His sensations when he read the letter are not easy to describe. There was more than mere business curtness in the denial. There was actual unfriendliness. Furthermore, it contained an ultimatum to the effect that if the season's work was unsuccessful they would accept an offer which they had had for their stock.
With Helen's warning still fresh in his mind, Bruce understood the situation in one illuminating flash. Under the circumstances, no one but Sprudell would want to buy the stock. Obviously Sprudell had gotten in touch with the stockholders and managed somehow to poison their minds. This was the way, then, that he intended taking his revenge!
Harrah's secretary had written Bruce in response to his last appeal that Harrah had been badly hurt in an aeroplane accident in France and that it would not be possible to communicate with him for months perhaps. This was a blow, for Bruce counted him his only friend.
Bruce had neither the time nor money to go East and try to undo the harm Sprudell had done, and, furthermore, little heart for the task of setting himself right with people so ready to believe.
There was just one thing that remained for Bruce to do. He could use the amount he had saved from his small salary as general manager and continue the work as long as the money lasted. When this was gone he was done. In any event it meant that he must face the winter there alone. If the machinery was still not in working order when he came to the end of his resources it meant that he was stranded, flat broke, unable even to go outside and struggle.
In his desperation he sometimes thought of appealing to his father. The amount he required was insignificant compared to what he knew his father's yearly income must be. He doubted if even Harrah's fortune was larger than the one represented by his father's land and herds; but just as often as he thought of this way out just so often he realized that there were some things he could not do--not even for Helen Dunbar--not even to put his proposition through.
That humiliation would be too much. To go back begging after all these years--no, no, he could not do it to save his life! He would meet the pay-roll with his own checks so long as he had a cent, and hope for the best until he knew there was no best.
The end of his rope was painfully close the day Banule announced, after frequent testings, that they might start.
During short intervals of pumping, Bruce had been able by ground-sluicing to work off a considerable area of top soil and now that the machinery was declared to be ready for a steady run he could set the scrapers at once in the red gravel streak that contained the "pay."