n from the ground
up. I ain't any too strong for that New York bunch of capitalists back
of Mac, but I've got to give it to him that he's all there without
leaning on anybody."

"I've heard that he's a domineering man--rides roughshod over others.
Is that right, Mr. Strong?"

"He's a bear for getting his own way," grinned the little miner. "If you
won't get out of his road he peels your hide off and hangs it up to dry.
But I can't help liking him. He's big every way you take him. He'll
stand the acid, Mac will."

"Do you mean that he's square--honest?"

"You've said two things, my friend," answered Strong dryly. "He's
square. If he tells you anything, don't worry because he ain't put down
his John Hancock before a notary. He'll see it through to a finish--to
a fighting finish if he has to. Don't waste any time looking for fat or
yellow streaks in Mac. They ain't there. Nobody ever heard him squeal
yet and what's more nobody ever will."

"No wonder men like him."

"But when you say honest--Hell, no! Not the way you define honesty
down in the States. He's a grabber, Mac is. Better not leave anything
valuable around unless you've got it spiked to the floor. He takes what
he wants."

"What does he look like?" asked Gordon.

"Oh, I don't know." Strong hesitated, while he searched for words to
show the picture in his mind. "Big as a house--steps out like a buck
in the spring--blue-gray eyes that bore right through you."

"How old?"

"Search me. You never think of age when you're looking at him.
Forty-five, mebbe--or fifty--I don't know."

"Married?"

"No-o." Hanford Strong nodded in the direction of the Kusiak circle.
"They say he's going to marry Mrs. Mallory. She's the one with the red
hair."

It struck young Elliot that the miner was dismissing Mrs. Mallory in too
cavalier a fashion. She was the sort of woman at whom men look twice,
and then continue to look while she appears magnificently unaware of it.
Her hair was not red, but of a lustrous bronze, amazingly abundant,
and dressed in waves with the careful skill of a coiffeur. Half-shut,
smouldering eyes had met his for an instant at dinner across the table
and had told him she was a woman subtle and complex. Slightest shades
of meaning she could convey with a lift of the eyebrow or an intonation
of the musical voice. If she was already fencing with the encroaching
years there was little evidence of it in her opulent good looks. She had
manifestly spec