RIDGWAY OF MONTANA(蒙达那的李奇微)

VIP免费

2024-12-26 1 0 625.98KB 182 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

RIDGWAY OF

MONTANA

by WILLIAM MACLEOD RAINE

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

To JEAN

AND THAT KINGDOM

"Where you and I through this world's weather Work, and give praise

and thanks together."

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

CHAPTER 1. TWO MEN AND A

WOMAN

"Mr. Ridgway, ma'am."

The young woman who was giving the last touches to the very

effective picture framed in her long looking-glass nodded almost

imperceptibly.

She had come to the parting of the ways, and she knew it, with a

shrewd suspicion as to which she would choose. She had asked for a week

to decide, and her heart-searching had told her nothing new. It was

characteristic of Virginia Balfour that she did not attempt to deceive

herself. If she married Waring Ridgway it would be for what she

considered good and sufficient reasons, but love would not be one of them.

He was going to be a great man, for one thing, and probably a very rich

one, which counted, though it would not be a determining factor. This she

could find only in the man himself, in the masterful force that made him

what he was. The sandstings of life did not disturb his confidence in his

victorious star, nor did he let fine-spun moral obligations hamper his

predatory career. He had a genius for success in whatever he undertook,

pushing his way to his end with a shrewd, direct energy that never faltered.

She sometimes wondered whether she, too, like the men he used as tools,

was merely a pawn in his game, and her consent an empty formality

conceded to convention. Perhaps he would marry her even if she did not

want to, she told herself, with the sudden illuminating smile that was one

of her chief charms.

But Ridgway's wary eyes, appraising her mood as she came forward to

meet him, read none of this doubt in her frank greeting. Anything more

sure and exquisite than the cultivation Virginia Balfour breathed he would

have been hard put to it to conceive. That her gown and its accessories

seemed to him merely the extension of a dainty personality was the

highest compliment he could pay her charm, and an entirely unconscious

one.

"Have I kept you waiting?" she smiled, giving him her hand.

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

His answering smile, quite cool and unperturbed, gave the lie to his

words. "For a year, though the almanac called it a week."

"You must have suffered," she told him ironically, with a glance at the

clear color in his good-looking face.

"Repressed emotion," he explained. "May I hope that my suffering has

reached a period?"

They had been sauntering toward a little conservatory at the end of the

large room, but she deflected and brought up at a table on which lay some

books. One of these she picked up and looked at incuriously for a moment

before sweeping them aside. She rested her hands on the table behind her

and leaned back against it, her eyes meeting his fairly.

"You're still of the same mind, are you?" she demanded.

"Oh! very much."

She lifted herself to the table, crossing her feet and dangling them

irresponsibly. "We might as well be comfy while we talk;" and she

indicated, by a nod, a chair.

"Thanks. If you don't mind, I think I'll take it standing."

She did not seem in any hurry to begin, and Ridgway gave evidence of

no desire to hasten her. But presently he said, with a little laugh that

seemed to offer her inclusion in the joke:

"I'm on the anxious seat, you know--waiting to find out whether I'm to

be the happiest man alive."

"You know as much about it as I do." She echoed his laugh ruefully.

"I'm still as much at sea as I was last week. I couldn't tell then, and I can't

now."

"No news is good news, they say."

"I don't want to marry you a bit, but you're a great catch, as you are

very well aware."

"I suppose I am rather a catch," he agreed, the shadow of a smile at the

corners of his mouth.

"It isn't only your money; though, of course, that's a temptation," she

admitted audaciously.

"I'm glad it's not only my money." He could laugh with her about it

because he was shrewd enough to understand that it was not at all his

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

wealth. Her cool frankness might have frightened away another man. It

merely served to interest Ridgway. For, with all his strength, he was a vain

man, always ready to talk of himself. He spent a good deal of his spare

time interpreting himself to attractive and attracted young women.

Her gaze fastened on the tip of her suede toe, apparently studying it

attentively. "It would be a gratification to my vanity to parade you as the

captive of my bow and spear. You're such a magnificent specimen, such a

berserk in broadcloth. Still. I shan't marry you if I can help it--but, then,

I'm not sure that I can help it. Of course, I disapprove of you entirely, but

you're rather fascinating, you know." Her eye traveled slowly up to his,

appraising the masterful lines of his square figure, the dominant strength

of his close-shut mouth and resolute eyes. "Perhaps 'fascinating' isn't just

the word, but I can't help being interested in you, whether I like you or not.

I suppose you always get what you want very badly?" she flung out by

way of question.

"That's what I'm trying to discover"--he smiled.

"There are things to be considered both ways," she said, taking him

into her confidence. "You trample on others. How do I know you wouldn't

tread on me?"

"That would be one of the risks you would take," he agreed

impersonally.

"I shouldn't like that at all. If I married you it would be because as

your wife I should have so many opportunities. I should expect to do

exactly as I please. I shouldn't want you to interfere with me, though I

should want to be able to influence you."

"Nothing could be fairer than that," was his amiably ironical comment.

"You see, I don't know you--not really--and they say all sorts of things

about you."

"They don't say I am a quitter, do they?"

She leaned forward, chin in hand and elbow on knee. It was a part of

the accent of her distinction that as a rebel she was both demure and

daring. "I wonder if I might ask you some questions--the intimate kind that

people think but don't say--at least, they don't say them to you."

"It would be a pleasure to me to be put on the witness-stand. I should

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

probably pick up some interesting side-lights about myself."

"Very well." Her eyes danced with excitement. "You're what they call

a buccaneer of business, aren't you?"

Here were certainly diverting pastimes. "I believe I have been called

that; but, then, I've had the hardest names in the dictionary thrown at me

so often that I can't be sure."

"I suppose you are perfectly unscrupulous in a business way--stop at

nothing to gain your point?"

He took her impudence smilingly.

"'Unscrupulous' isn't the word I use when I explain myself to myself,

but as an unflattered description, such as one my enemies might use to

describe me, I dare say it is fairly accurate."

"I wonder why. Do you dispense with a conscience entirely?"

"Well, you see, Miss Balfour, if I nursed a New England conscience I

could stand up to the attacks of the Consolidated about as long as a dove

to a hawk. I meet fire with fire to avoid being wiped off the map of the

mining world. I play the game. I can't afford to keep a button on my foil

when my opponent doesn't."

She nodded an admission of his point. "And yet there are rules of the

game to be observed, aren't there? The Consolidated people claim you

steal their ore, I believe." Her slanted eyes studied the effect of her daring.

He laughed grimly. "Do they? I claim they steal mine. It's rather

difficult to have an exact regard for mine and thine before the courts

decide which is which."

"And meanwhile, in order to forestall an adverse decision, you are

working extra shifts to get all the ore out of the disputed veins."

"Precisely, just as they are," he admitted dryly. "Then the side that

loses will not be so disappointed, since the value of the veins will be less.

Besides, stealing ore openly doesn't count. It is really a moral obligation in

a fight like this," he explained.

"A moral obligation?"

"Exactly. You can't hit a trust over the head with the decalogue.

Modern business is war. Somebody is bound to get hurt. If I win out it will

be because I put up a better fight than the Consolidated, and cripple it

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

enough to make it let me alone. I'm looking out for myself, and I don't

pretend to be any better than my neighbors. When you get down to bed-

rock honesty, I've never seen it in business. We're all of us as honest as we

think we can afford to be. I haven't noticed that there is any premium on it

in Mesa. Might makes right. I'll win if I'm strong enough; I'll fail if I'm not.

That's the law of life. I didn't make this strenuous little world, and I'm not

responsible for it. If I play I have to take the rules the way they are, not the

way I should like them to be. I'm not squeamish, and I'm not a hypocrite.

Simon Harley isn't squeamish, either, but he happens to be a hypocrite. So

there you have the difference between us."

The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company set forth his creed

jauntily, without the least consciousness of need for apology for the fact

that it happened to be divorced from morality. Its frank disregard of ethical

considerations startled Miss Balfour without shocking her. She liked his

candor, even though it condemned him. It was really very nice of him to

take her impudence so well. He certainly wasn't a prig, anyway.

"And morality," she suggested tentatively.

"--hasn't a thing to do with success, the parsons to the contrary

notwithstanding. The battle is to the strong."

"Then the Consolidated will beat you finally."

He smiled. "They would if I'd let them; but brains and resource and

finesse all count for power. Granted that they have a hundred dollars to my

one. Still, I have elements of strength they can't even estimate. David beat

Goliath, you know, even though he didn't do it with a big stick."

"So you think morality is for old women?"

"And young women," he amended, smiling.

"And every man is to be a law unto himself?"

"Not quite. Some men aren't big enough to be. Let them stick to the

conventional code. For me, if I make my own laws I don't break them."

"And you're sure that you're on the road to true success?" she asked

lightly.

"Now, you have heaven in the back of your mind."

"Not exactly," she laughed. "But I didn't expect you to understand."

"Then I won't disappoint you," he said cheerfully.

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

She came back to the concrete.

"I should like to know whether it is true that you own the courts of

Yuba County and have the decisions of the judges written at your lawyer's

offices in cases between you and the Consolidated."

"If I do," he answered easily, "I am doing just what the Consolidated

would do in case they had been so fortunate as to have won the last

election and seated their judicial candidates. One expects a friendly

leaning from the men one put in office."

"Isn't the judiciary supposed to be the final, incorruptible bulwark of

the nation?" she pretended to want to know.

"I believe it is supposed to be."

"Isn't it rather--loading the dice, to interfere with the courts?"

"I find the dice already loaded. I merely substitute others of my own."

"You don't seem a bit ashamed of yourself."

"I'm ashamed of the Consolidated"--he smiled.

"That's a comfortable position to be able to take." She fixed him for a

moment with her charming frown of interrogation. "You won't mind my

asking these questions? I'm trying to decide whether you are too much of a

pirate for me. Perhaps when I've made up my mind you won't want me,"

she added.

"Oh, I'll want you!" Then coolly: "Shall we wait till you make up your

mind before announcing the engagement?"

"Don't be too sure," she flashed at him.

"I'm horribly unsure."

"Of course, you're laughing at me, just as you would"--she tilted a

sudden sideways glance at him--"if I asked you WHY you wanted to

marry me."

"Oh, if you take me that way----"

She interrupted airily. "I'm trying to make up my mind whether to take

you at all."

"You certainly have a direct way of getting at things."

He studied appreciatively her piquant, tilted face; the long, graceful

lines of her slender, perfect figure. "I take it you don't want the sentimental

reason for my wishing to marry you, though I find that amply justified.

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

But if you want another, you must still look to yourself for it. My business

leads me to appreciate values correctly. When I desire you to sit at the

head of my table, to order my house, my judgment justifies itself. I have a

fancy always for the best. When I can't gratify it I do without."

"Thank you." She made him a gay little mock curtsy "I had heard you

were no carpet-knight, Mr. Ridgway. But rumor is a lying jade, for I am

being told--am I not?--that in case I don't take pity on you, the lone future

of a celibate stretches drear before you."

"Oh, certainly."

Having come to the end of that passage, she tried another. "A young

man told me yesterday you were a fighter. He said he guessed you would

stand the acid. What did he mean?"

Ridgway was an egoist from head to heel. He could voice his own

praises by the hour when necessary, but now he side-stepped her little trap

to make him praise himself at second-hand.

"Better ask him."

"ARE you a fighter, then?"

Had he known her and her whimsies less well, he might have taken her

audacity for innocence.

"One couldn't lie down, you know."

"Of course, you always fight fair," she mocked.

"When a fellow's attacked by a gang of thugs he doesn't pray for

boxing-gloves. He lets fly with a coupling-pin if that's what comes handy."

Her eyes, glinting sparks of mischief, marveled at him with mock

reverence, but she knew in her heart that her mockery was a fraud. She did

admire him; admired him even while she disapproved the magnificent

lawlessness of him.

For Waring Ridgway looked every inch the indomitable fighter he was.

He stood six feet to the line, straight and strong, carrying just sufficient

bulk to temper his restless energy without impairing its power. Nor did the

face offer any shock of disappointment to the promise given by the

splendid figure. Salient-jawed and forceful, set with cool, flinty, blue-gray

eyes, no place for weakness could be found there. One might have read a

moral callousness, a colorblindness in points of rectitude, but when the

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA

last word had been said, its masterful capability, remained the outstanding

impression.

"Am I out of the witness-box?" he presently asked, still leaning against

the mantel from which he had been watching her impersonally as an

intellectual entertainment.

"I think so."

"And the verdict?"

"You know what it ought to be," she accused.

"Fortunately, kisses go by favor, not by, merit."

"You don't even make a pretense of deserving."

"Give me credit for being an honest rogue, at least."

"But a rogue?" she insisted lightly.

"Oh, a question of definitions. I could make a very good case for

myself as an honest man."

"If you thought it worth while?"

"If I didn't happen to want to be square with you"--he smiled.

"You're so fond of me, I suppose, that you couldn't bear to have me

think too well of you."

"You know how fond of you I am."

"Yes, it is a pity about you," she scoffed.

"Believe me, yes," he replied cheerfully.

She drummed with her pink finger-tips on her chin, studying him

meditatively. To do him justice, she had to admit that he did not even

pretend much. He wanted her because she was a step up in the social

ladder, and, in his opinion, the most attractive girl he knew. That he was

not in love with her relieved the situation, as Miss Balfour admitted to

herself in impersonal moods. But there were times when she could have

wished he were. She felt it to be really due her attractions that his pulses

should quicken for her, and in the interests of experience she would have

liked to see how he would make love if he really meant it from the heart

and not the will.

"It's really an awful bother," she sighed.

"Referring to the little problem of your future?"

"Yes."

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

RIDGWAYOFMONTANA1RIDGWAYOFMONTANAbyWILLIAMMACLEODRAINERIDGWAYOFMONTANA2ToJEANANDTHATKINGDOM"WhereyouandIthroughthisworld'sweatherWork,andgivepraiseandthankstogether."RIDGWAYOFMONTANA3CHAPTER1.TWOMENANDAWOMAN"Mr.Ridgway,ma'am."Theyoungwomanwhowasgivingthelasttouchestotheveryeffectivepictureframedinhe...

展开>> 收起<<

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA(蒙达那的李奇微).pdf

共182页,预览37页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA(蒙达那的李奇微)

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: