looked at her in honest and pondering admiration. “I want you
so bad, Miss Mason, that I don’t dast to ask you now,” he said,
with such whimsicality and earnestness as to make her throw her
head back in a frank boyish laugh. “Besides, as I told you, I’m
green at it. I never went a-courting before, and I don’t want to
make any mistakes.”
“But you’re making them all the time,” she cried impulsively.
“No man ever courted a woman by holding a threatened proposal
over her head like a club.”
“I won’t do it any more,” he said humbly. “And anyway, we’re off
the argument. My straight talk a minute ago still holds. You’re
standing in your brother’s way. No matter what notions you’ve
got in your head, you’ve got to get out of the way and give him a
chance. Will you let me go and see him and talk it over with
him? I’ll make it a hard and fast business proposition. I’ll
stake him to get well, that’s all, and charge him interest.”
She visibly hesitated.
“And just remember one thing, Miss Mason: it’s HIS leg, not
yours.”
Still she refrained from giving her answer, and Daylight went on
strengthening his position.
“And remember, I go over to see him alone. He’s a man, and I can
deal with him better without womenfolks around. I’ll go over
to-morrow afternoon.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Daylight had been wholly truthful when he told Dede that he had
no real friends. On speaking terms with thousands, on fellowship
and drinking terms with hundreds, he was a lonely man. He failed
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to find the one man, or group of several men, with whom he could
be really intimate. Cities did not make for comradeship as did
the Alaskan trail. Besides, the types of men were different.
Scornful and contemptuous of business men on the one hand, on the
other his relations with the San Francisco bosses had been more
an alliance of expediency than anything else. He had felt more
of kinship for the franker brutality of the bosses and their
captains, but they had failed to claim any deep respect. They
were too prone to crookedness. Bonds were better than men’s word
in this modern world, and one had to look carefully to the bonds.
In the old Yukon days it had been different. Bonds didn’t go. A
man said he had so much, and even in a poker game his appeasement
was accepted.
Larry Hegan, who rose ably to the largest demands of Daylight’s
operations and who had few illusions and less hypocrisy, might
have proved a chum had it not been for his temperamental twist.
Strange genius that he was, a Napoleon of the law, with a power
of visioning that far exceeded Daylight’s, he had nothing in
common with Daylight outside the office. He spent his time with
books, a thing Daylight could not abide. Also, he devoted
himself to the endless writing of plays which never got beyond
manuscript form, and, though Daylight only sensed the secret
taint of it, was a confirmed but temperate eater of hasheesh.
Hegan lived all his life cloistered with books in a world of
agitation. With the out-of-door world he had no understanding
nor tolerance. In food and drink he was abstemious as a monk,
while exercise was a thing abhorrent. Daylight’s friendships, in
lieu of anything closer, were drinking friendships and roistering
friendships. And with the passing of the Sunday rides with Dede,
he fell back more and more upon these for diversion. The
cocktail wall of inhibition he reared more assiduously than ever.
The big red motor-car was out more frequently now, while a stable
hand was hired to give Bob exercise. In his early San Francisco
days, there had been intervals of easement between his deals, but
in this present biggest deal of all the strain was unremitting.
Not in a month, or two, or three, could his huge land investment
be carried to a successful consummation. And so complete and
wide-reaching was it that complications and knotty situations
constantly arose. Every day brought its problems, and when he