PART VI
KRONBORG
I
It is a glorious winter day. Denver, standing on her
high plateau under a thrilling green-blue sky, is masked
in snow and glittering with sunlight. The Capitol building
is actually in armor, and throws off the shafts of the sun
until the beholder is dazzled and the outlines of the building
are lost in a blaze of reflected light. The stone terrace is a
white field over which fiery reflections dance, and the trees
and bushes are faithfully repeated in snow--on every
black twig a soft, blurred line of white. From the terrace
one looks directly over to where the mountains break in
their sharp, familiar lines against the sky. Snow fills the
gorges, hangs in scarfs on the great slopes, and on the peaks
the fiery sunshine is gathered up as by a burning-glass.
Howard Archie is standing at the window of his private
room in the offices of the San Felipe Mining Company, on
the sixth floor of the Raton Building, looking off at the
mountain glories of his State while he gives dictation to his
secretary. He is ten years older than when we saw him last,
and emphatically ten years more prosperous. A decade of
coming into things has not so much aged him as it has forti-
fied, smoothed, and assured him. His sandy hair and
imperial conceal whatever gray they harbor. He has not
grown heavier, but more flexible, and his massive shoulders
carry fifty years and the control of his great mining inter-
ests more lightly than they carried forty years and a coun-
try practice. In short, he is one of the friends to whom we
feel grateful for having got on in the world, for helping to
keep up the general temperature and our own confidence in
life. He is an acquaintance that one would hurry to over-
take and greet among a hundred. In his warm handshake
and generous smile there is the stimulating cordiality of
good fellows come into good fortune and eager to pass it on;
something that makes one think better of the lottery of
life and resolve to try again.
When Archie had finished his morning mail, he turned
away from the window and faced his secretary. "Did any-
thing come up yesterday afternoon while I was away,
T. B.?"
Thomas Burk turned over the leaf of his calendar.
"Governor Alden sent down to say that he wanted to see
you before he sends his letter to the Board of Pardons.
Asked if you could go over to the State House this morn-
ing."
Archie shrugged his shoulders. "I'll think about it."
The young man grinned.
"Anything else?" his chief continued.
T. B. swung round in his chair with a look of interest on
his shrewd, clean-shaven face. "Old Jasper Flight was in,
Dr. Archie. I never expected to see him alive again. Seems
he's tucked away for the winter with a sister who's a
housekeeper at the Oxford. He's all crippled up with
rheumatism, but as fierce after it as ever. Wants to know
if you or the company won't grub-stake him again. Says
he's sure of it this time; had located something when the
snow shut down on him in December. He wants to crawl
out at the first break in the weather, with that same old
burro with the split ear. He got somebody to winter the
beast for him. He's superstitious about that burro, too;
thinks it's divinely guided. You ought to hear the line of
talk he put up here yesterday; said when he rode in his
carriage, that burro was a-going to ride along with him."
Archie laughed. "Did he leave you his address?"
"He didn't neglect anything," replied the clerk cynically.
"Well, send him a line and tell him to come in again. I
like to hear him. Of all the crazy prospectors I've ever
known, he's the most interesting, because he's really crazy.
It's a religious conviction with him, and with most of 'em
it's a gambling fever or pure vagrancy. But Jasper Flight
believes that the Almighty keeps the secret of the silver
deposits in these hills, and gives it away to the deserving.
He's a downright noble figure. Of course I'll stake him!
As long as he can crawl out in the spring. He and that
burro are a sight together. The beast is nearly as white as
Jasper; must be twenty years old."
"If you stake him this time, you won't have to again,"
said T. B. knowingly. "He'll croak up there, mark my
word. Says he never ties the burro at night now, for fear he
might be called sudden, and the beast would starve. I guess
that animal could eat a lariat rope, all right, and enjoy it."
"I guess if we knew the things those two have eaten, and
haven't eaten, in their time, T. B., it would make us vege-
tarians." The doctor sat down and looked thoughtful.
"That's the way for the old man to go. It would be pretty
hard luck if he had to die in a hospital. I wish he could
turn up something before he cashes in. But his kind seldom
do; they're bewitched. Still, there was Stratton. I've been
meeting Jasper Flight, and his side meat and tin pans, up
in the mountains for years, and I'd miss him. I always
halfway believe the fairy tales he spins me. Old Jasper
Flight," Archie murmured, as if he liked the name or the
picture it called up.
A clerk came in from the outer office and handed Archie
a card. He sprang up and exclaimed, "Mr. Ottenburg?
Bring him in."
Fred Ottenburg entered, clad in a long, fur-lined coat,
holding a checked-cloth hat in his hand, his cheeks and
eyes bright with the outdoor cold. The two men met before
Archie's desk and their handclasp was longer than friend-
ship prompts except in regions where the blood warms and
quickens to meet the dry cold. Under the general keying-
up of the altitude, manners take on a heartiness, a vivacity,
that is one expression of the half-unconscious excitement
which Colorado people miss when they drop into lower
strata of air. The heart, we are told, wears out early in
that high atmosphere, but while it pumps it sends out no
sluggish stream. Our two friends stood gripping each other
by the hand and smiling.
"When did you get in, Fred? And what have you come
for?" Archie gave him a quizzical glance.
"I've come to find out what you think you're doing out
here," the younger man declared emphatically. "I want
to get next, I do. When can you see me?"
"Anything on to-night? Then suppose you dine with
me. Where can I pick you up at five-thirty?"
"Bixby's office, general freight agent of the Burlington."
Ottenburg began to button his overcoat and drew on his
gloves. "I've got to have one shot at you before I go,
Archie. Didn't I tell you Pinky Alden was a cheap squirt?"
Alden's backer laughed and shook his head. "Oh, he's
worse than that, Fred. It isn't polite to mention what he
is, outside of the Arabian Nights. I guessed you'd come
to rub it into me."
Ottenburg paused, his hand on the doorknob, his high
color challenging the doctor's calm. "I'm disgusted with
you, Archie, for training with such a pup. A man of your
experience!"
"Well, he's been an experience," Archie muttered. "I'm
not coy about admitting it, am I?"
Ottenburg flung open the door. "Small credit to you.
Even the women are out for capital and corruption, I hear.
Your Governor's done more for the United Breweries in
six months than I've been able to do in six years. He's the
lily-livered sort we're looking for. Good-morning."
That afternoon at five o'clock Dr. Archie emerged from
the State House after his talk with Governor Alden, and
crossed the terrace under a saffron sky. The snow, beaten
hard, was blue in the dusk; a day of blinding sunlight had
not even started a thaw. The lights of the city twinkled
pale below him in the quivering violet air, and the dome of
the State House behind him was still red with the light
from the west. Before he got into his car, the doctor paused
to look about him at the scene of which he never tired.
Archie lived in his own house on Colfax Avenue, where
he had roomy grounds and a rose garden and a conserva-
tory. His housekeeping was done by three Japanese boys,
devoted and resourceful, who were able to manage Archie's
dinner parties, to see that he kept his engagements, and to
make visitors who stayed at the house so comfortable that
they were always loath to go away.
Archie had never known what comfort was until he
became a widower, though with characteristic delicacy, or
dishonesty, he insisted upon accrediting his peace of mind
to the San Felipe, to Time, to anything but his release from
Mrs. Archie.
Mrs. Archie died just before her husband left Moonstone
and came to Denver to live, six years ago. The poor wo-
man's fight against dust was her undoing at last. One
summer day when she was rubbing the parlor upholstery
with gasoline,--the doctor had often forbidden her to use
it on any account, so that was one of the pleasures she
seized upon in his absence,--an explosion occurred. No-
body ever knew exactly how it happened, for Mrs. Archie
was dead when the neighbors rushed in to save her from the
burning house. She must have inhaled the burning gas and
died instantly.
Moonstone severity relented toward her somewhat after
her death. But even while her old cronies at Mrs. Smiley's
millinery store said that it was a terrible thing, they added
that nothing but a powerful explosive COULD have killed
Mrs. Archie, and that it was only right the doctor should
have a chance.
Archie's past was literally destroyed when his wife died.
The house burned to the ground, and all those material
reminders which have such power over people disappeared
in an hour. His mining interests now took him to Denver
so often that it seemed better to make his headquarters
there. He gave up his practice and left Moonstone for
good. Six months afterward, while Dr. Archie was living
at the Brown Palace Hotel, the San Felipe mine began to
give up that silver hoard which old Captain Harris had
always accused it of concealing, and San Felipe headed the
list of mining quotations in every daily paper, East and
West. In a few years Dr. Archie was a very rich man.
His mine was such an important item in the mineral out-
put of the State, and Archie had a hand in so many of the
new industries of Colorado and New Mexico, that his poli-
tical influence was considerable. He had thrown it all, two
years ago, to the new reform party, and had brought about
the election of a governor of whose conduct he was now
heartily ashamed. His friends believed that Archie himself
had ambitious political plans.
