"Possibly," the railroad magnate spoke thoughtfully, "we'd better meet his terms. The damned outlaw has power up there and we stand to win—or lose—a little empire of wealth."
Henderson's closed fist fell softly but very firmly on the table. His tone was smooth and determined. "Please leave me in command for a while, Mr. Wallace. I mean to beat this highbinder at his own favorite game. If we yield to him he'll emasculate our profits. You gave me five years when we first discussed this thing. In that time I can accomplish it."
"Take seven if you need them. It's worth it."
Sitting in the smoking-car of the train that was transporting him again from civilization to "back of beyond," Jerry Henderson found himself absorbed in somewhat disquieting thoughts.
He gazed out with a dulled admiration on the fertility of blue-grass farms where the land rolled with as smooth and gracious a swell as a woman's bosom. Always heretofore the Central Kentucky mansions with their colonial dignity and quiet air of pride had brought an eager appreciation to his thoughts—the tribute of one who worships an aristocracy based on wealth.
But now when he saw again the tangled underbrush and outcropping rock of the first foothills, something in him cried out, for the first time since boyhood, "I'm going home!" When the altitudes began to clamber into the loftiness of peaks, with wet streamers of cloud along their slopes, the feeling grew. The sight of an eagle circling far overhead almost excited him.
Jerry Henderson was a soldier of fortune, with Napoleonic dreams, and finance was his terrain of conquest. To its overweening ambition he had subordinated everything else. To that attainment he had pointed his whole training, cultivating himself not only in the practicalities of life but also in its refinements, until his bearing, his speech, his manners were possibly a shade too meticulously perfect; too impeccably starched.
Where other men had permitted themselves mild adventures in love and moderate indulgence in drink, he had set upon his conduct a rigid censorship.
His heart, like his conduct, had been severely schooled, for upon marriage, as upon all else, he looked with an opportunist's eye.
His wife must come as an ally, strengthening his position socially and financially. She must be a lady of the old aristocracy, bringing to his house cultivated charm and the power of wealth. She must be fitted, when he took his place among the financially elect, to reign with him.