"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 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 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 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.
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