________________________________________________
_ The visit to the city was imitated on the three succeeding
evenings by similar excursions. On one night they returned to
the plaza, and the other two were spent in drifting down the
harbor and along the coast on King's yacht. The President and
Madame Alvarez were King's guests on one of these moonlight
excursions, and were saluted by the proper number of guns, and
their native band played on the forward deck. Clay felt that
King held the centre of the stage for the time being, and
obliterated himself completely. He thought of his own paddle-
wheel tug-boat that he had had painted and gilded in her honor,
and smiled grimly.
MacWilliams approached him as he sat leaning back on the rail and
looking up, with the eye of a man who had served before the mast,
at the lacework of spars and rigging above him. MacWilliams came
toward him on tiptoe and dropped carefully into a wicker chair.
``There don't seem to be any door-mats on this boat,'' he said.
``In every other respect she seems fitted out quite
complete; all the latest magazines and enamelled bathtubs,
and Chinese waiter-boys with cock-tails up their sleeves. But
there ought to be a mat at the top of each of those stairways
that hang over the side, otherwise some one is sure to soil the
deck. Have you been down in the engine-room yet?'' he asked.
``Well, don't go, then,'' he advised, solemnly. ``It will only
make you feel badly. I have asked the Admiral if I can send
those half-breed engine drivers over to-morrow to show them what
a clean engine-room looks like. I've just been talking to the
chief. His name's MacKenzie, and I told him I was Scotch myself,
and he said it `was a greet pleesure' to find a gentleman so well
acquainted with the movements of machinery. He thought I was one
of King's friends, I guess, so I didn't tell him I pulled a lever
for a living myself. I gave him a cigar though, and he said,
`Thankee, sir,' and touched his cap to me.''
MacWilliams chuckled at the recollection, and crossed his legs
comfortably. ``One of King's cigars, too,'' he said. ``Real
Havana; he leaves them lying around loose in the cabin. Have you
had one? Ted Langham and I took about a box between us.''
Clay made no answer, and MacWilliams settled himself contentedly
in the great wicker chair and puffed grandly on a huge cigar.
``It's demoralizing, isn't it?'' he said at last.
``What?'' asked Clay, absently.
``Oh, this associating with white people again, as we're doing
now. It spoils you for tortillas and rice, doesn't it? It's
going to be great fun while it lasts, but when they've all gone,
and Ted's gone, too, and the yacht's vanished, and we fall back
to tramping around the plaza twice a week, it won't be gay, will
it? No; it won't be gay. We're having the spree of our lives
now, I guess, but there's going to be a difference in the
morning.''
``Oh, it's worth a headache, I think,'' said Clay, as he shrugged
his shoulders and walked away to find Miss Langham.
The day set for the visit to the mines rose bright and clear.
MacWilliams had rigged out his single passenger-car with rugs and
cushions, and flags flew from its canvas top that flapped and
billowed in the wind of the slow-moving train. Their
observation-car, as MacWilliams termed it, was placed in front of
the locomotive, and they were pushed gently along the narrow
rails between forests of Manaca palms, and through swamps and
jungles, and at times over the limestone formation along the
coast, where the waves dashed as high as the smokestack of the
locomotive, covering the excursionists with a sprinkling of white
spray. Thousands of land-crabs, painted red and black and
yellow, scrambled with a rattle like dead men's bones across the
rails to be crushed by the hundreds under the wheels of the
Juggernaut; great lizards ran from sunny rocks at the sound of
their approach, and a deer bounded across the tracks fifty feet
in front of the cow-catcher. MacWilliams escorted Hope out into
the cab of the locomotive, and taught her how to increase and
slacken the speed of the engine, until she showed an unruly
desire to throw the lever open altogether and shoot them off the
rails into the ocean beyond.
Clay sat at the back of the car with Miss Langham, and told her
and her father of the difficulties with which young MacWilliams
had had to contend. Miss Langham found her chief pleasure in
noting the attention which her father gave to all that Clay had
to tell him. Knowing her father as she did, and being familiar
with his manner toward other men, she knew that he was treating
Clay with unusual consideration. And this pleased her greatly,
for it justified her own interest in him. She regarded Clay as a
discovery of her own, but she was glad to have her opinion of him
shared by others.
Their coming was a great event in the history of the mines.
Kirkland, the foreman, and Chapman, who handled the
dynamite, Weimer, the Consul, and the native doctor, who cared
for the fever-stricken and the casualties, were all at the
station to meet them in the whitest of white duck and with a
bunch of ponies to carry them on their tour of inspection, and
the village of mudDcabins and zinc-huts that stood clear of the
bare sunbaked earth on whitewashed wooden piles was as clean as
Clay's hundred policemen could sweep it. Mr. Langham rode in
advance of the cavalcade, and the head of each of the different
departments took his turn in riding at his side, and explained
what had been done, and showed him the proud result. The village
was empty, except for the families of the native workmen and the
ownerless dogs, the scavengers of the colony, that snarled and
barked and ran leaping in front of the ponies' heads.
Rising abruptly above the zinc village, lay the first of the five
great hills, with its open front cut into great terraces, on
which the men clung like flies on the side of a wall, some of
them in groups around an opening, or in couples pounding a steel
bar that a fellow-workman turned in his bare hands, while others
gathered about the panting steam-drills that shook the solid rock
with fierce, short blows, and hid the men about them in a
throbbing curtain of steam. Self-important little dummy-
engines, dragging long trains of ore-cars, rolled and rocked on
the uneven surface of the ground, and swung around corners with
warning screeches of their whistles. They could see, on peaks
outlined against the sky, the signal-men waving their red flags,
and then plunging down the mountain-side out of danger, as the
earth rumbled and shook and vomited out a shower of stones and
rubbish into the calm hot air. It was a spectacle of desperate
activity and puzzling to the uninitiated, for it seemed to be
scattered over an unlimited extent, with no head nor direction,
and with each man, or each group of men, working alone, like rag-
pickers on a heap of ashes.
After the first half-hour of curious interest Miss Langham
admitted to herself that she was disappointed. She confessed she
had hoped that Clay would explain the meaning of the mines to
her, and act as her escort over the mountains which he was
blowing into pieces.
But it was King, somewhat bored by the ceaseless noise and heat,
and her brother, incoherently enthusiastic, who rode at her side,
while Clay moved on in advance and seemed to have forgotten her
existence. She watched him pointing up at the openings in the
mountains and down at the ore-road, or stooping to pick up a
piece of ore from the ground in cowboy fashion, without
leaving his saddle, and pounding it on the pommel before he
passed it to the others. And, again, he would stand for minutes
at a time up to his boot-tops in the sliding waste, with his
bridle rein over his arm and his thumbs in his belt, listening to
what his lieutenants were saying, and glancing quickly from them
to Mr. Langham to see if he were following the technicalities of
their speech. All of the men who had welcomed the appearance of
the women on their arrival with such obvious delight and with so
much embarrassment seemed now as oblivious of their presence as
Clay himself.
Miss Langham pushed her horse up into the group beside Hope, who
had kept her pony close at Clay's side from the beginning; but
she could not make out what it was they were saying, and no one
seemed to think it necessary to explain. She caught Clay's eye
at last and smiled brightly at him; but, after staring at her for
fully a minute, until Kirkland had finished speaking, she heard
him say, ``Yes, that's it exactly; in open-face workings there is
no other way,'' and so showed her that he had not been even
conscious of her presence. But a few minutes later she saw him
look up at Hope, folding his arms across his chest tightly and
shaking his head. ``You see it was the only thing to do,'' she
heard him say, as though he were defending some course of
action, and as though Hope were one of those who must be
convinced. ``If we had cut the opening on the first level, there
was the danger of the whole thing sinking in, so we had to begin
to clear away at the top and work down. That's why I ordered the
bucket-trolley. As it turned out, we saved money by it.''
Hope nodded her head slightly. ``That's what I told father when
Ted wrote us about it,'' she said; ``but you haven't done it at
Mount Washington.''
``Oh, but it's like this, Miss--'' Kirkland replied, eagerly.
``It's because Washington is a solider foundation. We can cut
openings all over it and they won't cave, but this hill is most
all rubbish; it's the poorest stuff in the mines.''
Hope nodded her head again and crowded her pony on after the
moving group, but her sister and King did not follow. King
looked at her and smiled. ``Hope is very enthusiastic,'' he
said. ``Where did she pick it up?''
``Oh, she and father used to go over it in his study last winter
after Ted came down here,'' Miss Langham answered, with a touch
of impatience in her tone. ``Isn't there some place where we can
go to get out of this heat?''
Weimer, the Consul, heard her and led her back to Kirkland's
bungalow, that hung like an eagle's nest from a projecting cliff.
From its porch they could look down the valley over the greater
part of the mines, and beyond to where the Caribbean Sea lay
flashing in the heat.
``I saw very few Americans down there, Weimer,'' said King. ``I
thought Clay had imported a lot of them.''
``About three hundred altogether, wild Irishmen and negroes,''
said the Consul; ``but we use the native soldiers chiefly. They
can stand the climate better, and, besides,'' he added, ``they
act as a reserve in case of trouble. They are Mendoza's men, and
Clay is trying to win them away from him.''
``I don't understand,'' said King.
Weimer looked around him and waited until Kirkland's servant had
deposited a tray full of bottles and glasses on a table near
them, and had departed. ``The talk is,'' he said, ``that Alvarez
means to proclaim a dictatorship in his own favor before the
spring elections. You've heard of that, haven't you?'' King
shook his head.
``Oh, tell us about it,'' said Miss Langham; ``I should so like
to be in plots and conspiracies.''
``Well, they're rather common down here,'' continued the Consul,
``but this one ought to interest you especially, Miss Langham,
because it is a woman who is at the head of it. Madame
Alvarez, you know, was the Countess Manueleta Hernandez before
her marriage. She belongs to one of the oldest families in
Spain. Alvarez married her in Madrid, when he was Minister
there, and when he returned to run for President, she came with
him. She's a tremendously ambitious woman, and they do say she
wants to convert the republic into a monarchy, and make her
husband King, or, more properly speaking, make herself Queen. Of
course that's absurd, but she is supposed to be plotting to turn
Olancho into a sort of dependency of Spain, as it was long ago,
and that's why she is so unpopular.''
``Indeed?'' interrupted Miss Langham, ``I did not know that she
was unpopular.''
``Oh, rather. Why, her party is called the Royalist Party
already, and only a week before you came the Liberals plastered
the city with denunciatory placards against her, calling on the
people to drive her out of the country.''
``What cowards--to fight a woman!'' exclaimed Miss Langham.
``Well, she began it first, you see,'' said the Consul.
``Who is the leader of the fight against her?'' asked King.
``General Mendoza; he is commander-in-chief and has the
greater part of the army with him, but the other candidate, old
General Rojas, is the popular choice and the best of the three.
He is Vice-President now, and if the people were ever given a
fair chance to vote for the man they want, he would
unquestionably be the next President. The mass of the people are
sick of revolutions. They've had enough of them, but they will
have to go through another before long, and if it turns against
Dr. Alvarez, I'm afraid Mr. Langham will have hard work to hold
these mines. You see, Mendoza has already threatened to seize
the whole plant and turn it into a Government monopoly.''
``And if the other one, General Rojas, gets into power, will he
seize the mines, too?''
``No, he is honest, strange to relate,'' laughed Weimer, ``but he
won't get in. Alvarez will make himself dictator, or Mendoza
will make himself President. That's why Clay treats the soldiers
here so well. He thinks he may need them against Mendoza. You
may be turning your saluting-gun on the city yet, Commodore,'' he
added, smiling, ``or, what is more likely, you'll need the yacht
to take Miss Langham and the rest of the family out of the
country.''
King smiled and Miss Langham regarded Weimer with flattering
interest. ``I've got a quick firing gun below decks,'' said
King, ``that I used in the Malaysian Peninsula on a junkful of
Black Flags, and I think I'll have it brought up. And there are
about thirty of my men on the yacht who wouldn't ask for their
wages in a year if I'd let them go on shore and mix up in a
fight. When do you suppose this--''
A heavy step and the jingle of spurs on the bare floor of the
bungalow startled the conspirators, and they turned and gazed
guiltily out at the mountain-tops above them as Clay came
hurrying out upon the porch.
``They told me you were here,'' he said, speaking to Miss
Langham. ``I'm so sorry it tired you. I should have
remembered--it is a rough trip when you're not used to it,'' he
added, remorsefully. ``But I'm glad Weimer was here to take care
of you.''
``It was just a trifle hot and noisy,'' said Miss Langham,
smiling sweetly. She put her hand to her forehead with an
expression of patient suffering. ``It made my head ache a
little, but it was most interesting.'' She added, ``You are
certainly to be congratulated on your work.''
Clay glanced at her doubtfully with a troubled look, and turned
away his eyes to the busy scene below him. He was greatly hurt
that she should have cared so little, and indignant at himself
for being so unjust. Why should he expect a woman to find
interest in that hive of noise and sweating energy? But even as
he stood arguing with himself his eyes fell on a slight figure
sitting erect and graceful on her pony's back, her white habit
soiled and stained red with the ore of the mines, and green where
it had crushed against the leaves. She was coming slowly up the
trail with a body-guard of half a dozen men crowding closely
around her, telling her the difficulties of the work, and
explaining their successes, and eager for a share of her quick
sympathy.
Clay's eyes fixed themselves on the picture, and he smiled at its
significance. Miss Langham noticed the look, and glanced below
to see what it was that had so interested him, and then back at
him again. He was still watching the approaching cavalcade
intently, and smiling to himself. Miss Langham drew in her
breath and raised her head and shoulders quickly, like a deer
that hears a footstep in the forest, and when Hope presently
stepped out upon the porch, she turned quickly toward her, and
regarded her steadily, as though she were a stranger to her, and
as though she were trying to see her with the eyes of one who
looked at her for the first time.
``Hope!'' she said, ``do look at your dress!''
Hope's face was glowing with the unusual exercise, and her
eyes were brilliant. Her hair had slipped down beneath the visor
of her helmet.
``I am so tired--and so hungry.'' She was laughing and looking
directly at Clay. ``It has been a wonderful thing to have
seen,'' she said, tugging at her heavy gauntlet, ``and to have
done,'' she added. She pulled off her glove and held out her
hand to Clay, moist and scarred with the pressure of the reins.
``Thank you,'' she said, simply.
The master of the mines took it with a quick rush of gratitude,
and looking into the girl's eyes, saw something there that
startled him, so that he glanced quickly past her at the circle
of booted men grouped in the door behind her. They were each
smiling in appreciation of the tableau; her father and Ted,
MacWilliams and Kirkland, and all the others who had helped him.
They seemed to envy, but not to grudge, the whole credit which
the girl had given to him.
Clay thought, ``Why could it not have been the other?'' But he
said aloud, ``Thank YOU. You have given me my reward.''
Miss Langham looked down impatiently into the valley below, and
found that it seemed more hot and noisy, and more grimy than
before. _
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