“There’s an old crater up among them hills,” the miner vouchsafed, when the last slice of bacon and bread had disappeared, “and some sulfur springs. There’s another fortune, maybe, if you could get at the sulfur.”
“I’ll take a look at it,” Brainard said. “How do you go?”
And so, while the old man turned back to look after their horses, which they had left tethered far below, Brainard clambered on among the sharp peaks toward the snow beds that lay in drifts along the ragged edge of the mountains. He passed the circular depression of which the miner had spoken, and noticed the yellow crust upon the earth; but for a long time he kept on upward. He wanted to be alone, to think over a certain daring idea that had seized hold of him while the miner was showing him the neglected riches of the Melody mine. Perhaps the keen mountain air, blowing dry and fresh from the desert below, had its part in stirring his brain to unwonted excitement. Perhaps it was the reaction from his disappointment of the evening before in not finding his young mistress waiting to receive her fortune. However that might be, his idea kept teasing him, expanding all the time in reasonableness and urgency.
Why should he not take up Krutzmacht’s purpose—use part of the money he had obtained from the bankers in developing this great property? While he was prosecuting the search for the young girl, which he foresaw might take much time, might indeed end in failure, this work would give a new incentive, a new meaning to his long adventure.
“Give it all to Melody!” the old adventurer had whispered with his last breath. Yes, all to Melody in one form or another, as soon as possible. He would dive deeper than the letter of Krutzmacht’s word—he would do as the old man might have done himself, if his life had gone on. He would fulfill his inmost purposes.
He had humor enough to smile at his own daring. “One Edgar Brainard,” as he had described himself to Krutzmacht, unsuccessful playwright, scrub of the city streets, to run a mine! But why not? For that old self, that “one Edgar Brainard,” buffeted, discouraged human chip on the muddy surface of the stream of life, had completely disappeared, never again to exist, he earnestly hoped. These eventful weeks of vital living, constant and quick decision, of prompt, forceful execution, of vivid feeling and yet calm self-reliance, had made a totally other man of him—one whose possibility he had never suspected, but one whom he liked and respected an infinite deal more than that old, familiar “one Edgar Brainard.”
Thanks to Krutzmacht and the elusive Melody, he could never again become the timid, inefficient struggler earning his precarious crust of bread by humiliating tasks, dreaming futile dreams and putting them into equally futile words. He had tasted of life, action, power, and he found them sweet. He would not resign them! Thus Krutzmacht had bestowed on the chance stranger who had befriended him in his last need more than those millions he was leaving to Melody.
His rapid thoughts swept over these last weeks. Everything in them, it seemed, had prepared the way for this decision, had fitted him to dare, to take the responsibility. If it had confronted him a month before, when he and Melody had passed each other unknown, he would not have been ready; if it had come a fortnight before while he was in Paris, he would not have risen to the opportunity. It had come Now, at the fertile moment. . . . His thin, weak body had filled out, just as his harassed face had taken on firm lines of real manhood. He was no longer afraid of life, nor of any of its chances. He would act for this girl as he would act for himself; he would be her trustee, her faithful servant, and the guardian of her property until such time as it could be given into her hands. And the idle millions should set about their proper task of breeding more millions.
At this point in his thinking he gave a boyish whoop that even caught the ear of the old miner below and made him look up. Brainard waved his hat and laughed from the glorious fun of it all,—the risk and the joy of life,—living at last! . . .
As was characteristic of the new man, having projected an idea, committed himself to a decision, his mind at once bent quickly to filling in the details of the pattern in action. He should go to-morrow across the mountains to look for his old friend Gunnison, to learn what more he could, if anything, about the girl’s sudden departure. Gunnison might also give him information of value concerning the mine. Then he should take the evening train for San Francisco, and there first of all he would look up the friendly reporter Farson, to enlist his aid in the search for the girl. In this he must exercise great caution, because San Francisco might not yet be a perfectly salubrious climate for him, nor did he wish to stir cupidinous desires in the breasts of possible claimants to Krutzmacht’s fortune. What he should do afterwards was not clear as yet, but he thought that Farson might be helpful in suggesting the best methods for prosecuting such a search as was before him. Hollinger, if he had returned to the States, might also be useful. He would willingly confide in the “fight-trust magnate.” In any case he should try to find the grizzled miner from Union,—just why, he could not say. But he felt that the old man who had searched fortune in the earth for thirty years might be useful in “handling the Melody proposition.” He would run across him either at the Palace in San Francisco or, if not there, could stop at Winnemucca on his way east and make the journey to Union. He had the man’s name written down somewhere. And then he must call for that trunk in Chicago, in which he hoped to find the title deeds to the mine and other interesting documents. There was much to be done, and to be done speedily. Yet he felt no haste, no nervous anxiety to be adoing. Time for thought was needed also. . . .