Larry’s face flushed a purple-red.
“What do you mean, Maclin? Talk out straight and clear.”
“Well, I weigh it this way and that. Northrup might––I hate to use brutal terms––he might compromise your wife and get her to sell and shut him up, or he might get her so bedazzled that she’d feel real set up to negotiate with him. A man like Northrup is pretty flattering to a woman like your wife, Rivers. You see, she’s carrying such a big cargo of learning and fancy rot that she can’t properly sail. That kind gets stranded always, Larry. They just naturally make for rocks.”
Larry had a sensation of choking and loosened his collar, 161 then he surprised Maclin by turning and lighting a fire in the stove before he further surprised him by asking, with dangerous calmness:
“What in all that’s holy do you––this Northrup––any one, want this damned Point for?”
Maclin was rarely in a position to fence with Rivers, but he was now.
“Larry, old man, did you ever have in your life an ideal, or what stands for it, that you would work for, and suffer for?”
“No!” Rivers could not stand delay.
“Well, I have, Larry. I’m an old sentimentalist, when you know me proper. I took a fancy to you, and while I can’t show my feelings as many can, I have stood by you and you’ve been a proposition, off and on. I bought those mines because I saw the chance they offered, and I shared with you. I’ve got big men interested. I’ve let you carry results to them––but the results are slow, Rivers, and they’re getting restive. I’m afraid some one of them has blabbed and this Northrup is the result. Why, man, I’ve got inventions over at the mines that will revolutionize this rotten, lazy Forest. I wanted to win the folks––but they wouldn’t be won. I wanted to save them in spite of themselves, but damn ’em, they won’t be saved. In a year I could make Heathcote a rich man, if he’d wake up and keep an inn instead of a kennel. But I’ve got to have this Point. I want to build a bridge from here to the railroad property on the other shore––this is the narrowest part of the lake; I want to build cottages here, instead of––of rat holes. I’ve got to get this Point by hook or crook––and I can’t shilly-shally with this Northrup on to the game.”
Suddenly, while he was talking, Maclin’s eyes fell upon the untidy mass of papers on the table. He pulled his fat hands out of his tight pockets and let them fall like paperweights on the envelopes and sheets.