“Very well.” Her eyes danced with excitement. “You’re what they call a buccaneer of business, aren’t you?”
Here were certainly diverting pastimes. “I believe I have been called that; but, then, I’ve had the hardest names in the dictionary thrown at me so often that I can’t be sure.”
“I suppose you are perfectly unscrupulous in a business way—stop at nothing to gain your point?”
He took her impudence smilingly.
“‘Unscrupulous’ isn’t the word I use when I explain myself to myself, but as an unflattered description, such as one my enemies might use to describe me, I dare say it is fairly accurate.”
“I wonder why. Do you dispense with a conscience entirely?”
“Well, you see, Miss Balfour, if I nursed a New England conscience I could stand up to the attacks of the Consolidated about as long as a dove to a hawk. I meet fire with fire to avoid being wiped off the map of the mining world. I play the game. I can’t afford to keep a button on my foil when my opponent doesn’t.”
She nodded an admission of his point. “And yet there are rules of the game to be observed, aren’t there? The Consolidated people claim you steal their ore, I believe.” Her slanted eyes studied the effect of her daring.
He laughed grimly. “Do they? I claim they steal mine. It’s rather difficult to have an exact regard for mine and thine before the courts decide which is which.”
“And meanwhile, in order to forestall an adverse decision, you are working extra shifts to get all the ore out of the disputed veins.”