So Hal hurried off, and climbed the street which led to the superintendent's house, a concrete bungalow set upon a little elevation overlooking the camp. He rang the bell, and the door opened, and in the entrance stood his brother. Edward Warner was eight years older than Hal; the perfect type of the young American business man. His figure was erect and athletic, his features were regular and strong, his voice, his manner, everything about him spoke of quiet decision, of energy precisely directed. As a rule, he was a model of what the tailor's art could do, but just now there was something abnormal about his attire as well as his manner.
Hal's anxiety had been increasing all the way up the street. “What's the matter with Dad?” he cried.
“Dad's all right,” was the answer—“that is, for the moment.”
“Then what—?”
“Peter Harrigan's on his way back from the East. He's due in Western City to-morrow. You can see that something will be the matter with Dad unless you quit this business at once.”
Hal had a sudden reaction from his fear. “So that's all!” he exclaimed.
His brother was gazing at the young miner, dressed in sooty blue overalls, his face streaked with black, his wavy hair all mussed. “You wired me you were going to leave here, Hal!”
“So I was; but things happened that I couldn't foresee. There's a strike.”
“Yes; but what's that got to do with it?” Then, with exasperation in his voice, “For God's sake, Hal, how much farther do you expect to go?”
Hal stood for a few moments, looking at his brother. Even in a tension as he was, he could not help laughing. “I know how all this must seem to you, Edward. It's a long story; I hardly know how to begin.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Edward, drily.
And Hal laughed again. “Well, we agree that far, at any rate. What I was hoping was that we could talk it all over quietly, after the excitement was past. When I explain to you about conditions in this place—”
But Edward interrupted. “Really, Hal, there's no use of such an argument. I have nothing to do with conditions in Peter Harrigan's camps.”
The smile left Hal's face. “Would you have preferred to have me investigate conditions in the Warner camps?” Hal had tried to suppress his irritation, but there was simply no way these two could get along. “We've had our arguments about these things, Edward, and you've always had the best of me—you could tell me I was a child, it was presumptuous of me to dispute your assertions. But now—well, I'm a child no longer, and we'll have to meet on a new basis.”
Hal's tone, more than his words, made an impression. Edward thought before he spoke. “Well, what's your new basis?”
“Just now I'm in the midst of a strike, and I can hardly stop to explain.”
“You don't think of Dad in all this madness?”
“I think of Dad, and of you too, Edward; but this is hardly the time—”
“If ever in the world there was a time, this is it!”
Hal groaned inwardly. “All right,” he said, “sit down. I'll try to give you some idea how I got swept into this.”
He began to tell about the conditions he had found in this stronghold of the “G. F. C.” As usual, when he talked about it, he became absorbed in its human aspects; a fervour came into his tone, he was carried on, as he had been when he tried to argue with the officials in Pedro. But his eloquence was interrupted, even as it had been then; he discovered that his brother was in such a state of exasperation that he could not listen to a consecutive argument.
It was the old, old story; it had been thus as far back as Hal could remember. It seemed one of the mysteries of nature, how she could have brought two such different temperaments out of the same parentage. Edward was practical and positive; he knew what he wanted in the world, and he knew how to get it; he was never troubled with doubts, nor with self-questioning, nor with any other superfluous emotions; he could not understand people who allowed that sort of waste in their mental processes. He could not understand people who got “swept into things.”
In the beginning, he had had with Hal the prestige of the elder brother. He was handsome as a young Greek god, he was strong and masterful; whether he was flying over the ice with sure, strong strokes, or cutting the water with his glistening shoulders, or bringing down a partridge with the certainty and swiftness of a lightning stroke, Edward was the incarnation of Success. When he said that one's ideas were “rot,” when he spoke with contempt of “mollycoddles”—then in............