In a sense it had begun. Gregory had called two days before to ask if she were comfortable. He was in his overalls (purposely), and had refused at first to sit down, but finally had succumbed to the deepest of the chairs before the log fire. He had finished by remaining for supper, and again had occupied the chair until eleven o’clock. Neither had suspected the other’s secret passion, for love before union, being nine parts imagination, needs solitude for indulgence, and is capable, moreover, of long and satisfying quietudes if fed with externals. There was sheer delight in sitting together by that warm intimate fire, at the dining-table at the end of the long shadowy room, in feeling cut off from the world on the edge of that rough mountain camp, in listening to the soughing of the pines during the silences. That both were on their guard lest the other take fright and the experience be impossible of repetition but exaggerated the atmosphere of friendliness, of almost sexless comradeship. Gregory betrayed one only of his reflections: he admitted to himself what Ora subtly compelled him to admit, and had no difficulty in divining, that the companionship of woman was a blessed thing, and that he had been the loneliest of men.
Their talk was mainly of ores! She was permitted to learn how little else interested him in comparison with the enthralling inside of Montana. But he told her also the legends of the great copper mines on Lake Superior, so old that copper was found pure, looking much like the smelted product from the copper ores of the later geological formations of the Rocky Mountains. These vast mines, particularly that on Isle Royal, bore unmistakable signs of having been worked systematically by a prehistoric people experienced in mining; presumably by the Atlantans, who, after their own mines were worked out and they still demanded “orichalcum” for their monuments and bronze for their implements, went annually in ships for the metal. That there had been a self-supporting mining colony on Isle Royal was indicated by certain agricultural remains.
Gregory and Ora had amused themselves reconstructing that old time when the metal island was as lively as today, and considerably more picturesque—owing to the alternative of skins for muck-spattered overalls; an underground chapter of the Niebelungenlied, its gnomes toiling down in those two miles of workings, stoping out less in a hundred years than the methods of today force a mine to yield in one. How they must have swarmed to the surface, regardless of discipline, at the first signal of the approaching ships, their one link with a world that was not all water and forest and underground cavern. By what tortuous way did those archaic ships travel from the Atlantic to the northwest corner of that vast inland sheet; unless, indeed, which is likely, subsequent upheavals have destroyed a waterway which may have connected sea and lake prior to 10000 B.C.[B] How many of those old ships lie in the bed of Lake Superior, laden with rude nuggets of copper, pounded from the gangue, or, who knows? smelted by a lost art into sheets and blocks? Archaic ships rode high, and no doubt those from Atlantis were overladen; for what has kept Atlantis in the realm of myth so long save the unscientific legend that she perished of greed and its vicious offspring? What archaic mysteries may not the terrible storms of that great north lake yet uncover? What strange variety of copper, washed and bitten by the waters of twelve thousand years, for which the enraptured geologist must find a new name? Who knows?—the bed of Lake Superior may be one unbroken floor of malachite; and the North American Indian of that region the descendant of those ancient miners, abandoned and forgotten when Atlantis plunged to the bottom of the sea.
It was Ora who advanced these last frivolous theories, and—the clock striking eleven—Gregory sprang to his feet.
“Likely as any,” he said. “All theories change about as often as it is time to get out a new edition of an encyclopædia, or develop a ‘new school’ which makes its reputation by the short cut of upsetting the solemn conclusions of its predecessors. I’m going down into the mine.” He bolted out with no further ceremony, but Ora was long since accustomed to the manners of Western men. She went to bed feeling that sadness had gone out of the world.
She had not seen him since. Nor had anything new and interesting happened. Her manager, Raymond, refused to take her down in the mine, alleging that when Apex broke into the workings of Perch of the Devil, there was sure to be a fight, and the bohunks would retreat, not up their own shaft but through the tunnels of the Primo mine. The young man was manifestly distressed to refuse any boon to so charming a woman, and he and his foreman had moved at once into the half-finished cottage, but he heartily wished her back in Butte, nevertheless. The best of miners love a fight, and it would be impossible to protect her from flying bullets if the row was continued above ground. Ora merely had laughed when he begged her to return or to remain within doors, but had promised to be prudent and flourished her automatic .25.
X
SHE glanced at the clock. It was half-past three. She knew that Gregory frequently went below in the morning, and had half expected that he would cross over to her hill for a moment when he came up at three o’clock. The drifting mood vanished. She decided that two days were enough for feminine passivity and went to her bedroom and changed her pretty house frock for a stout out-of-doors’ costume of forest green tweed: as she had no mind to look either the outworn Western heroine of romance, or a fright, she had omitted khaki from her mountain wardrobe. She tied a light green veil round her head, put on a pair of loose chamois gloves, selected a green parasol lined with pink, and went out to give the fates a gentle shove.
Hitherto she had so far yielded to the solicitude of her manager as to take her walks through the pine woods above her bungalow, but today she marched deliberately through her grove and stood for several moments on the edge of the little bluff above the tableland on which her claim was located. It was her first prolonged look at the three mining camps, for she had arrived at night. She had driven out occasionally to mining camps with her father, once or twice with Mark; the scene was both typical and picturesquely ugly. In or near the centre of each claim was the shaft house; fifty feet beyond—the distance prescribed by law to prevent overhead fires from communicating with underground timbers—were the buildings containing the hoisting machinery and the compressed air plant. Scattered about were the shacks of the miners, the long bunk- and mess-houses, blacksmith and carpenter shops. Just below the Apex claim, and on Government land, an enterprising publican had established himself. On all sides were other claims of recent location, for there had been the inevitable rush.
The rude buildings were grey and weather-beaten, and all traces of the gentle spring verdure had disappeared. About the collar of each shaft was an immense dump heap, waste rock brought up from the depths, and the highest of these was on Perch of the Devil. Near each were the ore bins, but these for the most part were empty, and, save on the De Smet hill, there was a notable absence of “double-sixes.” The Primo vein had not been recovered, Apex had not yet touched bottom; Gregory Compton, for reasons best known to himself, had changed his original plan and was merely uncovering his new vein, taking out as little of its ore as possible. His bins were furnished with ore from the second level of his mine, where work had proceeded steadily on the original vein.