Ridgway of Montana | Page 5

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.