Flower of the North: A Modern Romance

by James Oliver Curwood

"I had to. There wasn't a loophole left open to me. There wasn't a single point at which I could bring attack against Brokaw and the others. They were six veritable Bismarcks of deviltry and shrewdness. They hadn't over-stepped the law. They had sold a million and a quarter of stock on a hundred-thousand-dollar investment, but Brokaw only laughed when I raged at this. 'Why, Philip,' he said, 'we value our license alone at over a million!' And there was no law which could prevent them from placing that value upon it, or more. There was one thing that I could do—and only one. I could resign, decline to accept my stock and the hundred thousand, and publicly announce why I had broken off my connections with the company. I was about to do this when cooler judgment prevailed. It occurred to me that there would have to be an accounting. The company might sell a million and a quarter of stock—but in the end there would have to be an accounting. If I was out of the game it would be easily made. If I was in—well, do you see, Greggy? There was still a chance of making the company win out as a legitimate enterprise, even though it began under the black flag of piratical finance and fraud. Brokaw and the others were astonished at the stand I took. It was like throwing a big, ripe plum into the fire Brokaw was the first to hedge. He came over to my side in a private interview which we had, and for the first time I convinced him completely of the tremendous possibilities before us. To my surprise he began to show actual enthusiasm in my favor. We figured out how the company, if properly developed, could be made to pay a dividend of fifty cents a share on the stock issued within two years. This, I thought, would be at least a partial return of the original steal. Brokaw worked the thing through in his own way. He was authorized to vote for one of the directors, who was in Europe, and he won over two of the others. As a consequence we voted all of the money in the treasury, nearly six hundred thousand dollars, and the remainder of the stock that was on the market, for development purposes. Brokaw then made the proposition that the company buy up any interest that wished to withdraw. The two M. P.'s and a professional promoter from Toronto immediately sold out at fifty thousand each. With their original hundred thousand these three retired with an aggregate steal of nearly half a million. Pretty good work for yours truly, eh, Greggy! Good Heaven, think of it! I started out to strike a blow, to launch a gigantic project for the people, and this was what I had hatched! Robbery, bribery, fraud—"

He paused, his hands clenched until the blue veins stood out on them like whipcords.

"And—"

Gregson spoke, uneasily.

"And what?"

Philip's fingers relaxed their grip on the table.

"If that had been all, I wouldn't have called you up here," he continued. "I've taken a long time in coming down to the real hell of the affair, because I wanted you to understand the situation from the beginning. After I left Brokaw I came north again. I possessed all the funds necessary to make an honest working organization out of the Northern Fish and Development Company. I hired two hundred additional men, added twenty new fishing-stations, began a second road-bed to the main line, and started a huge dam at Blind Indian Lake. We had thirty horses, driven up through the wilderness from Le Pas, and twenty teams on the way. There didn't appear to be an important obstacle in the path of our success, and I had recovered most of my old enthusiasm when Brokaw sprung a new mine under my feet.

"He had written a long letter almost immediately after I left him, which had been delayed at several places. In it he told me that he had discovered a plot to wreck our enterprise, that some powerful force was about to be pitted against us in the very country we were holding. I could see that Brokaw was tremendously worked up when he wrote the letter, and that for once he felt himself outwitted by a rival faction, and realized to the full a danger which it took me some time to comprehend. He had discovered absolute evidence, he said, that the bunch of trust capitalists whom he had beaten were about to attack us in another way. Their forces were already moving into the north country. Their object was to stir up the country against us, to bring about that condition of unrest and antagonism between the people of the north and ourselves which would compel the government to take away our license. Remember, this license was only provisional. It was, in fact, left to the people of the north to decide whether we should remain among them or not. If they turned against us there would be only one thing for the government to do.

"At first Brokaw's letter caused me no very great uneasiness. I knew the people up here. I knew that the Indian, the Breed, the Frenchman, and the White of this God's country were as invulnerable to bribery as Brokaw himself is to the pangs of conscience. I loved them. I had faith in them. I knew them to possess an honor which is not known down there, where we have a church on every four corners, and where the Word of God is preached day and night on the open streets. I felt myself warming with indignation as I replied to Brokaw, resenting his insinuations as to the crimes which a 'half-savage' people might be induced to commit for a little whisky and a little money. And then—"

Whittemore wiped his face. The lines settled deeper about his mouth.