The Silver Horde. Rex Beach
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no such thing as fear. It doesn't exist. It's merely an absence of courage, just as indecision is merely a lack of decision. I never saw anything yet of which I was afraid—and you're a man. The deity of success is a woman, and she insists on being won, not courted. You've got to seize her and bear her off, instead of standing under her window with a mandolin. You need to be rough and masterful with her. Nobody ever reasoned himself out of a street fight. He had to act. If a man thinks over a proposition long enough it will whip him, no matter how simple it is. It's the lightning flash that guides a man. You must lay your course in the blue dazzle, then follow it in the dark; and when you come to the end, it always lightens again. Don't stand still, staring through the gloom, and then try to walk while the lightning lasts, because you won't get anywhere."
Her words were charged with an electric force that communicated itself to the young man and galvanized him into action. He would have spoken, but she stayed him, and went on:
"Wait; I'm not through yet. I've watched you, and I know you are down on your luck for some reason. You've been miscast somehow and you've had the heart taken out of you; but I'm sure it's in you to succeed, for you're young and intelligent, cool and determined. I am giving you this chance to play the biggest game of your life, and erase in eight short months every trace of failure. I'm not doing it altogether unselfishly, for I believe you've been sent to Kalvik to work out your own salvation and mine, and that of poor George Balt, whom you've never seen. You're going to do this thing, and you're going to make it win."
Emerson reached out impulsively and caught her tiny, mittened hand. His eyes were shining, his face had lost the settled look of dejection, and was all aglow with a new dawn of hope. Even his shoulders were lifted and thrown back as if from some sudden access of vigor that lightened his burden.
"You're right!" he said, firmly. "We'll send for Balt to-night."
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH A COMPACT IS FORMED
Now that he had committed himself to action, Boyd Emerson became a different being. He was no longer the dispirited cynic of yesterday, but an eager, voluble optimist athirst for knowledge and afire with impatience. On the homeward drive he had bombarded Cherry with a running fusillade of questions, so that by the time they had arrived at her house she was mentally and physically fatigued. He seemed insatiable, drawing from her every atom of information she possessed, and although he was still hard, incisive, and aloof, it was in quite a different way. The intensity of his concentration had gathered all feeling into one definite passion, and had sucked him dry of ordinary emotions.
In the days that followed she was at his elbow constantly, aiding him at every turn in his zeal to acquire a knowledge of the cannery system. The odd conviction grew upon her that he was working against time, that there was a limit to his period of action, for he seemed obsessed by an ever-growing passion to accomplish some end within a given time, and had no thought for anything beyond the engrossing issue into which he had plunged. She was dumfounded by his sudden transformation, and delighted at first, but later, when she saw that he regarded her only as a means to an end, his cool assumption of leadership piqued her and she felt hurt.
Constantine had been sent for Balt, with instructions to keep on until he found the fisherman, even if the quest carried him over the range. During the days of impatient waiting they occupied their time largely in reconnoitring the nearest cannery, permission to go over which Cherry had secured from the watchman, who was indebted to her. The man was timid at first, but Emerson won him over, then proceeded to pump him dry of information, as he had done with his hostess. He covered the plant like a ferret; he showed such powers of adaptability and assimilation as to excite the girl's wonder; his grasp of detail was instant; his retentive faculty tenacious; he never seemed to rest.
"Why, you already know more about a cannery than a superintendent does," she remarked, after nearly a week of this. "I believe you could build one yourself."
He smiled. "I'm an engineer by education, and this is really in my line. It's the other part that has me guessing."
"Balt can handle that."
"But why doesn't he come?" he questioned, crossly. A score of times he had voiced his impatience, and Cherry was hard pushed to soothe him.
Nor was she the only one to note the change in him; Fraser followed him about and looked on in bewilderment.
"What have you done to 'Frozen Annie'?" he asked Cherry on one occasion. "You must have fed him a speed-ball, for I never saw a guy gear up so fast. Why, he was the darndest crape-hanger I ever met till you got him gingered up; he didn't have no more spirit than a sick kitten. Of course, he ain't what you'd call genial and expansive yet, but he's developed a remarkable burst of speed, and seems downright hopeful at times."
"Hopeful of what?"
"Ah! that's where I wander; he's a puzzle to me. Hopeful of making money, I suppose."
"That isn't it. I can see he doesn't care for the money itself," the girl declared, emphatically. She would have liked to ask Fraser if he knew anything about the mysterious beauty of the magazine, but refrained.
"I don't think so, either," said the man. "He acts more like somebody was going to ring the gong on him if this fish thing don't let him out. It seems to be a case bet with him."
"It's a case bet with me, too," said the girl. "My men are ready to quit, and—well, Willis Marsh will see that I am financially ruined!"
"Oho! So this is your only 'out,'" grinned "Fingerless" Fraser. "Now, I had a different idea as to why you got Emerson started." He was observing her shrewdly.
"What idea, pray?"
"Well, talking straight and side-stepping subterfuge, this is a lonely place for a woman like you, and our mutual friend ain't altogether unattractive."
Cherry's cheeks flamed, but her tone was icy. "This is entirely a business matter."
"Hm—m—! I ain't never heard you touted none as a business woman," said the adventurer.
"Have you ever heard me"—the color faded from the girl's face, and it was a trifle drawn—"discussed in any way?"
"You know, Emerson makes me uncomfortable sometimes, he is so damn moral," Fraser replied, indirectly. "He won't stand for anything off color. He's a real square guy, he is, the kind you read about."
"You didn't answer my question," insisted Cherry.
Again Fraser evaded the issue. "Now, if this Marsh is going after you in earnest this summer, why don't you let me stick around here till spring and look-out your game? I'll drop a monkey-wrench in his gear-case or put a spider in his dumpling; and it's more than an even shot that if him and I got to know each other right well, I'd own his cannery before fall."
"Thank you, I can take care of myself!" said the girl, in a tone that closed the conversation.
Late one stormy night—Constantine had been gone a week—the two men whom they were expecting blew in through the blinding smother, half frozen and well-nigh exhausted, with the marks of hard travel showing in their sunken cheeks and in the bleeding pads of their dog-team. But although a hundred miles of impassable trails lay behind them, Balt refused rest or nourishment until he had learned why Cherry had sent for him.
"What's wrong?" he demanded of her, staring with suspicious eyes at the strangers.
As briefly as possible she outlined the situation the while Boyd Emerson took his measure, for no person quite like this fisherman had ever crossed the miner's path. He saw a huge, barrel-chested creature whose tremendous muscles bulged beneath his nondescript garments, whose red, upstanding bristle of hair topped a leather countenance from which gleamed a pair of the most violent eyes Emerson had ever beheld, the dominant expression of which was rage. His jaw was long, and the seams from nostril and