Read Ebook: In the Garden of the Gods by Raine William MacLeod Schook F De Forest Illustrator

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Ebook has 117 lines and 7165 words, and 3 pages

I meditated. "Of course it is a holdup of some sort. He isn't doing it for fun. What does he want?"

Looking up, I happened to catch Katherine Gray's eyes. They were blushing.

"Oh!" I exclaimed understandingly.

"Nothing of the kind! Don't be silly, Tavis," she told me sharply.

"I told you it was accidental," growled the bass voice. "I couldn't catch her, so I took out my gun to frighten her into stopping."

"Then one hears that the Copper King himself is viewing scenery he does not enjoy, under enforced restraint at the hands of a young man who used to lead cotillions with his daughter before he fell into evil ways. You know I told you he was a scamp."

"Where are you going?" I asked.

She can be very deaf on occasion.

"Oh, up the hill," she flung over her shoulder in answer to my question repeated.

"But you said you weren't going back."

"Can't I change my mind, Grandmother?"

"You don't need to be rude," I said sulking.

I toiled in her wake, and Corduroy in mine. The pace she set soon had us puffing. Miss Gray is one of those young women who do outdoor things better than most men. She never fainted in her life, and nerves are a fairy tale to her. It always ruffles my temper and my vanity to do a twosome with her at golf.

"Hello, you people! Just in time for lunch. Glad to see you, Damron," sang out Halloway cheerily as we emerged from the aspens into view at the rear of the cliff.

A most appealing luncheon was set forth on the white table cloth spread on a camp table among the boulders. Halloway, in his shirt sleeves, was making coffee, opening cans of deviled ham, unpacking a box of fried chicken, and otherwise endeavoring to be several places at once. He fell immediately to issuing orders.

Miss Gray probably thought his assurance was akin to cheek. At any rate she gave him the full benefit of her un-willowy five foot seven. He met with smiling admiration her level indignant eyes; and indeed the girl's long curves, her frank good looks, her flashing sunburnt beauty, had led captive many a man's fancy. Turning on her heel, she joined her father. Simon Gray, multimillionaire, was seated morosely on a rock, frowning down into the Garden of the Gods with blazing eyes. Far below a dozen dwarfed carriages might be seen wheeling along the red ribbon of road, and many burros with tourists on their backs crawled like ants among the rocks, but for all practical purposes the grim-eyed captain of industry was as much a prisoner as if the gates of a jail had closed on him.

His dignity was too precious to be risked in a futile attempt to escape from the long-legged powerful young athlete. Possibly it was because I was so interested in the situation that I burnt the bacon to a crisp. Miss Grey, with one of her sudden changes of humor, drove me from the fire and broiled the bacon herself. The truth is that despite her frowns the girl was enjoying herself hugely. The excitement of a new experience filliped through her blood.

I joined Mr. Gray and we conversed in whispers. He explained to me the absolute necessity of his being in Denver that afternoon to attend an important meeting of the Copper Consolidated Corporation. It was the day of the biennial election of officers. He had bought Consolidated stock sufficient to win the control from the present management, but without his presence or his proxies the old management would still be able to carry the election and reinstate itself. James Halloway was president of the Consolidated, and the two men had been fighting for control more years than one.

"Last call for dinner in the dining car," sang out Halloway, and notwithstanding our lack of harmony the sharp air of the Rockies had made us hungry enough to sink, for the moment, at least, all differences. Halloway, easy, alert, and masterful, dispensed refreshments with debonair hospitality to his unwilling guests.

"Finest bacon I ever ate. It would be a pleasure to have you for a housekeeper, Miss Gray," our host tossed out audaciously.

"You are such a good provider, Mr. Halloway, that I am sure it would be a pleasure to be your housekeeper," returned Miss Gray demurely.

"And if I neglected my duties you could always send your man out to shoot at me."

"Ah! That only shows my solicitude to detain you. One couldn't bear the idea of having you leave our party, and yet one couldn't in common politeness desert Mr. Gray to follow you. It remained only to send a message via John requesting you to return."

"Well, he delivered it," the girl said, dimpling reminiscently.

Halloway smiled. "I'm afraid John is a little abrupt sometimes."

Her eyes mocked him boldly. "In your profession of highwayman, abruptness, one would think, might sometimes be essential."

"It was cruel of you to desert us without warning," he said, ignoring her irony.

"I went to get help."

"That was good of you, but we did not really need it," he returned, misunderstanding her promptly. "Though of course we are very glad to have Damron with us."

"I suppose you know that it will be a criminal offense to keep Mr. Gray here till night as you threaten. You invited him here to a picnic. You have no right to detain him a moment longer than he desires. Your outrageous course is very much against the law, Mr. Halloway," I said stiffly.

He looked politely interested. "Is it? No, I didn't know just how illegal it was. Of course I guessed I was skating on thin ice, but the truth is that I didn't get legal advice. That shows the advantage of having a lawyer along when one goes buccaneering. How much could they give me, Damron?"

"You'll not think it so much of a joke when you are behind the bars."

"No, I daresay not. I expect I would better enjoy it while I have the opportunity. Try one of these peaches, Miss Gray." He leaned against a rock and smoked the placid post-prandial cigar of him whose soul is at peace. I, too, had lit up, but my mind was far from equable. I was possessed by the vision of a headlong generous girl under the fascination of this charming young vagabond. Yet I confess that for myself I admired as much as I disliked his dare-devil indifference to consequences, though for the life of me I could not guess what his game was or how it could advantage him to detain the Copper King on this mountain top against his will.

He expounded his easy philosophy with airy candor. "After all, laws are made for man, not man for the laws. Mr. Gray is a capitalist, and he can tell you that laws are to be obeyed with discretion. There would not be any use in having them if somebody did not break them occasionally. Well, this is my day off. I'm playing ping-pong with the statutes of Colorado"

"But why?" I demanded. "What good does it do you?"

"Oh come, Damron! Mayn't I have a secret or two of my own? I don't suppose you ever explained publicly just why you happen to be spending your vacation in Colorado instead of Timbuctoo."

I fear I blushed. Glancing covertly at my reason, I found it the fairest under the sun, but too present to admit of discussion.

Suddenly Simon Gray cut crisply into the talk for the first time.

"Of course I understand why you are holding me here, Halloway. You are working under instructions from your father to keep me until after the election this afternoon. But the thing is too barefaced. It won't hold in law. It's a conspiracy."

Halloway's masterful eves looked straight at him.

"I have not seen or heard from my father in two years, Mr. Gray. He does not have anything to do with his scalawag son. You do not need to look beyond me to place the responsibility for this. But you're right in one thing. I intend that you shall not reach Denver in time for the Copper Consolidated meeting."

They were both dominant men, and their eyes met like the flash of steel.

"No? Why not?" asked Gray quietly, his lids narrowing to long watchful slits.

"You don't know what you are talking about young man. I am going there to take what the law allows me--what I have bought and paid for in the open market," broke in Gray harshly.

"Yes, the law allows it to you, and it doesn't allow me to interfere. That is where the law is defective. It is true, too, that you have manipulated the market in such a way as to get temporary control of a majority of the stock. But that does not affect the fact that my father and his friends have the moral right to direct the affairs of the Consolidated. Their whole life is bound up in it. You are interested simply for speculative purposes. They have earned the right to direct its affairs. You haven't."

"Such talk is sheer folly. You do not understand finance, sir. You have been living outside of the currents of business. The matter is a plain business one, not an ethical or sentimental affair at all."

Halloway's daring eyes swept whimsically across the table and rested momentarily on Katherine. "I am trying to keep it on a business basis so that sentiment may not interfere, sir."

Then Katherine spoke with silken cruelty. "You have a very flattering opinion of my father, Mr. Halloway. It makes his daughter proud to know that one of such notable achievement thinks so highly of him."

Halloway bowed, a sardonic smile on his good-looking face. "I can hardly expect my course to commend itself to Miss Gray," he said simply.

Miss Katherine's dark flashing eyes showed their anger at the presumption of this lawless, high-handed youth. She had, in company with many charming women, a capacity for injustice, but she had, too, a quick instinctive appreciation for fine points of character. Her feelings were outraged that this young man, who had once wanted to marry her and who still held much fascination for her, had taken advantage of his position as host to overreach her father. But she was very much a creature of moods, and I knew her well enough to fear the revulsion which would follow when she began to take into account his motive--loyalty to a father who had disowned him. And I was certain that even now there was running through her rage an admiration of his audacity that would remain when the anger had evaporated.

Just now, however, she treated his remarks in very cavalier fashion. The burden of such conversation as there was rested on Halloway. It consisted for the most part in genially ironical remarks on the charms of an outdoor life. Katherine was aloofly viewing the scenery with occasional side-shot glances at the offending youth; I watched events in a moody silence, and Corduroy still discussed his dinner some fifty yards from us. As for Simon Gray, he sat in a brown study, his eyes fixed intently on a syphon he did not see. I wondered what plan was filtering into that alert, fertile brain of his.

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