“Why—what do you mean?” asked the surprised treasurer.
“If you do, I’ll pay anything in reason for your stock.” He got up and began to pace the floor with long deliberate strides. “I’m a born gambler, Steve. It clears my head to take big chances. Give me a good fight on my hands with the chances against me, and I’m happy. You’ve got to take the world by the throat and shake success out of it if you’re going to score heavily. That’s how Harley made good years ago. Read the story of his life. See the chances he took. He throttled combinations a dozen times as strong as his. Some people say he was an accident. Don’t you believe it. Accidents like him don’t happen. He won because he was the biggest, brainiest, most daring and unscrupulous operator in the field. That’s why I’m going to win—if I do win.”
“Yes, if you win.”
“Well, that’s the chance I take,” flung back the other as he swung buoyantly across the room. “But YOU don’t need to take it. If you want, you can get out now at the top market price. I feel it in my bones I’m going to win; but if you don’t feel it, you’d be a fool to take chances.”
Eaton’s mercurial temperament responded with a glow.
“No, sir. I’ll sit tight. I’m no quitter.”
“Good for you, Steve. I knew it. I’ll tell you now that I would have hated like hell to see you leave me. You’re the only man I can rely on down to the ground, twenty-four hours of every day.”
The answer was sent, and Eaton’s astonishment at his chief’s temerity changed to amazement when the great Harley, pocketing his pride, asked for an appointment, and appeared at the offices of the Mesa Ore-producing Company at the time set. That Ridgway, who was busy with one of his superintendents, should actually keep the most powerful man in the country waiting in an outer office while he finished his business with Dalton seemed to him insolence florescent.
“Whom the gods would destroy,” he murmured to himself as the only possible explanation, for the reaction of his enthusiasm was on him.
Nor did his chief’s conference with Dalton show any leaning toward compromise. Ridgway had sent for his engineer to outline a program in regard to some ore-veins in the Sherman Bell, that had for months been in litigation between the two big interests at Mesa. Neither party to the suit had waited for the legal decision, but each of them had put a large force at work stoping out the ore. Occasional conflicts had occurred when the men of the opposing factions came in touch, as they frequently did, since crews were at work below and above each other at every level. But none of these as yet had been serious.