Robert J. C. Stead

“ It was as though it were rushing up the valley. They watched it, fascinated; then burst into laughter as the orb of the moon became recognizable.... There was something very companionable about watching the moon rise, as they did.
“The greatest wealth in the world,” he said at length, as though his thoughts had been far afield, searching, perchance, the mazy corridors of Truth for this atom of wisdom; “the greatest wealth in the world is to be able to do something useful. That is the only wealth which will not be disturbed in the coming reorganization of society.”
Zen did not reply. ”

“ He always found a way. And he was now quite sure that he wanted Zen. He had not known that positively until the morning when he found her in the grey light of dawn with Dennison Grant. There was a suggestion of companionship there between the two which had cut him to the quick. Like most ambitious men, Transley was intensely jealous.
Up to this time Transley had not thought seriously of matrimony. A wife and children he regarded as desirable appendages for declining years—for the quiet and shade of that evening toward which every active man looks with such irrational confidence. ”

“ For a long time Grant stood drinking in the scene; the fertile valley lying with its square farms like a checker-board of the gods, with its round little lakes beating back the white sunshine like coins from the currency of the Creator; the ruddy copper-colored patches of ripe wheat, and drowsy herds motionless upon the receding hills; the blue-green ribbon of river with its yellow fringes of cottonwood and bluffs of forbidding spruce, and behind and over all the silent, majestic mountains. It was a sight to make the soul of man rise up and say, “I know I stand on the heights of the Eternal!” ”

“ All great thoughts come from uncharted sources of inspiration, and it may be that the function of the mind is not to create thought, but only to record it. To do so it must be tuned to the proper key of receptivity. Grant had a consciousness, as he walked along the deserted streets toward his hotel, that he was in that key; the quietness, the domesticity of Murdoch’s home, the loveliness of Phyllis Bruce, had, for the moment at least, shut out a background of horror and lifted his thought into an exalted plane. ”

“ Had Transley been the most suspicious of husbands—and in reality his domestic vision was as guileless as that of a boy—he could have caught no glint of any smoldering spark of the long ago. Grant found himself thinking of this dissembling quality as one of nature’s provisions designed for the protection of women, much as the sombre plumage of the prairie chicken protects her from the eye of the sportsman. For after all the hunting instinct runs through all men, be the game what it may. ”

“ The kitchen was to the east, and off the kitchen lay Grant’s bedroom, facing also to the east, as becomes a man who rises early for his day’s labors. And then facing the west, and opening off the dining-room, was what he was pleased to call his whim-room.
The idea of the whim-room came upon him as he was working out plans on the smooth side of a board, and thinking about things in general, and a good deal about Phyllis Bruce, and wondering if he should ever run across Zen Transley. It struck him all of a sudden, as had the Big Idea that night when he was on his way home from Murdoch’s house. ”

“ You could put all your wealth in a strong-box and bury it under your house up there on the hill, and it wouldn’t increase a nickel in a thousand years, but if you put it to work it makes money for you and money for other people as well. I’m a little nervous about new-fangled notions. It’s easier to wreck the ship than to build a new one, which may not sail any better. What the world needs to-day is the gospel of hard work, and everybody, rich and poor, on the job for all that’s in him. ”

“ Transley was a man very hard to resist. She felt as though she were in the grip of a powerful machine; it was as though she were being swept along by a stream against which her feeble strength was as nothing. Zen was as nearly frightened as she had ever been in her vigorous young life. ”

“ The foothill rancher makes hay by horse power, and almost without the aid of a pitch-fork. Even as Drazk watched he saw a load skidded up; saw its apparent momentary poise in air; saw the well-trained horses stop and turn and start back to the meadow with their sweep. And up the valley Transley’s outfit was at a standstill.
Drazk employed his limited but expressive vocabulary. It was against all human nature to look on such a scene unmoved. He recalled Y.D.‘s half-spoken wish about a random cigar. Then suddenly George Drazk’s mouth dropped open and his eyes rounded with a great idea. ”

“ Up the valley lay the white tents of Transley’s outfit, almost hidden in green foliage; the ford across the river was distinctly visible, and stretching south from it lay, like a great curving snake, the trail which wound across the valley and lost itself in the foothills far to the south; across the western horizon hung the purple curtain of the mountains, soft and vague in their noonday mists, but touched with settings of ivory where the snow fields beat back the blazing sunshine ”

“ Any successful man of to-day will admit, if he is frank about it, that he owes his success as much to good luck as to good judgment. If you could find a way, Grant, to take the element of luck out of life, perhaps you would be doing a service which would justify you in keeping those millions which worry you so. But I can’t see that it makes any difference to the prosperity of a country who owns the wealth in it, so long as the wealth is there and is usefully employed. Money doesn’t grow unless it works, and if it works it serves Society just the same as muscle does. ”

“ What the world needs is just friends.”
Grant had talked himself out, but he continued to sit at the little table, reveling in the happiness of a man who feels that he has been called to some purpose worth while. His companion hesitated to interrupt his thoughts; her somewhat drab business experience made her pessimistic toward all idealism, and yet she felt that here, surely, was a man who could carry almost any project through to success. The unique quality in him, which distinguished him from any other man she had ever known, was his complete unselfishness. ”

“ He shot a quick glance at Transley, but the contractor’s face gave no sign. Even as he looked Linder thought what an able face it was. Transley was not more than twenty-six, but forcefulness, assertion, ability, stood in every line of his clean-cut features. He was such a man as to capture at a blow the heart of old Y.D., perhaps of Y.D.‘s daughter.
“Where’s Zen?” demanded the rancher.
“She’ll be here presently,” his wife replied. “We don’t have Mr. Transley and Mr. Linder every night, you know,” she added, with a smile.
“Dolling up,” thought Linder. “Trust a woman never to miss a bet.” ”

“ Murdoch explained, “but I could not do that, as I knew nothing of your plans, and a girl can’t afford to trifle with her job these days, Mr. Grant.”
And Grant said nothing, but he thought of his whim-room, and smiled.
Grant was almost sorry when the house was finished. “There’s so much more enjoyment in doing things than in merely possessing them after they’re done,” he philosophized to Linder. “I think that must be the secret of the peculiar fascination of the West. The East, with all its culture and conveniences and beauty, can never win a heart which has once known the West. ”

“ Squiggs announced with some finality. “It could never be brought into effect.”
“If a corporation can determine the value of the service rendered by each of its hundred thousand employees, why cannot a nation determine the value of the service rendered by each of its hundred million citizens?”
“THERE’S something for you to chew on, Squiggs,” said Transley. “You argue your case well, Grant; I believe you have our legal light rather feazed—that’s the word, isn’t it, Mr. Murdoch?—for once. I confess a good deal of sympathy with your point of view, but I’m afraid you can’t change human nature.” ”

“ I know something of what divided affection—if one can even say it is divided—means. Denny, I will make a confession. I knew you would come back; I always was sure you would come back. ‘Then,’ I said to myself, ‘I will see this man Grant as he is, and the reality will clear my brain of all this idealism which I have woven about him.’ Perhaps you know what I mean. We sometimes meet people who impress us greatly at the time, but a second meeting, perhaps years later, has a very different effect. It sweeps all the idealism away, and we wonder what it was that could have charmed us so. ”

“ Every honorable tradition of the range demanded that he enlist his force against the common enemy.
“Hell, Transley!” he ejaculated, “we can’t sit and look at that! Order the men out! What have we got to fight with?”
For answer Transley swung round in his saddle and struck his palm into Y.D.‘s.
“Good boy, Y.D!” he said. “I did you an injustice—I mean, about your prayers being answered. We haven’t as much as a plow, either, but we can gallop down with some barrels in a wagon and put a sack brigade to work. I’m afraid it won’t save Landson’s hay, but it will show where our hearts are.” ”

“ Clouds of blue and mauve and creamy yellow rolled from the meadows and stacks. The fire was whipping the light breeze of the afternoon to a gale, and was already running wildly over the flanks of the foothills.
“Well, I’m off,” said Zen. “Good-bye!”
“Be careful, Zen!” her father shouted. “Fire is fire.” But already her horse was stretching low and straight in a hard gallop down the valley.
“I’ll ride in to camp and tell Tompkins to make up a double supply of sandwiches and coffee,” said Transley. “I guess there’ll be no cooking in Landson’s outfit this afternoon. ”

“ When a self was dodging Battle Ax he hadn’t much time to think about evolving a Magna Charta. But most of all I suppose it is just natural laziness. People refuse to think. It calls for effort. Most people would find it easier to pitch a load of hay than to think of a new thought.”
The moon was now well up; the smoke clouds had been scattered by the breeze; the sky was studded with diamonds. Zen had a feeling of being very happy. True, a certain haunting spectre at times would break into her consciousness, but in the companionship of such a man as Grant she could easily beat it off. ”

“ The rancher and his wife sat at the ends of the table; Transley on the side at Y.D.‘s right; Linder at Transley’s right. In the better light Linder noted Y.D.‘s face. It was the face of a man of fifty, possibly sixty. Life in the open plays strange tricks with the appearance. Some men it ages before their time; others seem to tap a spring of perpetual youth. Save for the grey moustache and the puckerings about the eyes Y.D.‘s was still a young man’s face. Then, as the rancher turned his head, Linder noted a long scar, as of a burn, almost grown over in the right cheek.... ”

“ I am no Moses, but I think I have the germ of the law which would cure our economic ills—that no person should be allowed to receive value without earning it. Because I believed in that I gave up a fortune and went to work as a laborer on a ranch, but Fate has forced wealth upon me, doubtless in order that I may prove out my own theories. ”

“ Landson, you know that I have never worried about money; if I had I wouldn’t be here. I figure that the more money a man has the greater are his responsibilities and his troubles; worse than that, his wealth excites the jealousy of the public and even the envy of his friends. It builds a barrier around him, shutting out all those things which are really most worth while. It makes him the legitimate prey of the unprincipled. ”

“ He was looking for no temporary location, but for a spot where he might drive his claim-stakes deep. That prairie, which stretched under the hot sunshine unbroken to the rim of heaven; that brown grass glowing with an almost phosphorescent light as it curled close to the mother sod;—a careless match, a cigar stub, a bit of gun-wadding, and in an afternoon a million acres of pasture land would carry not enough foliage to feed a gopher. ”

“ It has brought home to me and to the world the fact that heroism is a flower which grows in no peculiar soil, and that it blossoms as richly among the unwashed and the underfed as among the children of fortune. This fact only aggravates the extremes of wealth and poverty, and makes them seem more unjust than ever. ”

“ I have a whim about my money, a whim about my farm, a whim about my buildings. I do not do as other people do, which is the unpardonable sin. To Linder I am a jester, to Murdoch a fanatic, to our friend the real estate dealer a fool; I even noticed my honest carpenter trying to ask me something about shell shock! Well—they’re MY whims, and I get an immense amount of satisfaction out of them.”
The days that followed were the happiest Grant had known since childhood. ”

“ I have been brought up in an environment where there is no standard higher than the money standard. Not that my father or husband are dishonest; they are rigidly honest according to their ideas of honesty. But to say that a man must give actual service for every dollar he gets or it isn’t his—that is a conception of honesty so far beyond them as to be an absurdity. But I have wanted to ask you how you are going to enforce this new idealism.”
“Idealism is not enforced. We aspire to it; we may not attain to it. Christianity itself is idealism—the idealism of unselfishness. ”

“ The idealism which I thought must fade away is justified—heightened—by the reality.”
She had turned her face to him, and Grant, little as he understood the ways of women, knew that she had made her great confession. For a moment he held himself in check.... then from somewhere in his subconsciousness came ringing the phrase, “Every man worth his salt.... takes what he wants.” That was Transley’s morality; Transley, the Usurper, who had bullied himself into possession of this heart which he had never won and could never hold; Transley, the fool, frittering his days and nights with money! ”

“ I have no patience with any claim that all men are equal, or capable of rendering equal service to society, and I want payment to be made according to service rendered, not according to the freaks of a haphazard system such as I have been trying to describe.”
“But how are you going to bring that golden age about?” Murdoch inquired.
“By education. The first thing is to accept the principle that wealth cannot be accepted except in exchange for full-measure service. You, Mrs. Transley—you teach your little boy that he must not steal. ”

“ Wasn’t it you who propounded a theory about an age when men took what they wanted by force giving way to an age in which they took what they wanted by subtlety? Now, I believe, you want society to restrain the man of clever wits just as it has learned to restrain the man of big biceps. And when that is done will not man discover some other means of taking what he wants?”
She had seated herself beside him on a divanette and the joy of her nearness fired Grant with a very happy intoxication. It recalled that night on the hillside when, as she had since said, she felt safe in his protection. ”

“ Her father had always admired men with a will, and Zen shared his admiration. Then there was Linder. The fierce light of Transley’s charms did not blind her to the glow of quiet capability which she saw in Linder. If one were looking for a husband, Linder had much to recommend him. He was probably less capable than Transley, but he would be easier to manage.... But who was looking for a husband? Not Zen. No, no, certainly not Zen.
Then there was George Drazk, whose devotions fluctuated between “that Pete-horse” and the latest female to cross his orbit. ”