"Nonsense!"
"I'm not sure that it's wise to put more good money into those coal claims," said Gordon. "This ruling will doubtless be reversed as the others have been. One never knows what the Land Office policy will be two days at a time."
"You know your own business," O'Neil remarked after a pause, "but unless you have inside information, or a bigger pull in Washington than the rest of us, I'd advise you to get busy. I'll be on my way to Kyak in the morning with a gang of men." Gordon's attitude puzzled him, for he could not bring himself to believe that such indifference was genuine.
"We have been treated unfairly by the Government."
"Granted!"
"We have been fooled, cheated, hounded as if we were a crowd of undesirable aliens, and I'm heartily sick of the injustice. I prefer to work along lines of least resistance. I feel tempted to let Uncle Sam have my coal claims, since he has lied to me and gone back on his promise, and devote myself to other enterprises which offer a certainty of greater profits. But"—Gordon smiled deprecatingly—"I dare say I shall hold on, as you are doing, until that fossilized bureau at Washington imposes some new condition which will ruin us all."
Remembering Natalie's statement that her own and her mother's fortunes were tied up in the mines, O'Neil felt inclined to go over Gordon's head and tell the older woman plainly the danger of delay in complying with the law, but he thought better of the impulse. Her confidence in this man was supreme and it seemed incredible that Gordon should jeopardize her holdings and his own. More likely his attitude was just a part of his pose, designed to show the bigness of his views and to shed a greater luster upon his railroad project.
It was difficult to escape from the hospitality of Hope, and O'Neil succeeded in doing so only after an argument with Natalie and her mother. They let him go at last only upon his promise to return on his way back from the coal-fields, and they insisted upon accompanying him down to the dock, whither Gordon had preceded them in order to have his motor-boat in readiness.
As they neared the landing they overheard the latter in spirited debate with "Happy Tom" Slater.
"But my dear fellow," he was saying, "I can't lose you and Appleton on the same day."