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Title: The Parowan Bonanza

Author: B. M. Bower

Release Date: April 1, 2019 [EBook #59179]

Language: English

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[Illustration: He packed an emergency camp outfit on Wise One, and
set out quite happily, walking beside Doris.

FRONTISPIECE.    _See page 103._]


The
Parowan Bonanza

BY

B. M. BOWER

AUTHOR OF

CHIP OF THE FLYING U,
THE TRAIL OF THE WHITE MULE,
STARR OF THE DESERT, Etc.

FRONTISPIECE BY
FRANK TENNEY JOHNSON

[Illustration]

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America


_Copyright, 1923_,
By Little, Brown, and Company.

_All rights reserved_

Published August, 1923
Reprinted November, 1923



Printed in the United States of America


CONTENTS

CHAPTER                                        PAGE

    I Hopeful Bill Dale                           3

   II Music Hath Charms                          16

  III Luella Announces                           29

   IV Good, Lively Prospect                      41

    V Strangers in Camp                          50

   VI Bill Grows Sentimental                     65

  VII What Drives Prospectors Crazy              74

 VIII "Monte Cristo Would Enjoy This!"           86

   IX A "Hint" from Doris                        96

    X "We're Rich, Bill, Dear"                  108

   XI Mr. Rayfield Gives Advice                 119

  XII A Man Shouldn't Mix Business with Love    130

 XIII Bill Learns About Women from 'er          146

  XIV Baker Cole                                159

   XV "Mary's Going to Have a Home!"            171

  XVI So Bill Goes Back                         180

 XVII Bill Gives the Public Mind a Lift         191

XVIII The Yarn Al Freeman Told                  205

  XIX "There'll Be More to Come of It"          219

   XX Luella Entertains                         229

  XXI Bill and the Tame Bandits                 240

 XXII Bill Buys Parowan                         255

XXIII Bill is Back Where He Started             269

 XXIV The Town That Was                         282

  XXV Hopeless Bill Dale                        291

 XXVI Bill Acquires a Cook                      295


THE
PAROWAN BONANZA



CHAPTER ONE

HOPEFUL BILL DALE


To those who do not know the desert, the word usually conjures a
picture of hot, waterless wastes of sand made desolate by sparse,
withered gray sage more depressing than no growth at all; blighted by
rattlesnakes and scorpions and the bleached bones of men from which
lean coyotes go skulking away in the brazen heat that comes with the
dawn; a place where men go mad with thirst and die horribly, babbling
the while of mountain brooks and the cool blur of lakes shining blue
in the distance, painted treacherously there by the desert mirage.

Sometimes the desert is like that in certain places and at certain
seasons of the year, but the men who know it best forgive the desert
its trespasses, and love it for its magnificent distances, always
beautiful, always changing their panorama of lights and shadows on
uptilted mesas and deep, gray-green valleys. Such men yield to the
thrall of desert sorcery that paints wonderful, translucent tints of
blue, violet and purple on all the mountains there against the sky.
They love the desert nights when the stars come down in friendly
fashion to gaze tranquilly upon them as they sit beside their camp
fires and smoke and dream, and see rapturous visions of great wealth
born of that mental mirage which is but another bit of desert
enchantment.

Bill Dale was such a man. Hopeful Bill, men called him, with the
corners of their mouths tipped down. Bill loved the desert, loved to
wander over it with his two burros waddling under full packs of grub
and mining tools and dynamite. He loved to pry and peck into some
mineral outcropping in a far canyon where no prospector had been
before him. And though he sometimes cursed the heat and the wind and
brackish water, where he expected a clear, cold spring, he loved the
desert, nevertheless, and called it home.

Men jibed at his unquenchable optimism and mistook the man behind his
twinkling eyes for a rainbow chaser, mirage-mad in a mild way. For
even in Nevada, where the hills have made many a man a millionaire,
they laugh at the seeker and call failure after him until he has found
what he seeks. Then they want his friendship and a share in his good
fortune; and this merely because Nevada is peopled--very thinly--with
human beings and not by gods or saints.

Occasionally, when Bill Dale came to town for fresh supplies and mail,
some one would wonder why a great, strapping fellow like Hopeful
didn't go to work. Perhaps that was because Hopeful carried a safety
razor in his pack, and had the knack of looking well-groomed on a pint
of water, a clean shirt, an aluminum comb and six inches of mirror.
Your orthodox prospector (at least in fiction) promises himself a bath
and a clean shave when he strikes it rich, and frequently is made to
forego the luxury for years.

Men liked Hopeful Bill, but they thought he was a shiftless cuss who
would never amount to anything, since he had taken to the burro trail.
A few remembered that Hopeful's father had been unlucky in a boom when
Hopeful was just a kid. They thought it was a bad thing to have the
legend of a gold mine in the family. Personally they called him a good
scout,--and that was because they could borrow money from him, if he
had any, and need not fear the embarrassment of being asked to repay
it. They could tell their private troubles to Bill and be sure that he
would never betray the confidence. But it never occurred to any man
that knew him that Hopeful Bill Dale might now and then need money,
or sympathy, or some one besides his menagerie to tell his troubles
to.

It was the menagerie that belittled Hopeful Bill Dale in the eyes of
his fellows. Commonplace souls they were, their brains dust-dry in
that cranny where imagination should flourish. They could not see why
any grown man should carry a green parrot and a great, gray, desert
turtle around with him wherever he went. They were willing to concede
the harmlessness of the fuzzy-faced Airedale, since any man is
entitled to own a dog if he wants one. But they could not understand a
man who would call a dog Hezekiah; which was not a dog's name at all.
The mournful, hairy-chopped Hezekiah was therefore a walking proof of
Hopeful Bill Dale's eccentricity. And as all the world knows, a man
must be rich before he dare be different from his fellows.

Of course, they argued in Goldfield, any grown man that would keep a
turtle on a string--tied firmly through a hole bored in the tail of
its shell--might be expected to call it Sister Mitchell and claim that
it had a good Methodist face. Who ever heard of a turtle having a
face? And there was the parrot, that cooed lovingly against Bill's
cheek and made little kissing sounds with its beak,--the same beak
that had taken a chunk out of a stranger's hand, swearing volubly at
her victim afterward. Even if Goldfield could overlook the parrot,
there was its name to damn Hopeful Bill Dale finally and completely.
Couldn't call it Polly, which is the natural, normal name for a
parrot! No, he had to name the thing Luella. Add to that Bill's
burros, that answered gravely to the names Wise One and Angelface.
Could any man know these things and still take Bill Dale seriously?

Goldfield shook its head--behind Bill's back--and said he was a nice,
likable fellow, but--a little bit "off" in some ways.

So there you have him, according to the estimate of his acquaintances:
A great, good-natured, fine-looking man in his early thirties; a man
always ready to listen to a tale of woe or to put his hand in his
pocket and give of what he had, nor question the worthiness of the
cause; but a man who seemed content to wander through the hills
prospecting, when he might have made a success of some business more
certain of yielding a good living--and mediocrity; a man with a queer
kink somewhere in his make-up that prevented his taking life
seriously.

Prospectors were usually men who, having failed, through age or other
cause, to make good at anything else, took to burrowing in the hills
and pecking at rocks and dreaming. If the habit fixed itself upon them
they became plain desert rats, crack-brained and useless for any other
vocation. Hopeful Bill Dale was too young, too vigorous to have the
name "desert rat" laid upon him,--yet. But it was tacitly agreed that
he was in a fair way to become a desert rat, if he did not pull up
short and turn his mind to something else. The purposeless life he was
leading would "get" him in a few more years, they prophesied sagely.

One day in spring Bill Dale walked behind his burros into Goldfield
and outfitted for a long trip. Had any one examined closely Bill's
pack loads, he would have guessed that Hopeful Bill had a camp
established somewhere in the wilderness and was in for all the grub
his two burros and a borrowed one could carry.

The storekeeper knew, as he weighed out sugar, rice, beans, dried
fruit (prunes, raisins and apricots mostly), that Bill was buying with
a careful regard for the maximum nourishment coupled with the minimum
weight. For instance, Bill bought five pounds of black tea, though he
loved coffee with true American fervor. Rolled oats he also bought,--a
twenty-five pound sack. There was a great deal of nourishment in
rolled oats, properly cooked. And when Bill called for two large cans
of beef extract, the storekeeper looked at him knowingly.

"Goin' to develop something you've struck, hey?" he guessed with
unconscious presumption.

"Going to stay till the grub's low, anyway," Bill drawled
imperturbably. "Hazing burros over the trail is going to be hot work,
from now on until fall. It's cooler in the hills. I'm taking out a
rented burro that will come back alone. I figure this grubstake ought
to run me until cool weather."

"Got a pretty good claim?" Storekeepers in mining towns are likely to
be inquisitive.

"Can't say as I have," Bill grinned. "Open for engagements with old
Dame Fortune, though. Kinda hoping, too, that she don't send her
daughter, instead, to make a date with me."

"Her daughter?" The storekeeper was one of those who had desert dust
in the folds of his brain. "Who's she?"

Bill looked at him soberly, rolling a smoke with fingers smoother and
better kept than prospectors usually could show.

"Mean to tell me you never met Miss Fortune yet?" His lips were
serious; as for his eyes, one never could tell. His eyes always had a
twinkle. "She can sure keep a man guessing," he added. "I like her
mother better, myself."

"Oh. Er--he-he! Pretty good," testified the storekeeper dubiously.
Something queer about a fellow that springs things you never heard of
before, he was thinking. The storekeeper liked best the familiar jokes
he had heard all his life. He didn't have to think out their meaning.

"Hey! Cut that out! Bill! Take a look at that!" A voice outside called
imperiously, and Bill swung toward the door.

"What is it, Luella?"

"Take a look at that! Git a move on!"

In the doorway Bill stopped. Luella was walking pigeon-toed up and
down the back of Wise One, where she usually perched while Bill
traveled the desert. Three half-grown boys were crowding close, trying
to reach the string of Sister Mitchell, who had crawled under the
store steps. The string was fastened to the crotch of Wise One's pack
saddle, and Wise One was circling slowly, keeping his heels toward the
enemy. Luella's tail was spread fanwise, showing the red which even
Nature seems to recognize as a danger signal. Her eyes were yellow
flames, her neck feathers were ruffled. By all these signs Luella was
not to be trifled with.

"Cut that out! Hez! Here, Hez! Where the hell is that dog? Hezekiah!
Bill! Come alive, come alive!" Up and down, up and down, one foot
lifted over the other, her eyes on the giggling boys, Luella
expostulated and swore.

Bill stepped outside, throwing away the burnt stub of a match. The
three boys looked at him and fled, though Bill was not half so
dangerous as Luella or Wise One, either of which would have sent them
yelping in another minute.

"Hez! Here, Hez! Where the hell's that dog?" Luella called again
impatiently and wheeled, stepping up relievedly upon Bill's
outstretched finger. "Lord, what a world!" she muttered pensively, and
subsided under Bill's caressing hand.

Bill dragged Sister Mitchell from under the steps and swung her, head
down, to the porch. He sat down beside her, his knees drawn up, Luella
perched upon one of them.

"Add two cartons of Durham, will you?" Bill called over his shoulder
to the storekeeper and turned back to his perturbed pets.

Sister Mitchell thrust forth a cautious head and craned a skinny neck,
looking for fresh alarms. Luella tilted her head and eyed the turtle
speculatively. "Cut that out!" she commanded harshly, and Sister
Mitchell drew in her head timorously before she realized that it was
only parrot talk and not to be taken seriously.

The storekeeper asked Bill a question which necessitated Bill's
personal examination of two brands of bacon; wherefore, he placed
Luella on the porch beside Sister Mitchell and went inside to finish
making up his load of supplies. When he emerged with a sack of flour
on his shoulder and three sides of bacon under one arm, Luella was
riding up the platform on Sister Mitchell's back and telling her to
"git a move on." At the other end of the porch a small audience stood
laughing at the performance.

"What'll you take for that parrot, Hopeful?" a man asked, grinning.

"Same price you ask for your oldest kid," Bill retorted, and returned
for another load from the store.

"Make that strike yet?" another called, as Bill came out with his arms
full.

"You bet! Solid ledge of gold, Jim. Knock it off in chunks with a
single-jack and gadget. Bring you a hunk next trip in--if I can think
of it."

"Hate to hang by the heels till you do," Jim retorted.

"Hate to have you," Bill agreed placidly, stepping over Luella and her
mount that he might deposit his load on the edge of the porch.

"What yuh got out there, anyway?" Jim persisted curiously. "You aren't
packing all that grub out in the desert just to eat in the shade of a
Joshuway tree. What yuh got?"

"Hopes." Bill bent and slid a sack from his shoulder to the pile of
supplies. "Outcropping of lively looking rock, Jim. Good indications.
I'm hoping it'll turn out something, maybe, when I get into it a
ways."

"Get an assay on it?" Jim's curiosity was fading perceptibly. The same
old story: lively looking rock, indications; desert rats all came in
with that elusive encouragement.

"Trace of silver, two dollars in gold," Hopeful Bill replied. "I'm
hoping it'll run into higher values when I hit the contact."

"What contact you got?" Jim's tone was plainly disparaging. "You can't
bank too strong on values at contact, Bill."

"Well, this looks pretty fair," Bill argued mildly. "A showing of
quartzite,--if it's in place; which I'm digging to find out. Nothing
lost but a little sweat and powder, if I don't hit it. I can eat as
cheaply in the hills as I can here. Cheaper." From under his dusty hat
brim he sent a glance toward the restaurant across the street. "And I
know it's clean. I like to have eat a fly, this noon."

"Why didn't you try the Waffle Parlor? They've got screens."

"My own cooking suits me just fine," Bill returned amiably.

"All right, if you like that kinda life," Jim carped. "I should think
you'd want to get _into_ something, Bill. You aren't any has-been----"

"Nope, I'm a never-was," Bill retorted shamelessly. "And a
going-to-be," he added with naïve assurance. "You mark that down in
your book, Jim. Some day you're going to brag about knowing Bill Dale.
Some day your tone's going to be hearty and your hand'll be out when
you see me coming. You guys will all of you be saying you knew me
_when_."

The group bent backward to let the laughs out full and free. Into the
midst of their mirth Luella came scrabbling with her pigeon-toed walk,
her tail spread wide and her throat ruffled.

"You cut that out!" she shrieked angrily. "Hez! Here, Hez! Where the
hell's that dog? Git outa here! Git a move on."

Bill grabbed her before she succeeded in shedding blood.

"Luella doesn't like the tone of that applause," he observed, holding
her close to his chest while he smoothed her ruffled feathers.
"Luella's a sensitive bird, and she stands up for her folks."

With three loaded burros nipping along before him, the whiskered
Hezekiah slouching at his heels, and Luella and Sister Mitchell
riding serenely the pack of Wise One, Bill left the town and struck
off up the hill by a trail he knew that would cut off a great elbow of
the highway, which was dusty and rutted with the passing of great,
heavy ore wagons and automobiles loaded with fortune-hunters and camp
equipment. At the crest of the long slope the burros stopped to
breathe, and Bill turned and stood gazing back at the camp whose first
fever was already cooling a bit, leaving the restless ones a bit bored
and eager for some new strike in a fresh district, with the whooping
boom times that must inevitably follow.

"Laugh, darn you!" Bill figuratively addressed Jim and his companions
down there in the town. "You're bone from your necks up, or you'd see
plumb through my talk--and be on my trail like ants after a leaky
syrup can. Go ahead and laugh, and call me a fool behind my back! You
won't take the notion to follow me, anyway."

"Lord, what a world!" chuckled Luella, scrambling for fresh foothold
on the canvas pack as Wise One started on with a lurch.

"You're dead right, old girl," Bill agreed; and went on, grinning at
something hidden in his thoughts.




CHAPTER TWO

MUSIC HATH CHARMS


Just before sundown, while Bill and his burros and Hezekiah were
plodding down the highway toward the sporadic camp called Cuprite, a
big touring car came roaring up behind and passed Hopeful Bill in a
smothering cloud of yellow dust. Bill observed that it was loaded with
luggage and stared after it with that aimless interest which the empty
desert breeds in men. A coyote on a hilltop, a strange track in the
trail, human beings traveling that way,--it matters little what
trivial thing breaks the monotony of plodding through desert country.

Bill could remember when this same road was peopled with men rushing
here and there after elusive fortune. Good men and bad, honest men and
thieves, the dust never settled to lie long upon the yellow trail.
That last two years had made a difference. The tide was fast ebbing,
and men were rushing elsewhere in search of the millions they coveted.

"Get a move on!" Bill called to Wise One, at the head of the pack
train, with the strange burro tied behind at a sufficient length of
rope to protect him from Wise One's heels, which were likely to lift
unexpectedly. Luella repeated the command three times without
stopping, and the burros shuffled a bit faster in the lowering dust
cloud kicked up by the speeding car.

Farther on, Wise One stopped short, backing up from an object in the
trail. Bill went forward to investigate, and lifted from the ground a
black leather case such as musicians use to hold band instruments.
Bill undid the catches and looked in upon a shining, silver object
with a gold-lined, bell-shaped mouth and many flat discs all up and
down its length. He gazed up the road, already veiled with the
purplish haze that comes to the desert before dusk, when the sun has
dipped behind a mountain. The car was gone, hidden completely from
sight by a low ridge.

"They'll be back," Bill observed tranquilly, and tied the case
securely upon the pack of Angelface. "They're bound to miss a thing
like that. Anyway, I'll probably run across 'em somewhere."

"Hate to hang till yuh do," remarked Luella, who had evidently been
adding to her repertoire in Goldfield while no one thought she was
taking heed; which is the way of parrots the world over.

"I don't know about that, now," Bill grinned. "Anyway, if it was mine,
I know I'd miss it. I always did want to play a horn."

"Aw, cut it out!" Luella advised him shrewishly. "Git a move on!"
Which pertinent retort may possibly explain why Hopeful Bill Dale
looked upon the parrot as a real companion. He swore that the bird
understood what he said and conversed intelligently, so far as her
vocabulary permitted. And her vocabulary, while simple, seemed
sufficient for her needs.

Instead of turning aside to a certain spring and camping there for the
night, Bill camped near the road where he could not miss seeing and
being seen, if any came that way. It was quite a tramp to the spring,
so he took a couple of desert water bags and mounted Wise One, leaving
the other two burros to follow, and trusting his supplies to the care
of Hezekiah and the parrot.

He was not approached that night, nor the next day. Cars passed him,
it is true, hurrying through dust clouds from either direction; but
never the automobile that had lost the horn. So Bill arrived, in the
course of time, at his camp, richer--or poorer, according to
viewpoint--by one band instrument of doubtful name and unknown
possibilities.

In spring the desert is beautiful. Bill loved the desert flowers,
vivid pinks and blues and yellows, dainty of form, sweet as honeycomb.
He loved the desert lights, as delicately vivid as were the flowers
growing out of the sandy soil, shyly snuggled against some stiff,
scraggy bush. Cottontails romped through the sage in the afterglow
that lingers long in that high altitude, and Bill let them go
unmolested, and gave Hezekiah a lecture. He did not believe in killing
just because one can, and there was meat in camp already. From the
juniper bushes above the spring the quail were calling.
"Shut-that-door! Shut-that-door!"--or so Bill and Luella interpreted
the call. Farther up on the hillside, doves were crying mournfully.
And Bill knew that higher, on the very top of the butte, mountain
sheep, deer and antelope were hiding their bandy-legged young away
from the prowling coyotes and "link cats" that were less conscientious
than Bill when the chance came for a killing.

Yet this was the desert, against which men rail. There was no
mistaking. Out there stood a barrel cactus, almost within reach of a
gaunt yucca whose awkward, spiny limbs were rigidly upheld like
bloated arms,--colloquially called Joshua trees because they seemed
always to be imploring the sun. Down in the valley a dry lake lay
baked yellow, hard as cement, with dust devils whirling dizzily down
its bald length when Bill looked that way. On the map you will see
that valley. It is officially known as the Amargosa Desert. And over
the ridge which wore a mystic veil of blended violet and amethyst,
Death Valley lay crouched low amongst the hills. The maps call that
amethyst and violet pile the Funeral Mountains; and away to the east,
Bill could see the faint blue line of Skull Mountains and the Specter
Range standing bold behind the Skeleton Hills; proof enough that this
was the desert, since it bore the sinister names given it by those who
knew too little and dared too much.

It could be cruel,--but not crueller than the cities. It could be
lonely, though not so lonely as a multitude. The air was clean and
sweet and of that heady quality that only altitude can give. Bill
squatted on his heels by his camp fire, just about four thousand feet
above sea level,--higher than that above the floor of Death Valley,
whose rim he could see, whose poison springs he knew, whose terrible
breath he had drawn into his nostrils.

From now on the geography will remain closed and you must take my word
for it. And when I tell you that the great, blunt-topped butte behind
him was Parowan Peak, don't look for it on the map; you'll never find
it. It's a great, wild country, a beautiful, savage country, and if
you don't love it you will fear it greatly. And fear it is that rouses
the sleeping devil of the desert and sets the bones of men bleaching
under the arid sky.

Hopeful Bill Dale knew the desert, and loved it, and made friends with
it. He plucked a bright red "Indian paintbrush" from beside a rock and
held it up to Luella, watching him cock-eyed from her crude perch of
juniper laid across two forked sticks driven into the sand. Luella
took the flower in one claw, looked it over and dropped it
disdainfully.

"Aw, cut it out! Let's eat," she suggested.

"You're on," Bill replied amiably, turning fried potatoes out of the
frying pan. "Come and get it, old girl."

Luella was not a flying bird, except under stress of great emotion.
Now she leaned head downward, her beak closing upon a knob where a
small branch had been lopped off the stick. Turning like an acrobat,
she went down with the aid of beak and claws, and pigeon-toed over to
Bill's crude table, crawled upon a convenient rock and waited solemnly
for her first helping of fried potato, which she ate daintily, holding
it in one claw.

"I've got a surprise for you, old girl," Bill began, when the edge of
their hunger had dulled a bit. "That horn we picked up in the
road,--it's mine now, by right of discovery. You saw how I stuck to
the Goldfield road and made an extra day's journey of the trip, just
in case that car came back, hunting for the horn. Lord knows where
they are, by now. So I figure the thing belongs to me. After supper,
I'm going to open her up and give you some music."

"Hate to hang till yuh do," Luella observed pessimistically. "Let's
eat."

Bill dipped a piece of bread in his coffee and gave it to her, unmoved
by her pessimism. "One thing a fellow needs out here alone is
distraction," he went on. "You're getting so you know more than I
do--leave you to tell it--and you're more human than lots of folks.
You've reached the point where I can't seem to teach you anything
more, Luella. You could almost hold down a claim alone, except for the
cooking and maybe swinging a single-jack. So I figure a little
diversion will come in about right."

"You're on," said Luella. "Git a move on."

So that is how Hopeful Bill Dale conceived the idea of becoming a
musician, thus making use of the opportunity which Providence--or
something not so kind--had thrown in his way. It may seem a trivial
thing, but trivial things have a fashion of tripping one's feet in the
race for happiness, or perchance proving to be the one factor that
makes success certain. Bill washed his dishes and tidied his camp, and
then he opened the instrument case and for the first time removed the
shining thing within. Luella, once more back on her perch, watched him
distrustfully.

"Luck's own baby boy!" he ejaculated under his breath. "Here's a book
goes with it. 'Progressive Method for the Saxophone.' Saxophone, hunh?
I always did want to learn one, Luella; believe it or not. Well, let's
go."

"Aw, cut it out!" Luella advised him gloomily, but Bill was absorbed
in putting together the instrument and in reading certain directions
on the first page of the book.

Followed a muttered monologue, accompanied by certain unusual grimaces
and gestures.

"'Upper and lower lips slightly over the teeth--chin must be
down--lips drawn back as when laughing.' I got that, all right. 'Put
the mouthpiece into the mouth a little less than halfway.'" Goggling
down at the page, Bill obeyed,--or tried to. When he recovered from
that experiment, he read in silence and looked up at Luella puzzled.

"Now if you were human, you could maybe explain to me how a fellow is
going to breathe steadily without making use of his nose, mouth, ears
or eyes," he hazarded. "Your mouth is full of saxophone to your
palate and past it, and you mustn't breathe through your nose, because
that looks bad, and your eyes must follow the notes and it's against
the rule to puff out your cheeks, which is unbecoming. I figure,
Luella, a man's got to curl up his toes and _die_ till he's through
playing. Hunh?"

"Git a move on! Come alive, come alive!"

"Oh, well,--" said Bill, and began again.

Nothing happened, save imminent death from strangulation. Bill looked
foolishly at the instrument. Once more he placed certain fingers
carefully upon certain keys, flattened his lips to a fixed, painful
grin, swallowed as much mouthpiece as was possible without choking
himself to death, and blew until his eyes popped. Sister Mitchell came
slowly forward and stood with her skinny gray neck stretched toward
Bill, her melancholy eyes regarding curiously the long silver thing in
Bill's tense embrace. Hezekiah came up and squatted on his stump of a
tail, his ugly, hairy face tilted sidewise while he stared. Bill's
family were always keenly interested in everything that concerned
Bill, if it were only a new label on a can of tomatoes.

"Didn't get a rise out of it yet," Bill apologized embarrassedly, "but
I will. I've heard fellows warble on these brutes till your heart
fair melts in your chest. What they can do, I can do. A little music,
evenings, is what this camp needs."

In the dimming light he read the confusing instructions all over
again, engulfed the ebony mouthpiece within his carefully grinning
mouth, took a deep breath,--and something slipped. A terrific, deep
bass note rumbled forth quite unexpectedly, before Bill had fairly
begun to blow.

Bill jumped. Sister Mitchell disappeared precipitately into her shell,
Luella let out an oath which Bill only used under sudden overwhelming
emotion, and Hezekiah gave a howl and streaked it into the desert.

Bill recovered first, and on the whole he was pleased with himself. He
had gotten the hang of it by sheer accident, and he sat and made
terrible sounds while Luella paced up and down her perch with her tail
spread, cursing and imploring by turns.

She wronged Bill if she thought that Bill enjoyed his spasmodic
blattings and squeakings. He did not. He winced at every squawk, even
while he persisted doggedly in the uproar. Through discord only might
he hope to become a master of the melody he craved, wherefore he
endured the discord, thankful that no human being was near. It took
him all the next day to round up the burros, however, and Sister
Mitchell went into retirement in her shell and remained there
stubbornly.

Thereafter, the stars looked down upon a pathetic little desert comedy
enacted every night: The pathetic comedy of Bill Dale tying up his
burros and his dog and anchoring a gray desert turtle to a rock before
he sat down, with a dull-green instruction book before him on the
ground, its corners weighted with small rocks, and practiced dolefully
and indefatigably upon a silver-plated saxophone. As long as he could
see he would sit cross-legged, humped over his notes,--of which he
possessed a rudimentary knowledge learned in school. When darkness
blurred the staff, Bill would tootle up and down the scale to the
accompaniment of vituperous remarks from Luella and an occasional howl
from Hez.

Down deep in his heart there was a reason, which he would not divulge
to any one, much less Luella. Twenty miles away, in a vine-covered
ranch house that looked out upon the desert from under the branches of
cool, green cottonwoods, a certain Doris Hunter sang sweet old songs
sometimes in the twilight, and played a sketchy, pleasant little
accompaniment upon the piano. Bill knew no ecstasy sweeter than
sitting in the gloaming, staring dreamily up through the cottonwood
branches at the evening star, while Doris sang "Love's Old Sweet
Song."

The pathetic note in the little comedy, the note which his outraged
menagerie missed altogether, was the fact that Bill would sit for
hours, there under the stars, and try to play "Love's Old Sweet Song."
And while he tried patiently to make the notes come true, his heart
was away over the ridge and down in that little, vine-covered ranch
house, worshiping Doris Hunter while she sang.

A dream came to him every night while he played and watched the stars.
He dreamed of some day going down to the Hunter ranch, with some
perfectly convincing excuse for a visit. He would have the saxophone
tied on Wise One, who was more dependable in his habits than
Angelface, who was a devil. He would wait until after supper, when
Doris would finally settle down on the piano stool. Then he would
remember his saxophone and suggest nonchalantly that they try a few
little things together. Doris would round her eyes at him, and the
dimple would show in her left cheek when she begged him to bring it
in.

Then,--Bill's lips would smile in spite of the correct position of the
mouth, when he reached that point in his dream--then, after a little
talk, and the whole family gathering around to exclaim over the
beautiful instrument (which really was beautiful, in cold reality),
why, then Bill would suggest something, and Doris would strike a
preliminary chord or two, and Bill would follow her voice softly with
his music while she sang:

/P
    "Just a song at twi-light,
        When the lights ar-re low,
    A-and the flick'ring sha-adows,
        Sof-ftly come and go-o--"
P/

Bill's lips would soften, his eyes would grow luminous and very, very
tender. He would forget to play and would stare up into the gemmed
purple, and wonder, and dream, and hope.

After a long while, when Luella had tucked her head under her wing,
Bill would lay the saxophone carefully in its velvet nest and begin
absently to unlace his boots. Doris Hunter--the gold mine he meant to
find--had indeed almost found--"Love's Old Sweet Song"--the skill to
play while Doris sang; these things mingled indissolubly in his soul
while he slept and dreamed, shuttled through his waking mind while he
worked.

So this was the real Bill Dale, whom men called Hopeful Bill with
their mouths tipped down.




CHAPTER THREE

LUELLA ANNOUNCES


In the beginning of mining booms, accident and freaks of chance are
popularly supposed to play the leading rôle. A mule, for instance,
played fairy godmother when it let fly its heels and kicked a nub off
a ledge of fabulous richness in gold. A man threw a rock at a jack
rabbit, and then realized that the rock was heavier than it should be;
sought its mates and found a mine. Or a man takes an inadvertent slide
down a ledge and lands upon a bonanza.

These things do happen occasionally; and, being ready-made romance,
they are seized upon avidly by the teller of tales. So the public
comes to believe that chance, and chance alone, discovers the precious
minerals and leads men like blind children to the spot; a sort of
"Shut-your-eyes-and-open-your-mouth" game played by Fate.

In reality, more mines are found by careful prospecting than are ever
given to the world by sheer accident. More and more is science turning
prospector, and men go carefully, reading geologic formations,
following volcanic breaks and mineral outcroppings. Your desert
prospector may eat with his knife and forget to take off his hat in
the house, but he can talk you blind on intrusions and sedimentary
deposits and the dips, angles and faults of certain mineral formations
he knows. Chlorides, "bromides," sulphides,--these things are the shop
talk of desert and mountains. Men speak of one another with praise or
disparagement, as "knowing rock" or as not knowing rock. And the man
who does not know rock is the man who goes about praying for a mule to
kick the dirt off a gold outcropping for him.

Bill Dale knew rock. He had spent two years, more or less, prospecting
on the southern slope of Parowan, because there was a "break" running
across, and because, in the lower end of a wash that had many feeders
wrinkled into the mountainside, he had picked up a few pieces of
"float" carrying free gold in such quantity that it would mean a real
bonanza if he found it "in place," which means in a continuous vein
leading to the main body that produced it.

As a bystander he had observed the boom at Goldfield, Tonopah, and at
other lesser points. His father had been rich in a boom town for a few
weeks. Then he had been a broken, old pauper until he died.
Wherefore, Bill Dale did not want a premature boom, nor any boom at
all. He wanted to find the ledge or vein that had produced that float,
so that he would have something tangible to offer Doris Hunter,--in
case he ever found courage enough to offer her anything. He knew that
he was liked by the Hunters; but he also knew that as a prospective
husband for Doris he was never for one moment seriously considered.
Don Hunter, her father, was a stockman. He did not believe much in
mines, and he looked askance, from a business viewpoint, at any man
who spent good, working days in prospecting the desert. It was the
most insidious, the most hopeless form of gambling, according to Don
Hunter. He would rather see a man sit down to poker and play for a
living than to see him wallowing around like a badger, digging holes
in a sidehill looking for wealth.

Bill had done a great deal of pecking and prying, up this wash and
that. He believed he knew where the float had come from, but there
seemed to be an overburden of soil, probably the result of some
beating storm and consequent slide, which had covered the ledge that
had at one time been an outcropping. It was slow, tedious work, but
Bill was a patient man. Prospectors have to learn patience, or quit
the game.

Flaunting desert lilies, dainty blue bells, the deep magenta bloom of
the cacti gave way to the tiny pink and pale lavender blossoms that
cling close to the arid soil. The sky was brazen with heat, or it
turned deep shades of slate as the thunderheads poked over Parowan and
rumbled warningly at the desert. Bill worked on through the hot days
and practised scales and simple melodies in the evening, and quarreled
with Luella and confided to her many things which he would not want
repeated.

One sultry evening he brought into camp several pieces of rock and
held them where Luella could gaze upon certain telltale, yellow
specks. Bill's perspiring face glowed. His eyes were dancing with
something akin to mirth.

"We've struck it, old girl! What I've been looking for all this while.
Biggest thing yet, from the looks. We're _rich_, I tell you! Doggone,
thundering rich! You watch Parowan go on the map. Biggest thing in the
country. If I showed that rock in Goldfield, they'd be down here like
flies." He laid the rock down and broke a dry stick across his knee,
meaning to start a fire. But he was excited and kept on talking,--now
definitely to Luella, now to himself.

"It's the kind of thing I've been hunting. I knew it should be here
somewhere. This district is entitled to a big mine. It's got all the
earmarks. I've got her traced, now. That rock is in place, or I'm a
Chinaman. I tell you, old girl, we're rich! I've got a nugget in my
shirt pocket that I didn't show you, for fear you might swallow it."

"Aw, cut it out!" Luella snapped at him. She was a pessimistic bird,
as a rule.

Bill burrowed deeper and found more gold. Rock so rich that he could
break it up by hand and pan it in the spring, and glean gold enough
for another grubstake, more equipment. He was in no great hurry to
proclaim his fortune to the world, and he did not mean to show himself
in town until his grub was gone. Then he would make a trip, buy more
supplies, perhaps hire a man if he could find one whom he could trust.
He did not want the harpies to know about Parowan,--yet.

He relieved his inner excitement by talking to Luella, and by tootling
on the saxophone and dreaming of Doris Hunter, who did not seem quite
so unattainable, now that he had found the mine he had wanted to find
and was proving it richer than his most lavish expectations.

With the first discovery he had put up his location notices on three
claims, calling them simply Parowan Number One, Parowan Number Two and
Parowan Number Three. And in compliment to the girl of his dreams he
had located another, called it the Evening Star and signed Doris
Hunter's name as the locator. Which is a chivalrous custom observed
quite commonly among prospectors.

He did the location work on all four claims, put up the corner and
side-line monuments required by law, and then, having eaten most of
his supplies, he cached the remainder and started for Goldfield, his
mind at ease, his heart singing and his lips wearing an unconscious
half-smile all the way.

It was in Goldfield, while Bill was in the recorder's office, that the
news leaked out where it shouldn't. Luella, like others of her sex,
began talking, inspired by an audience of four men, one of whom was
Jim Lambert, who had betrayed some curiosity over Bill Dale's affairs
when Bill was last in town.

"Bill Dale's outfit. Hello, Luella," Jim greeted.

Luella looked down at him, seemed to recall having seen him before,
and began her pigeon-toed march up and down Wise One's spinal column.

"Boy, we've struck it rich!" she began, chuckling in vivid imitation
of Hopeful Bill's tone when he was particularly pleased. "Got her
traced now. Richest thing in Nevada. Goldfield can't show stuff like
this. Tell you, old girl, we're rich! Doggone, thunderin' rich! Can't
tell anybody. Don't want a boom. Git a move on! They'd be down here
like flies. Hez! Hez'll have a gold collar. Gold perch for you. Luck's
turned; luck's patting us on the back." Luella laughed, then, just as
Bill laughed.

Jim and his three companions had stood perfectly still, listening. Jim
turned his head and looked at the others, who stared back at him
inquiringly.

"Inside dope, boy, believe me." Jim plucked the nearest man by the
sleeve. "Bill Dale's parrot has give us the real dope on Bill, if you
want my opinion. Come on. We'll lay low, and I'll feel Bill out. He's
inside--recording claims, I'll bet. Anyway, I've got a claim to
record, come to think of it. I'll git all I can outa the recorder.
Bill Dale's parrot has tipped Bill's hand. I'll see the recorder."

They went away. Five minutes later, Bill came down the steps to his
burros and discovered Luella toeing it up and down, up and down,
practising new sets of words.

"Bill Dale's parrot has tipped Bill's hand. I'll see the recor'," she
muttered, over and over.

"You damned huzzy," Bill reproved her, when he had got the full
significance of her speech. He picked up Wise One's lead rope and went
thoughtfully down to the store.

"We'll lay low," Luella continued, bobbing her head as Wise One's
empty pack swayed and lurched under her feet. "Come on. We'll lay low.
I'll feel Bill out. Bill Dale's parrot has tipped Bill's hand. I'll
see the recor-r'----" She worried over the final syllable that
defeated her powers of enunciation.

Bill looked back at her speculatively. At the store, the first thing
he asked for was a large, pasteboard carton. Having found one which he
thought would do, he plucked Luella unceremoniously off her perch and
shut her up, with the box lid tied firmly in place with much heavy
twine.

"Fellow tried to steal her, last time I was in," he explained
good-humoredly. "She's a pet I'd hate to lose. I'll give you a dollar
if you'll let me put her away somewhere till I'm ready to leave town."

"Sure! Keep the dollar, though. It ain't any trouble--if you feed her
yourself." Bill was a good customer. He bought largely when he did
buy, and he never hinted at credit; which was more than could be said
of most prospectors.

"Wait! I'll just put the turtle in with her. Then she'll be more at
home, and won't try to break out." Bill went out and returned,
swinging a headless, footless, tailless mass of gray turtle
insouciantly by the string. "Bunch of boys was after Sister Mitchell
too, last time," he observed. "I hate to have trouble, and I can't
always keep an eye on things in town. Got quite a lot of running
around to do."

He carried the turtle to the back of the store, opened the box and
slid her in with little ceremony.

"What the hell!" Luella ejaculated, but Bill slipped on the cover and
left her in darkness, so that Luella subsided into throaty mutterings.
She never talked in the dark, as Bill knew very well.

"How's prospecting?" the storekeeper asked when Bill returned. "Found
anything?"

"Well, I've got a dandy prospect," Bill confided, lowering his voice
and glancing sidelong toward the door. "I want to do some more
digging, though, before I throw up my hat. Just recorded three claims,
as I came past the courthouse. I've got to go in on a lead, and I want
the work to count as location work. In fact," he further elucidated,
"I've recorded what work I've done as location. No use digging for
nothing, and even if they don't pan out rich enough to pay now, so
far from transportation, there's enough showing of mineral to pay for
hanging on awhile."

"Um-hmm." The storekeeper nodded. "Pity all prospectors don't take the
pains to make sure uh what they got. They come in here blattin' about
their strikes--and want more grub on credit. I used to fall for it.
What's your claims? Gold?"

"Showing of gold," Bill told him unhesitatingly. "The formation
entitles me to gold, too, so that's what I'm looking for. Here's a
piece of rock. Take a look at it."

The storekeeper tilted the specimen to the light and squinted. Bill
obligingly lent him a miner's glass, and with his finger pointed to a
certain spot on the sample. "Right there--at the edge of that iron
stain; there's a speck of color."

"Mh-hmm--yeah--I see it. Well, it's good, live-lookin' rock, Bill. I
think you're wise to dig into it." He returned the sample, weighing it
in his mind as he held it out.

"I'm keeping quiet about it--to outsiders," Bill said, dropping the
rock into his pocket again. "Don't want any stampede. But I do want a
couple more burros, and a hundred pounds of powder, and four boxes of
Six-X caps, and five hundred feet of fuse. If you can get me all the
stuff I need, and get the two extra burros packed and headed down the
trail with orders for the fellow to camp and wait till I show up, I'll
make it right with you. This town's got big ears and big eyes.
And--you can maybe remember why I hate boom stampedes that don't pan
out. I'll give you ten per cent. on every dollar's worth of stuff and
the cost of the burros you get to--say to Hick's Hot Spring for me,
and twenty-five dollars for a good, trusty man that can swing a
single-jack and throw a mess of sour-dough bread together."

The storekeeper ruminated.

"Why, I'll do it for nothing, Bill. You're a good customer, and if you
do make a strike I guess I won't lose your trade by treating you
white. Trade's slidin' into the credit class more'n what I like to
see. You're hard cash when you buy. Just give me your order, and I'll
fill it. And what's more, I'll keep my damn mouth shut. And glad to
accommodate yuh, Bill."

"Say, you're a white man!" Bill looked full at him and grinned
appreciation. But he did not confide further in the storekeeper,
nevertheless. "Don't let anybody hang around my pets, and don't say
who's to own the burros. You buy 'em, and I'll buy 'em from you, same
as I do bacon. And be careful, pickin' that man, will yuh? I want one
that can swing something besides his tongue."

"I getcha, Bill. How about booze?"

"All right--if he can do without for a month or two at a stretch. I
don't pack any jugs into the desert, as you maybe know."

"That's why I asked. Town's full of good men, but they are mostly
booze-punishers. Well--how long you expect to be in town?"

"Just until I'm hooked up with what I need."

"Well--I can get yuh out to-morrow, maybe."

"Just in case you happen to run shy,----" Bill wrote a check on a Reno
bank and handed it over. "Any balance, either way, we'll straighten up
before I leave."

He purloined a handful of withered lettuce leaves and dropped them
into the box for Sister Mitchell and Luella, and went out to idle here
and there through town and discover, if he could, just how much damage
Luella had done to his plans.




CHAPTER FOUR

GOOD, LIVELY PROSPECT


Jim Lambert had known Bill Dale since the beginning of the boom that
had broken Bill's father,--broken him mentally and financially. Jim
was a broker in Goldfield and sold real estate and underwrote fire
insurance as a side line. Lately, the side line had become the chief
industry, since mines had begun to close down and adventurers were
drifting on to later excitements.

Bill did not care much for Jim Lambert. Although he never troubled to
explain to himself his indifference that edged close to dislike, he
had no definite distrust of the man. Yet Jim Lambert had been active
in his father's Myrtle Mine boom and had professed to suffer when the
bubble burst. Bill's father had complained vaguely that Jim Lambert
was largely responsible for the bursting of the bubble, but Bill had
not paid much attention to that talk. He knew his dad too well. His
dad always blamed some one for his misfortunes,--some one other than
himself. Bill's nature was built of stiffer material. When his plans
went wrong, Bill set all his energies to work planning the next move
and wasted little thought upon the reason for his last failure;
unless, to be sure, in that reason lay his safety in the future. Thus,
Bill flatly refused to help his father play the game of
find-the-guilty-party. He went to work and earned and saved all he
could out of it, and when he had enough to keep him going for five
years, he set out deliberately to spend that five years in finding a
mine.

Wherefore, Bill never did learn what part, if any, Jim Lambert had
played in the failure of the Myrtle Mine. All he knew was that the
mine had been attached and sold by its creditors, and his father had
come out of it without a dollar. And he knew that he was not going to
be caught that way when he had found his mine. He meant to steer clear
of those speculating crooks who managed to loot every enterprise they
got hold of and still kept out of jail.

Jim Lambert met Bill by accident--or so Bill believed. It was in the
Great Northern bar, where Bill was treating himself to a glass of beer
and a San Francisco paper in a quiet corner. Both were inexpressibly
refreshing after his long exile, but Bill was not too engrossed to
keep a quiet eye open for those who came and went, or remained to chat
desultorily before the polished bar.

He was waiting for some one to approach him. Some one did, presently,
and that one was Jim Lambert. Jim brought his schooner of beer over
and sat down opposite Bill, grinning goodfellowship while he wiped his
perspiring brow.

"Got baked out, eh? Must be pretty hot in the desert, now."

"Fair," said Bill, and folded the paper for politeness' sake. "Still,
it hasn't been so bad. The man that cusses the desert is the man that
strikes out into it and thinks he'll hurry up and get it over with.
The desert's all right--if you know how to take it."

"I guess you're right. The old-timers don't seem to have much
trouble."

"Not unless they're drunk, or have an accident," Bill agreed, and took
two slow, satisfying swallows of beer.

"Well, how's she going? Hit that contact yet you were after?" Jim
spoke over his beer mug carelessly.

"Not yet. Been doing location work on three claims. Located first and
planned to prospect more thoroughly afterwards." He set down the mug
and reached into his pocket for the specimen he had shown to the
storekeeper. It was not a good sample of his ore; it was, in fact,
the "leanest" rock he could find. But he pushed it across the table
with an air of subdued pride.

Jim picked it up, testing its weight as he did so. Bill hooked his
toes behind his chair legs and leaned forward expectantly, watching
Jim Lambert's face. He thought he read there a shade of
disappointment, and he leaned back satisfied. Luella, he told himself,
did not talk to perfect strangers except when goaded to profanity by
teasing. Jim she had seen many times.

"Good, lively-looking rock," Jim said at last, repeating the
storekeeper's comment. "Carries gold, doesn't it?"

"You bet! Here, take this glass and look right there at the point of
that iron stain. It shows color, there, under the glass. When I get
depth on that, it ought to show good values, don't you think?"

"How deep is this?" Jim turned the rock under the glass. "Looks to me
like surface rock."

"You're right. That's outcropping. If I had enough of it, I'll bet it
would pay, just as she is. Or if it was close to a railroad, even."

Jim did not reply. He was pretending to study the rock; in reality he
was studying Bill Dale. Bill's optimism was a byword, to be sure; yet
Jim fancied he saw a slight discrepancy between Bill's keen eyes and
the easy hopefulness of his words. He missed somewhere the
good-natured twinkle and the drawl.

"Well, it's pretty good for surface rock," Jim said, when the silence
became noticeable. "Nothing to get excited over, though, do you
think?"

"I should say not! It'll have to look better than that before I get
excited."

"Well, good luck to yuh, Bill. If you do get something good, let me
know. I might be able to turn a deal for you. There's money in this
town yet--if you can show something good enough. It's shy, but it's
here. I'll be glad to help you out, any way I can."

"Thanks." Bill's drawl was quite apparent now. "I'll sure remember, if
I want to turn anything, later on."

Jim looked at his watch and said he must go; a simple expedient for
breaking off a conversation that has grown barren of interest, and one
that can never be gainsaid. And Bill, having finished his beer to the
dregs, went away also, quite satisfied in his mind.

His satisfaction was not so keen as Jim's, however. Had Bill Dale
tiptoed to the door of Jim's office, half an hour later, and put his
ear to the keyhole, he might have heard himself being talked about.

"He didn't get by, with me," Jim was saying positively. "Not for one
minute. He showed me a piece of rock no better than you can pick up on
any tailing dump in Goldfield, and claimed that was his best showing.
It wasn't good enough to account for what that parrot of his let out.
Remember? I jotted it down, first thing. Parrot talk is just parrot
talk, but they don't invent nothing. They've got to hear it said
before they'll say it. And if you might say Bill Dale was teaching it
that stuff for fun, that don't sound reasonable--knowing Bill."

He fumbled for a minute and brought out a little, soiled, red book.

"Now here's what the parrot reeled off, and I'll gamble she got it
straight. A man out alone by himself lets go and says what he really
thinks. We all know that. Now, the parrot says, 'Boy, we've struck it
rich! Got her traced now. Richest thing in Nevada. Goldfield can't
show stuff like this. Tell you we're rich. Won't tell anybody--don't
want a boom. Git a move on!' (That's something else, run in). 'They'd
be down here like flies. Gold perch for you. Luck's turned. Luck's
patting us on the back.'"

He looked at his companions and grinned. "Don't tell me that wasn't
picked up from Bill Dale's camp talk."

"Maybe he taught the parrot that lingo just to _have_ her spill it in
town and start a rush," one tight-faced man said cautiously.

Jim shook his head. "I saw him in the Great Northern--trailed him
there. Most generally, when Bill's in town, he takes the parrot around
with him, riding on his shoulder. She's a smart bird. Bill's proud of
her and likes to show her off. Talks everything, just like a human;
everything she hears and takes a notion to, that is. Well, he didn't
have her with him to-day. He's left her somewhere. From the saloon he
went into the barber shop. He's getting a haircut. Shave too,
probably. Never saw him in a barber shop before without that green
parrot. My guess is, he's afraid she'll let out something." Jim put
the book back in his pocket with a self-satisfied air. Men who live by
their wits are usually a bit vain of their shrewdness.

"Well, if you're right, he got scared too late to do any good,"
chuckled a jovial, round little man with one eye milky from cataract.

"He was just coming into town. Leaving her in the street for five
minutes, up there at the courthouse, would look safe enough to
anybody. It's just luck we happened along."

"Well, now, how's it to help _us_?" The tight-faced man had brown eyes
that stared intently, as do the near-sighted. He leaned forward,
bringing the conference to a point.

Four heads went together, at that, and if Bill had been listening at
the keyhole he wouldn't have heard much. They were a careful
quartette, and they had worked in harmony through the complexities of
several "deals."

Bill saw Jim Lambert again the next day. Jim was in the store, looking
boredly impatient to be served. The storekeeper's signal to Bill, of
tilted head and lowered eyelid did not pass unobserved. Bill followed
him back among the piled boxes of canned goods, and Jim idled over to
a pile of overalls and inspected them carefully while he tried to
listen.

He did not hear as much as he desired, and much that he did hear was
irrelevant. There was something about two burros leaving last night.
Then, after some mumbling, he caught the storekeeper's earnest
assurance, "--all right when he's sober. Just off a big drunk, so he's
good for three months, anyway. Tommy's an old, hard-rock man; all
around good guy if he takes a notion to yuh. And I got him cheap for
yuh. Three dollars and found."

Jim Lambert could not guess what Tommy this might be, but he was glad
to know that Bill was hiring a man by the underground route, and that
Tommy liked whisky. Working through the storekeeper meant only one
thing; the need of absolute secrecy. Which provided wonderful
illumination for a man like Jim Lambert.

Jim moved carelessly back to the front of the store and was giving his
order to the clerk when Bill emerged, carrying a spiteful-tongued
parrot on one finger. Bill grinned a greeting at Jim.

"Say, 'Hello, Jim,'" he instructed Luella in his coaxing tone.

Luella's reply was just barely printable when the editor's sense of
humor is keener than his puritanism. Luella blinked and said, "You
damned hussy, git a move on!"

"She's peevish," Bill apologized. "She's getting such a darned
nuisance in town I had to shut her up. Now you listen to me, old girl.
Back you go in the box, if you don't behave. Be quiet--you know I mean
it."

Luella turned and walked up Bill's arm to his shoulder, and leaned
forward to click her beak against his neck. "Lord, what a world!" she
murmured, and began daintily to eat half a banana which Bill gave her.

Jim Lambert took his few small packages and went out, and Bill saw him
no more. Which does not mean that Jim ceased to take an interest in
Bill Dale's prosperity and personal affairs.




CHAPTER FIVE

STRANGERS IN CAMP


From beside a camp fire at the springs which Bill Dale had designated
as the rendezvous, an undersized, ape-bodied individual rose and
goggled up at Bill through thick-lensed spectacles that magnified his
eyelids grotesquely.

"Hello," said Bill, looking down at him whimsically. "Is this the
outfit the Goldfield Supply Company sent out?"

"An' if ye'll tell me what business it might be uh yoors, I c'd maybe
say yis er no to that," the undersized one retorted, raising his voice
at the end of the sentence as if it were a question.

"All right, Tommy. You'll do, I reckon. I'm Bill Dale, and if I'm not
mistaken you'll be looking to me for your pay."

"An' from the look of ye I'll be earnin' that same," Tommy suggested
drily.

Bill lifted Luella and Sister Mitchell off Wise One, and began to
unlash the heavy pack, Tommy helping him. The two studied each other
with covert interest; Tommy seeking to discover whether Bill Dale
would make a good boss, one easy to work for, which, next to the
security of his pay, is a laborer's chief consideration. Bill measured
Tommy shrewdly as a man who would work--and gossip. A man who could be
loyal to the last gasp, but a man who might easily choose to be
disloyal. He was a garrulous little Irishman, was Tommy; a man of
indeterminate age and of problematic usefulness. But Bill was not
inclined to carp. He was content to give Tommy a trial, which was as
much as the best man could justly expect.

If Tommy had received any hint of the probable value of Bill's claims,
he gave no sign of knowing. Until he slept he sat cross-legged by the
fire and stared into the flames through his thick-lensed glasses, and
regaled Bill with choice anecdotes culled from his past,--that
endless, obvious odyssey of the common laborer whose world is bounded
by his "job." His voice was a soft, complaining monotone saturated
with the eternal vague question. Never did his inflection fall to a
period. At a distance which would blur the words of his speech, his
voice would inevitably give one the impression that Tommy was asking
one reproachful question after another, with never a statement to
relieve the endless inquiry.

Bill was amused, but he was also convinced that Tommy would presently
become a bore. He was interested to note that Luella preserved a
dignified silence all through the evening. One yellow eye on the
latest recruit, she sat humped upon the crotch of a packsaddle with
her green feathers ruffled moodily, still sulking over her
incarceration with Sister Mitchell.

At Parowan, whither they arrived one sultry afternoon with a smell of
rain in the air, Tommy went to work like an old hand on the desert.
Bill watched him unobtrusively and decided that the storekeeper had
shown pretty good judgment. While they were unpacking the burros,
Tommy cocked an eye at the sullen clouds that tore themselves on
Parowan Peak only to mend immediately and crowd lower down the slope,
and began gathering heavy rocks which he piled in a row on the lower
edge of Bill's tent, and to test the guy ropes and drive the pegs
deeper.

"She's a cloud-burst comin', er I never seen wan," he observed
complainingly, when he was again lugging the supplies into the tent.
"Them taties c'd stay outside, but watter will cause the bacon t'
mold, Mr. Dale. An' beans is never the same, wancet they've been
wrinkled wit' rain watter an' dried agin. I dunno, but that's been my
experience wit' grub. I'd git it all under cover, if it was mine, Mr.
Dale."

"Does look bad, for a fact," Bill admitted. "I was going up to the
workings; but I reckon we'd better make camp snug. Now, Hez, what'll
happen if you bust a lung? What's on your fool mind?"

Hez appeared to have a good deal on his mind. Presently his excitement
was explained by four loaded burros laboring up the draw, followed by
three men who hurried the animals up the uneven slope. Bill frowned
when he saw them, wondering if they had followed him.

But the men were strangers to him. If they came from Goldfield, he
thought, they must have hurried,--because Bill himself had made the
trip in record time. He nodded as they came up, and sent the impolite
Hezekiah into the tent with his hindquarters drooping guiltily. Two of
the men had the look of mining engineers (for your desert dwellers
learn to judge a man's profession by the way he dresses and carries
himself on the desert). The third, who evidently had charge of the
burros, had "desert rat" written all over him.

"Spring up here still workin', mister?" the burro driver asked in a
flat voice raised shrilly by way of attaining some volume. "Used to be
a spring up here."

"The spring is still there," Bill replied neutrally.

A pleasant, short man came forward, smiling and holding out his hand,
never doubting his welcome.

"Glad to see you, sir. My name is Rayfield; Walter B. Rayfield. My
partner, here, is John S. Emmett, a mining expert of whom you may have
heard, if you're the mining man you look to be. Working for the
government, making a report of the gold, silver and copper
possibilities of Nevada. I examine the country for gold and silver,
and Emmett, here, takes care of the copper report. We've been allotted
what is called the Furnace Creek quadrangle. We're working the
northern part first, so as to have cooler weather for the Death Valley
neighborhood."

"Glad to meet you." Bill's handshake was cordial, with a certain
reticence behind it. Happy-go-lucky as he seemed, Bill Dale was slow
in choosing his friends, while acquaintances never got below the
surface of his mind. "My name is Dale; Bill for short, Hopeful Bill
for sarcasm. You're just ahead of a big storm, by the looks, Mr.
Rayfield."

"Yes, it does look like rain." Mr. Rayfield glanced at the heavy
clouds that were now hiding the peak. "We expect to camp here for a
while, if the spring is all right. Glad to have a neighbor. Most of
the time we have to put up with our own company. Well, Al, suppose
you find a place for camp. You'll have to hustle, my man, if we're to
get our tents up before it rains."

"You've a nice little camp here," the man introduced as Emmett
observed, his hard brown eyes taking in the surroundings appraisingly.
It's certainly a great view you have here. We saw your tent from miles
away, down there."

"You came from Vegas way, then," Bill stated calmly. From that
direction only could they see his camp from any distance; the
Goldfield trail twisted around the mountain.

"We started from Las Vegas. We've been out some time, though. Came
down Forty Mile Canyon to the main road and followed that as far as we
could." He pulled a pipe from his pocket and began filling it in
leisurely fashion from a leather pouch while his gaze traveled
sophisticatedly over the surrounding hills.

"Prospecting, I suppose?" His eyes came back to Bill's face. His tone
had the casual note of one who wishes to be civil.

"Yes, a little," Bill replied guardedly. Even to research men he did
not feel like telling all he knew. "She's a hard country to prospect
in, though. Too much overburden. But I like the formation here. Seems
to me there's a chance here to run on to something, if a fellow keeps
right after it."

"I see already why they call you Hopeful Bill," Mr. Emmett grinned
over his pipe. "I don't think it's sarcasm, though." He gave another
professional glance at the rough outcroppings near them. "Looks pretty
fair, but my specialty is copper. Doesn't seem very promising for
that--but one never can tell. You're looking for gold, I take it.
That's more in Rayfield's line."

"I'm looking for anything I can find," Bill corrected lazily.
"Anything from gold to diamonds; just so there's money in it."

The fitful breeze died suddenly to an ominous, stifling calm. The
copper expert glanced up at the slatey mass moving up from the west
and went to help the others set up the tent before the storm broke.

"Want any help?" Bill called after him. But Mr. Emmett shook his head,
waved a hand and went on.

Tommy, who had retreated into the tent as the party drew near, pushed
his head through the opening and goggled at the group fifty yards
away. They were spreading a wall tent, preparing to make camp in the
lee of a rocky ledge. Tommy wiped the tobacco stain from his lips
with the back of his hand and glanced sidelong up at Bill.

"That's Al Freeman they got wit' 'em," he drawled in his complaining,
questioning way. "An' how he c'd git wit' 'em I dunno, fer I left him
in Goldfield--I did--and him owin' me tin dollars and denying all
knowledge of that same. He's a liar an' a t'ief, Mr. Dale, an' them
that trusts him is like t' find their t'roats cut some marrnin' an'
their pockets turned out.

"How he got to Las Vegas t' join up with these fellers I dunno--fer he
was in Goldfield whin I left, and there can't be two of 'im--an' the
devil wit' his hands full a'ready just wit' wan of 'im. I'd tip off
them gov-ment men, Mr. Dale, I sure would. He's worse ner a rattler in
camp, an' he's the kind that'll lie wit' 'is ears open an' then run
an' make bad use o' what he hears, Mr. Dale. He's a durrty
claim-robber fer wan t'ing, an' if yuh've got annything here wort'
robbin', Mr. Dale, yuh'd best set yer tent over it whilst Al Freeman's
on the mountain. It's the Gawd's trut' I tellin' yuh--an' yuh better
slip them experts the word--though how he got wit' 'em I dunno, fer I
left him in Goldfield; I did that!"

"That's mighty queer," Bill assented dubiously. "If you're sure of
that, we'll step lightly till we know the bunch better. Keep your eye
on him, Tommy, until I find out more about it. They won't get that
tent up in time to save a wetting; I can see that right now."

The man Tommy said was Al had unpacked one burro, but it was certain
they would not have time to make themselves even passably comfortable.
Even now the tent they were erecting was bellying like a balloon in a
sudden blast of wind, and while they struggled with it pegs and guy
ropes snapped loose. The short man, whose name was Rayfield, evidently
made a suggestion. All three looked toward Bill's camp. Then, as the
earth quivered under a deafening crash of thunder, Al hurriedly tied
the burros to a couple of stunted junipers, wadded the tent hastily
into an ungainly bundle and thrust it between two rocks.

Heads down against the wind, holding their hats on with both hands,
they came running. Bill opened the tent flaps and held it against the
wind until the strangers and Tommy were inside. Then he double-tied
the flaps and turned, grinning hospitably. His twelve-by-fourteen tent
was more than comfortably full now, what with the piles of supplies,
Bill's stove and table and bed, and the five men. But it was a
shelter, set shrewdly against just such an emergency as this storm.
It faced away from the wind, and a ledge protected it from the full
force of the gale.

Thunder, lightning, wind--then an abrupt silence, a holding of the
breath. Tommy, crouched down in his corner, his shoulder held
carefully away from the canvas wall, stared owl-like through his thick
glasses.

"She's comin'," he mumbled dolefully.

She came. All the water in the clouds seemed to have been dumped
unceremoniously upon the tent. A fine mist beat through the roof and
sides until warp and woof became saturated, and shrunk to a waterproof
texture that sent the water running off in streams.

"She's a cloud-burst--I said she'd be a cloud-burst!" Tommy muttered
again in melancholy triumph.

"You didn't get here any too soon," Bill observed cheerfully. "It
would be pretty tough, climbing through this. You're lucky."

"We certainly are!" Mr. Rayfield's voice was raised almost to a shout,
to carry above the storm. "Wouldn't want to be caught out in this!"

They sat and listened to it,--the boom and crash of the thunder, the
vivid flashes that lightened blindingly the gloom of the tent, the
roar of the falling water.

"She's a tough one, all right!" Bill rose and pried open the flaps
with his fingers, and put an eye to the crack. "Now I know how old
Noah felt when he shut the door of the ark. Nothing in sight but
water--good Lord!"

Something sagged against the tent, beat upon the taut canvas. A voice
was raised shrilly, frantically.

"Bill! Oh, Bill! Let me in!"

Bill's face had whitened at the first sound. His fingers clawed at the
stiff, canvas knots that held the flaps shut. His hands, reaching out
to loosen the outside fastenings, touched other fingers that tore
nervously at the soaked knots. Bill was hampered by those other
fingers, as a swimmer is hampered by the frenzied clutchings of a
drowning man. But he managed the two lower fastenings and was
beginning on the upper when the person outside stooped and ducked in
past Bill's knees.

"Doris---- Miss Hunter! What----"

"Oh, it's perfectly _awful_! I thought I'd never make it, Bill. I
couldn't make the horses face it, so I tied them down the gulch and
came on afoot. I could see your tent when it lightened--I'm just
_soaked_! It's the worst storm this year."

She was talking in gasping little rushes of words, talking because she
must have some emotional outlet. Her hat had gone in the wind, and
she wiped the water from her face with quick, impatient brushes of her
palms outward from her nose. Her hair was wet as a drowned woman's,
and as lank about her face and shoulders. She wore a khaki riding
skirt and a striped cotton blouse that clung to her shoulders and arms
like wet paper. Her high-laced boots squelched soppily when she moved.
Had she been pulled from a river she could not have been wetter.

"Tommy, start a fire in the stove; you're the closest," Bill
commanded. "Miss Hunter, let me introduce some other storm birds--only
they were luckier than you were. They beat it in. This is Mr.
Rayfield, and Mr. Emmett--both government experts making an
examination of the country for mineral. That's Al Freeman over there;
working for them" (Mr. Rayfield looked surprised) "and Tommy, over
there by the stove, is going to work for me. Get over there in the
corner and dry out. It'll be hot in a minute. You must be chilled."

The men moved back to leave clear passage to the stove, and she
hurried toward it, nodding to them shyly as she went. Mr. Rayfield
smiled upon her benignantly and drew a box from under the table for
her to sit on.

"Take off those wet boots, Miss Hunter, and put your feet in the
oven," he commanded, in the same tone which he might have used to his
own daughter. "A cup of coffee will take the chill out of your bones.
My, my! I've heard that it could rain pitchforks in this country, but
nobody mentioned raining angels!" His own hearty laugh robbed the
remark of any offensive familiarity, as he picked a blanket off the
bunk--disturbing Mr. Emmett and Al Freeman to do so--and laid it
matter-of-factly upon her shoulders.

"Here, let me unlace your boots. Tommy, get the coffee pot working."
Bill knelt and reverently lifted her small, booted foot to his knee.
"Mr. Emmett, if you'll pass that war-bag over here, I'll dig up some
dry socks. And if you'll remember to hold out your arms, Miss Hunter,
so you won't fall in outa sight, I'll lend you a pair of my boots. Or
maybe we could tie a loop under your arms and hitch you somehow.
Anyway, we'll fix you up comfortably as we can.

Miss Hunter laughed, which was exactly what Bill had intended that she
should do. If every little happy nerve in his big body tingled while
he unlaced her boots, that was his own business and none of his
neighbors'. He did not mean to have Doris Hunter experience one
moment's embarrassment if he could help it.

With a fine tact for which Bill was silently grateful, the two
government men resumed their casual talk of the storm and of the
desert,--the small talk of the region which is useful for filling in
the awkward spots in strange situations. Tommy busied himself with a
ham, a few cans and the coffee pot, and said not a word. Al Freeman,
over by the door, made himself as inconspicuous as possible,--perhaps
for reasons which Tommy could guess.

Bill casually turned his back upon Miss Hunter and the stove and stood
there with his hands in his pockets and his legs slightly apart,
throwing a sentence now and then into the talk of the others.

Thus hidden away in the corner, ignored for the time being, Doris
Hunter pulled the blanket tighter around her slim person, and fumbled
within its shelter. She was a sensible girl, and she had lived all of
her twenty years on the edge of the desert, and knew nothing much
about cads and crooks. So presently her khaki skirt was spread over
her knees to dry, and she was holding the blanket open to dry the rest
of her. And not a man of the five noticed the skirt, or paid any
attention to her whatever.

But when Tommy said supper was ready, Bill moved from his position as
screen, and pulled up a box to hold the girl's plate and cup so that
she could eat without moving away from the stove. It was casually
done; so casually that it would not have cost a nun the quiver of an
eyelash. Certainly Miss Hunter felt no confusion, for presently she
was chatting quite as composedly as if she were at home with her
family around her.

It rapidly grew dark, the lightning coming at more infrequent
intervals as the downpour continued. Bill found a lantern, lighted it
and hung it on a wire hook from the ridgepole, where it swayed to the
spasmodic shuddering of the tent. Miss Hunter turned and turned her
skirt, and Bill watched her boots that they did not dry too quickly.
There seemed nothing unusual in this foregathering, which was but one
more incident of the wilderness.




CHAPTER SIX

BILL GROWS SENTIMENTAL


"Bill, you haven't asked me if I were lost or just going somewhere,"
Miss Hunter accused suddenly, setting down her cup which she had twice
emptied of coffee. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Any one else
would have asked me that before I got the water out of my eyes."

"Well--are you lost, or just going somewhere?" Bill inquired
obediently. "I've known this young lady a good long while," he added
to the others, glad of the opportunity. "She rides the range right
alongside her dad, and can sling a pack or rope a critter better than
lots of men that draw wages for doing it. She couldn't get lost to
save her neck. Looking for cow brutes or horses, Miss Hunter?"

"Neither one. And don't call me Miss when I've been Doris all my life.
These gentlemen don't demand the starch in your speech, and I know it.
Dad sent me over to see if you'd come and help him out for awhile.
He's going to run the water by a tunnel through that little ridge
back of the corrals, and water the lower meadow directly from the
spring. It will save at least an inch" (she referred to a miner's inch
of water, which is a cubic measurement) "that's lost now in seepage as
it's carried around the hill.

"He's been sort of looking for you over to the ranch. But you didn't
show up, so he sent me over to see if you'd drive the tunnel for him.
He thinks your cautious disposition will make the blasting safe for
the cattle, I reckon. Anyway, that's what I came for, and the storm
did the rest. I guess the horses will be all right, but if they ever
get loose they'll beat it for home--and that will worry the folks. I
brought old Rambler with my camp outfit, and of course I rode Little
Dorrit."

"My, my, if some of the young ladies back in Washington could hear you
talk so calmly of traveling the desert alone with your own camp
outfit!" Mr. Rayfield pursed his lips and then smiled at her. Mr.
Rayfield was disfigured somewhat by a milky film over one eye, but for
all that his face was a pleasant one that made friends for him easily.

"If you folks can make out with a candle," said Bill, "I'll take the
lantern and go see about the horses. I can bring them up closer to
camp, maybe----"

"You'll do nothing of the kind, Bill Dale. Don't you suppose I made
sure they would stay tied? Or do you think I _like_ to take a chance
on being set afoot? I was, once. That was a plenty, thank you. You
stay right where you are."

Bill chuckled but declined to commit himself by any promise. Torrents
of rain still pounded upon the roof with the hollow sound of a
kettle-drum beaten at a distance. Like all the passionate outbursts in
which Nature indulges throughout her desert lands, this was likely to
be almost as brief as it was violent. Bill knew well the way of these
sudden storms and did not worry over the immediate future. The present
was sufficiently engrossing, and he was not loath to obey the command
of his queen.

Having Doris Hunter there beside his stove, her boots drying beside
his fire, her eyes meeting his with a smile in them now and then, her
voice a melody he loved against the drumming accompaniment of the
storm, was like a dream come true. Never before had Doris Hunter come
to his camp fire save in his most secret dreams. Never before had she
needed him, felt the comfort of his presence, his protection. It was
well that these men were all strangers to Bill,--else they might have
read his secret in the shine of his eyes, the steady flush on his
cheek bones, the smile that came twitching the corners of his lips at
the slightest provocation.

If Doris saw, she gave no sign. Outwardly Bill held himself rigidly to
the usual friendliness of a man who has known a girl since she was a
little thing just past babyhood, eager to ride on his shoulder with
her heels drumming his chest. His manner was indulgent, almost
paternal. He did not look at her often, he did not need to look at
her; indeed, he did not dare. To know that she was there, close beside
him, was like drinking wine.

"Storm's letting up fast," he announced at length, his face raised,
his eyes dwelling speculatively upon the roof. "I guess we're all
tired enough to get under the covers--and I hope you won't take that
as a hint to you fellows to go home to your own camp," he drawled
meaningly. "I'll bunk with you to-night, Tommy, and let Miss Hunter
have this tent. She's tired. I've caught her nodding twice in the last
five minutes."

"Oh, it's just the heat," Doris protested briskly. "I--really, Bill, I
can't turn you out of your tent! I've my own outfit, you know, just
down the gulch."

"Yours isn't set up," Bill pointed out to her calmly. "These fellows
got here some time before the storm broke. And Tommy has his tent, so
it's not putting me out. I'll leave you Luella and Sister Mitchell and
Hez for company. Oh, they're all at home," he answered her look of
inquiry. "They hate rain, and they've hunted cover. Well, fellows?"

Obediently the two experts turned toward the doorway. Al Freeman had
already untied the flaps and ducked out into the dark and the drizzle.
Mr. Rayfield apologized weakly for keeping late hours, and herded the
sour-faced Emmett out before him. Bill waited until they were gone.

"I want you to keep Hez inside," he told Doris then, his voice
lowered. "These fellows are all right, probably, but I don't know
them. And here's my gun. If you just call me, though, I'll hear and
come a-running."

He started out, then turned and smiled at her whimsically. "There's a
bundle of new blankets in that corner," he informed her. "Never been
opened up. Help yourself. Good night."

Over by the junipers Bill could hear the mutter of voices. He turned
that way and presently came upon the three, fumbling with wet pack
ropes and swearing softly at the rain pattering down upon them. Talk
ceased entirely when Bill approached.

"Hard luck, folks," he sympathized cheerfully. "But not a darn bit
harder than if you hadn't run across my camp at all. I'm sorry you got
here so late. Want any help?"

They did not, but Bill remained and did what he could to help them
raise the wet tent and get their stuff inside. They would not be
comfortable, but they would be quite as comfortable as he would be.

"We've got some tent-raising to do ourselves," he told them
cheerfully, when he could do no more. "It'll let up raining after a
bit, I think. Come over to my camp for breakfast. I'll sling together
some pancakes that'll melt in your mouths. And I've got a gallon of
alleged maple syrup to swim 'em in. Life will look a thousand per
cent. better, to-morrow morning."

"Oh, life looks all right to us now," Mr. Rayfield protested. "This is
nothing--nothing at all. Don't apologize, Mr. Dale. Of course the
young lady needed the tent; wouldn't think of such a thing as--but
we'll just call you on that breakfast bluff--pancakes, maple syrup and
all!"

"You're on," said Bill, and went back to help Tommy find his bedding
and tent.

Tommy was ignoring his own troubles in a chortling glee at Al
Freeman's discomfort.

"An' that's where he got 'is come-uppance," he gloated. "Al planned
it t' bunk in a warrm tent wit'out settin' up his own t'night!" He
tittered while he groped for ten pegs. "That tent-settin' b'foor the
starrm was a farce, as you know yerself, Mr. Dale. He's up to
something sure as yuh live--and phwat it is I dunno, but I sleeps wit'
wan eye open this night--I do."

It is likely that he did just that, as did Bill, lying so that he
could peer out through the opening of Tommy's little tent and see his
own bulking vaguely in the dark and drizzle. Hezekiah, shut inside,
would have lunged at the throat of any stranger who sought entrance in
the dark, and Doris Hunter did not need even that protection, since
she probably carried her own gun and would know what use to make of it
in an emergency.

But Bill discounted those things and himself kept watch; and smiled
for sheer happiness while he pulled Tommy's soggy blankets over his
shoulders. In the dark, so close in the dark--serene in the knowledge
of her safety, the girl he loved lay asleep, her head touching the
pillow where his head had lain while he dreamed of her. To-morrow she
would go again. All the to-morrows thereafter Bill would have only the
memory of her presence here to-night. But to-night he could lie and
know that she was there,--and what fool would waste the hours in
sleep, when he might lie awake and think, and thrill at the sense of
her nearness?

He wondered what she would say when he showed her his gold discovery;
told her, too that she owned a claim quite as good as his. He hoped
that the deluge of rain had not filled his cut and covered his vein of
rich ore. But even if it had, there were his samples in the corner of
the tent behind the door; and it would not take him and Tommy long to
uncover the vein again.

He thought uneasily of the government men camped so close. Not that he
was afraid of anything they might do; indeed, he could not imagine
anything that could rob him now of his claims. He had located
according to law, and his location work was done and on record in
Goldfield. It was Al Freeman who troubled him; not alone because of
what Tommy had said (he suspected Tommy of being an arrant gossip and
not too gentle with men's reputations behind their backs) but because
Al looked the sneak, acted the sneak, and undoubtedly was the sneak
Tommy had declared him to be.

Still, there was nothing a sneak could do to harm him. Even if he were
killed,--he thought swiftly of something he must do, and he smiled
tenderly at the grayish blotch in the drizzling dark. He must make
his will, so that if anything happened to him, Doris would have the
claims. There was no one else. His father had been the last relative
he knew anything about. Distant ones--cousins--they didn't count.

No, Doris Hunter stood closer to him than any one else. He wasn't
going to die yet awhile, but still accidents _could_ happen, he
admitted to himself. There must be no slip-up, no last-minute regrets.
Mining is always more or less risky. If he went out, then Doris must
have the Parowan group. And as for the rest, Bill did not worry.

He fell asleep finally, thinking that these experts might be able to
give him some good advice. There was no sense in trying to keep his
discovery a secret from them. They meant to examine Parowan's mineral
possibilities, and they would inevitably run across his claims. But he
would not be in too great a hurry. First, he would tell Doris. It
seemed to him a miracle of good fortune that had brought her to
Parowan at that particular time, when he was aching to tell her and
yet could not leave his claims and let Al Freeman--yes, and perhaps
Tommy as well--"high-grade" his gold the minute his back was turned.
Now he could show Doris, which was better than telling. And--the world
could go hang, for all Bill cared.




CHAPTER SEVEN

WHAT DRIVES PROSPECTORS CRAZY


After all it was Doris Hunter who called breakfast while Bill was yet
busy with her horses and Tommy was profanely spreading damp blankets
upon dry rocks that would presently be hot to the palm, when the sun
had stared down at them for a few hours.

There were hot cakes as good as Bill could have made, and bacon and
coffee and potatoes sliced raw and fried just right. The eyes of Mr.
Rayfield glistened when he saw them, and Bill drew his underlip
between his teeth when he looked at the girl's flushed face bent
solicitously over the coffee she was pouring; it was so like a
daydream come true that he could scarcely trust himself to speak, for
fear his tone would not be so normal as he meant it to be. But he had
his part to play nevertheless.

"Morning! I meant to get breakfast myself, but I didn't want to get
you out too early. You had a hard trip----"

"Oh, fudge! That wasn't a commencement to being caught out in a
blizzard. Luella woke me about daylight. She came crawling up on the
pillow, and the first I heard was 'What the'--something--in the most
surprised tone you ever heard." Doris laughed at the memory of it.
"Imagine hearing a man's voice saying _that_ in your very ear when
you're dreaming about putting up peaches! And that reminds me, Bill.
Mother sent over a jar of preserves. If you'll watch these cakes, I'll
get them out of the pack. I saw you had brought up the horses. Sit
right down and eat, folks, I won't be a minute."

Bill's table was small, but Doris had somehow crowded a sufficient
number of plates and cups upon it. Mr. Rayfield voiced his opinion of
her efficiency as he seated himself on Bill's neatly spread bunk and
drew the potatoes toward himself.

"My, my, what a difference there is in women nowadays!" he said
cheerfully. "Take these Western-raised girls--you can't match them
anywhere in the world for downright common sense and capableness.
Seems to be a great climate for the growth of brain. Now a city girl
out in a storm like that--well," he chuckled, "think of the hundreds
of plays and stories that have been built around the fainting forms of
beautiful maidens carried in from right center, just rescued by the
hero from the falling dew! And here's a girl can come out of it
smiling, with a breakfast fit for a steel king! Mr. Dale, if you can
beat these cakes, I'll resign from government employ and be your burro
puncher for life!"

Into the responsive laugh walked Doris with a quart jar of peach
preserves carried proudly in her two hands.

"I heard that about the cakes, Mr. Rayfield," she announced gravely.
"And all I can say is, you come down to the ranch where we have real
milk, and thick yellow cream, and fresh eggs. I'll show what hot cakes
can be like!"

Mr. Emmett, pulling a box out of a corner for a seat, had stooped and
picked up something from the ground,--something which the edge of the
box had dragged forward. He turned it to the side where the sun was
shining brightly on the canvas wall and examined the piece of ore
interestedly.

"Good-looking rock, that," he observed, glancing up at Bill. "Didn't
pick it up in this neighborhood, did you?"

Bill slanted a glance at the rock, and another at the sly, watchful
eyes of Al Freeman. Mr. Emmett was holding in his fingers a bit of the
richest ore Bill had taken from his vein on Parowan Number One. He
had concealed it under some sacks in the corner, and its appearance at
the breakfast table was, to say the least, inopportune.

"That? That's a specimen I've been packing around for luck," he said
carelessly. "Wish I had a mountain of it; then I could have fresh eggs
and cream for breakfast too."

Mr. Emmett laid the rich specimen in Rayfield's outstretched hand and
seated himself on the box, his hard, brown eyes glancing sharply now
and then at Bill. Mr. Rayfield set down his cup of coffee and pursed
his lips over the sample. His pleasant face glowed with professional
admiration for a pretty bit of ore.

"Yes-s--a mountain of that would insure a man against canned milk for
life!" he chuckled. "If you had even a good vein of ore like that, Mr.
Dale, your friends would need to pray that millions wouldn't make you
money-mad."

Doris held out her hand for it, and Mr. Rayfield smiled as he placed
it in her palm. He did not say anything at all.

Doris bent her brown head over the sample, then looked up quickly at
Bill, her eyes wide and questioning.

"O-oh--that's gold--_is_ that gold, Bill? All those yellow patches?
It--it doesn't look just like pyrites----"

"That's gold, Doris." To save his life Bill could not have kept the
tenderness, the deep exultation out of his voice.

"Gold! Why, it--it's almost _solid_ gold! Why, where----"

Bill pulled himself together, laughed lazily and helped himself to the
fried potatoes.

"That's what drives prospectors crazy," he drawled. "Looking for more
of the same. You keep that, Doris, if you like it. If I ever get hold
of enough of that, I'll call it a mine." He laughed again disarmingly.
"You know folks call me Hopeful Bill," he added quaintly.

"You'd be Sure-thing Bill, if you ever found a mine of _that_." Mr.
Rayfield's good eye dwelt hungrily upon the sample. "I suppose you're
on the trail of it. You wouldn't be human if you weren't looking for
more of the same. Well, I hope you locate it. I do, for a fact. I know
I wouldn't rest until I located that."

Bill's laugh betrayed nothing more than amusement, but his eyes forgot
to twinkle. They were fixed rather intently on Mr. Rayfield's smooth,
smiling face.

"And when you had it located--then what would you do?"

"Do?" Mr. Rayfield looked up, astonished. "What _would_ a man do, with
a gold mine like that?" He returned to the spreading of peach
preserves carefully between two hot cakes. "Organize a company and
avail myself of the most modern methods of mining it. A good, clean
corporation, Mr. Dale, is the most efficient, the most satisfactory
methods I know of to-day. I certainly would organize at once and start
out right to get the gold cheaply as possible and market the product
as profitably as possible. There is no other intelligent method, these
days."

Mr. Emmett looked up dissentingly. "There you go on your hobby," he
remarked. "The country's been done to death with wild-cat
organizations that found a showing of mineral and hustled a
corporation together. Look at the companies we've been sent to
investigate, Walter! I should think that would sicken you of
corporations."

"We investigated a lot of crooked corporations, yes." Mr. Rayfield
admitted it calmly. "We helped the government send more than one bunch
of crooked officers to the penitentiary--where they belong. But crooks
always will take advantage of the best machinery invented, John. And
those very investigations taught me the details of organizing and
operating corporations. They proved to me that a man is a fool to
potter along by himself with any mine--I don't care how rich it is!
You can't work a mine as you would a farm. Why? Because your potential
harvest is all there, in the ground, waiting for you to gather it. A
farm yields its wealth season by season--on the installment plan,
we'll say. Whereas the mineral in a mine _is there_; all of it. It was
put there long before it was ever discovered. The faster and the
cheaper you take it out, the greater your profit. That stands to
reason. What man of intelligence would spend ten, twenty years, we'll
say, taking out a million dollars, when an efficient corporation will
get it for him in less than half that time?"

He held up his cup for more coffee and smiled blandly at Doris, who
was listening to him with flattering attention.

"Miss Hunter, you see the point, don't you? I'll venture to say that
you'd want your millions dug out by machinery, in the shortest time
possible."

Doris laughed and looked again at the gold ore beside her plate.

"If I knew where there was a lot of that in the ground, and you could
get a million dollars worth of it out in fifteen minutes," she said,
"I'd--why, I'd probably stand around and abuse you because you weren't
getting my million in ten minutes instead of fifteen!" She blushed a
little as she met Mr. Rayfield's understanding smile. "That's just
human nature, isn't it?"

"That's human nature." Mr. Rayfield sugared his coffee with the
satisfied air of a man who has gained his point with less difficulty
than he had anticipated.

Then appeared Luella, walking offendedly out from under Bill's bunk,
where she had retreated from the presence of strangers.

"Aw, cut it out!" Luella complained gruffly. "Let's eat! Git a move
on, there!"

"And here we are, trying to starve poor Luella!" Doris stooped to her,
and the bird eyed her hand sidewise and decided to trust it for once.
She stepped solemnly upon the slim, brown wrist and so was lifted to a
perch on the foot of the bunk where she gravely accepted a slice of
fried potato. The advantages of a corporation over an individual miner
got no further attention from any one, for a parrot is very much like
a baby in its unfailing ability to monopolize attention. Luella would
not talk, save now and then a curt ejaculation that was hailed with
laughter. She was a temperamental bird and her manners were
inhospitable; for which Bill was vaguely thankful.

Furthermore, he was grateful when Doris proceeded as a matter of
course to clear away the breakfast. That little hint of hers, of
rising and picking up Bill's plate and cup, scattered the group. They
went, ducking their heads under the flaps, and Bill followed them with
the thought in his mind that he would see the three strangers safely
off about their business before he made any move toward his own claims
with Doris.

But the jovial Mr. Rayfield stuck to him like a burr, talking idly of
many things save mineral. Bill wondered what he had on his mind; and
as soon as they were out of hearing of the others, Mr. Rayfield
proceeded to the subject uppermost.

"You'll pardon my apparent presumption, Mr. Dale, I know. We
government fellows are instructed to help miners in any way we can,
and--well, this man of yours; have you had him with you long enough to
be sure of him?"

"I never," said Bill in his easy drawl, "consider that I'm sure of any
man. Why?" And then he gave no time for an answer, but put a question
of his own.

"How long have you had your pot-walloper?--if I may ask a question
that's none of my business."

"Al Freeman? We picked him up just the other day. Our cook that we
hired in Las Vegas was taken sick just as we struck the highway down
there. We laid over, and did what we could; but he wasn't recovering,
so when this Al Freeman came along with three other men in a car,
headed for Las Vegas, we just made an exchange. Sent our man in to a
doctor, and hired Al in his place." He laid his fingers lightly on
Bill's arm, and lowered his voice confidentially. "He told us last
night that your man, Tommy, is one of the toughest men out of
Goldfield. They call him Slippery Tom up there, I believe. Al says he
came near getting lynched, at one time--some murder and robbery, I
believe."

"Then there's a pair of them," Bill observed imperturbably. "Al's a
liar and a thief, according to Tommy."

Mr. Rayfield considered for a moment, then threw out his hands in a
gesture of helplessness.

"Might be a good idea to watch 'em both, don't you think?" He
chuckled. "Pot is very likely calling the kettle black. And I don't
know of anything worth stealing in our camp. Just thought I'd give you
a hint for what it may be worth, in case you don't know your man. And
we'll keep an eye on Al."

"Aw, there's nothing they can do--but earn their wages," Bill
dismissed the subject indifferently. "Time Tommy wrangles the burros
and does the dirty work and slings a muck stick eight hours a day,
crime won't look half so good to him as his blankets. Same with Al
Freeman, if you handle him right."

Nevertheless, Bill stopped at the corner of the tent and unobtrusively
watched Mr. Rayfield when he joined his companions.

So far as he could determine, Mr. Rayfield was concerning himself at
present with the preparations for a day's fieldwork. Emmett was
already waiting with his sample bag over his shoulder, his canteen at
his feet ready to pick up at the last minute. Al, apparently, would be
left in camp. Bill turned suddenly and beckoned to Tommy, who was
glumly examining a dull pick.

"You say you can sharpen steel, Tommy. I'll just let you do a little
blacksmithing, this fore-noon, while I show Miss Hunter a claim I
located for her," he said, when Tommy had come close. Then he lowered
his voice. "You can keep an eye on camp, too. I saw Al Freeman looking
hungry at that sample of gold ore, Tommy. You'll know what to do if he
makes a break. Only--don't kill him. I don't want to take in boarders,
and those experts can't cook."

"I'll watch 'im, Mr. Dale. I will that!"

Bill grinned, took a last pull at his cigarette, and went in to wipe
the dishes for Doris and watch the dimple in her left cheek.

And Destiny, that invisible, inscrutable companion whom men sometimes
fear, sometimes curse and obey inevitably, smiled and waited to see
how these souls would work out the problems she had set for them.




CHAPTER EIGHT

"MONTE CRISTO WOULD ENJOY THIS!"


"The way this gulch is washed, I don't know whether I can show you
anything or not," Bill explained worriedly, preparing for a flat
failure of his little plan. "That was next thing to a cloud-burst last
night, Doris--and I'll own now that I was uneasy last night when you
said you had left your horses down the gulch. But then, I knew you
wouldn't tie them in the bottom where they might get drowned out."

"Well, I hope not," Doris retorted with some asperity. No desert-bred
girl likes to be thought ignorant of desert hazards. "You'll have to
make this short, you know. They'll expect me home early to-day. I
don't see why you can't go. Now you've staked yourself to the luxury
of a mucker, you can leave him in charge, I should think. Do you
really think you've struck anything, Bill?"

"You wait. If my location cut isn't filled in, I can show you in ten
minutes. And--if it's good, you're in on it. I located a claim on the
same ledge in your name."

"You did?" Doris looked up at him quickly, but she could see only
Bill's left cheek as he swung his face away from her. "Why, why for
me, particularly? I couldn't develop it--dad wouldn't let me. You
ought to keep your claims for yourself, Bill. You--you'd give away
your head, if you could get it off!"

"I might throw in the rest of me," Bill hinted meaningly, his heart
pounding like a single-jack in a miners' contest. He stole a glance at
her from the corner of his eye and was scared and a bit happy, too, at
the flush on her cheek.

"Well, fortunately for you----" Doris bit her lip and left the
sentence unfinished. She liked Bill Dale, but--there would always be
unfinished sentences concerning her regard for him. A prospector is,
paradoxically, not a good prospect for a girl. Doris had seen the
poor, withered wives of miners who were forever just on the eve of
striking something rich.

Walking beside Bill, she thought of the wistful eyes and the draggled,
cheap clothes of certain women she had met. Some of them even wore
overalls and helped dig. Bill had been prospecting ever since she
first met him at a dance in Goldfield. He had talked optimistically of
his prospects then. He would always talk in the same vein. Always
just going to strike rich ore,--never actually getting more than a
bare living; if one could call grub and a tent a living.

"Fortunately for me--what?" Bill was in the mood to bring about a
crisis of some kind between them. He considered that he had gone too
far now to retreat.

"Fortunately for you, your friends have more regard for you than you
have for yourself," Doris amended glibly. "Is it much farther, Bill?
Because I really must----"

"It's just up around this first turn." Bill's face sobered a bit.
After all, Doris didn't seem to care much, one way or the other. She
didn't seem very enthusiastic over her claim; didn't she know he would
take care of the development work for her--at least the assessment
work?

"If a slide hasn't covered it up," he said heavily. "I wanted to show
you what I--what I've got. Then----"

"Well, you know I'm no expert, Bill," Doris reminded him lightly. "I
can tell silver--when it's in spoons. And gold is jewelry----"

Bill caught her arm, stopping her perforce. His grip left marks in her
soft flesh. She looked at him, startled, and paled before the fixed
stare in his eyes. He lifted a shaking finger and pointed.

Bill's cut in the side of the gulch had not been filled by any slide
of the soft gravel higher up the slope. Instead it stood there naked,
deep, clean as a dog's tooth. Even from where they stood the metal
gleamed yellow in the ten-inch vein of quartz laid bare to the
sunlight.

Slowly, almost reverently, Bill went forward, still holding the girl's
arm in his strong, unconsciously painful grip. He led her into the
cut, stooped and broke off a point of the vein with his fingers where
his last shot had seamed the quartz. He laid the gold-flecked piece in
her hand. He looked at her standing there so close with the symbol of
a great fortune in her hand,--the symbol too of his worshipful love.

"Monte Cristo would enjoy this," he said and laughed unsteadily.
"It's--I found it--it's yours--if you'll take me along with it. I
couldn't--I had to strike something before I could dare----"

"Is--is it--_gold_?" Doris whispered it awesomely. Looking up
wide-eyed into his face. "Oh--Bill!"

Bill took her in his arms, felt her yield, saw her head tilt back
against his shoulder. He drew a deep breath that was like a sob, and
bent and kissed her hair.

Doris was looking from the gold-specked quartz in her hand to the
gold-specked ridge lying naked to the sky. Her eyes were big and deep,
like the blue of the sky.

"Do you love me, Doris?" Bill dared to lean and speak his one
absorbing hunger, his lips close to her ear.

"Yes--Oh, Bill, it doesn't seem possible! I--I can't realize it. Can
you? Doris was staring still at the gold.

"It's like a dream come true--a thousand times better than I'd ever
dare to dream it." Bill was looking at the way the sunlight turned her
brown hair to burnished copper, strand by strand. His voice broke. He
laid his cheek against the copper shine. "You love me! God, I was
always scared to dream you ever would!"

Doris stirred in his arms. She was lifting the piece of ore, turning
it this way and that, watching it shine in the sun and in the shade
alike. That was the test--pyrites wouldn't shine in the shade. It was
gold, absolutely it _must_ be gold!

"Oh, Bill, aren't you--excited?" She had turned so that she could look
into his face. "It's an awfully rich strike, isn't it?"

"Why--yes, I suppose it is." Bill looked briefly at the vein. "Yes,
it's the richest stuff I ever saw in the ground. But it doesn't mean
anything to me, Doris, alongside your--love." He whispered the last
word shyly against her cheek. "You'll marry me right away, won't you,
Doris? I've--wanted you so long; ever since that first time I met you.
I've thought and dreamed about you--but it didn't seem possible you
could ever care. Only, I thought if I made a real stake, and you did
like me well enough, I could give you everything in the world you
wanted. It's as you say: I can't realize it yet. I--wish you'd say it
again; just once more. _Do_ you--care?"

For answer Doris smiled up at him brilliantly. "You great, big silly,"
she said softly.

Bill kissed her lips and wondered if a man could bear greater joy than
was his. Not to have just weary, wishful dreams of her; to have Doris
herself, her love, her willingness to trust herself to him. He felt
humbled, ashamed of every little human, masculine fault. In one
sweeping, swift repentance as he stood there, he resolved to attain
perfection for her sake--or as near to perfection as a man may
approach.

"You know, daddy and mother will have to be asked before I
can--promise absolutely," she reminded him prudently. "So let's not
talk about it any more just now, Bill."

"Why, I--I _couldn't_ talk about it," Bill said slowly. "Some things
go too deep. You just can't find any words; or I can't. I'll just
have to prove as I go along--what it means to me."

"Just think, Bill! We could go to California, couldn't we?" Doris
suggested inconsistently. "Talk about dreams--I've dreamed of the
ocean, and orange groves, and beautiful things, until sometimes I've
nearly gone crazy. Bill, I almost hate the desert. It's beautiful, and
of course I know it by heart and would probably miss it if I never saw
it again; but all my life I've been hungry for California."

"You're kind of glad I found the big strike, aren't you?" Bill smiled
down at her, his eyes worshipful. "I guess we can go to California,
all right. We could go to the South Pole, if we wanted to badly
enough. Anywhere in the world you say, Doris. You and I together have
four claims along this contact--as near as I could judge from surface
indications. That ought to bring your dreams to life, don't you
think?" Then he sobered. "But it's going to take a little time, at
that. We've got to dig it out, you know. Unless," he added dubiously,
"I sold out for just what I could get. That would be quick money, but
it wouldn't be enough to let us play the rest of our lives. I'd have
to take some of it and get into some business or other. And that would
tie us down to one spot more or less."

Doris shook her head at that. "No, we mustn't sell out. You remember
what Mr. Rayfield said at the breakfast table, don't you? He certainly
does know what he's talking about, and I know he'd be glad to
advise--us." The last word she spoke with an adorable hesitation which
registered an extra beat in Bill's pulse. "He's a government man, so
of course you can trust him. I think we ought to show this vein to
him, and let him tell us just what to do. His talk about corporations
was awfully sensible, Bill."

"I don't know, Doris." Bill's eyes became shadowed with an unhappy
memory. "I'm kind of scared of corporations. One of them broke my dad.
He found a mine--not so good as this by a long way, but still pretty
good--and some crooks incorporated it for him. When they got through
with him, he had a bunch of stock and no mine. No money, either. It
got him. He lived about two years after that, and he spent all his
time cursing corporations. I don't know, Doris, but it kind of left me
with a chill whenever I hear the word."

"Well, you say yourself that they were crooks. Mr. Rayfield and Mr.
Emmett may have landed those very men in the penitentiary. "You've got
nerves, Bill. I never would have suspected it."

"Maybe there's a good deal about me you've never suspected," Bill
hinted warily,--and almost told her about the saxophone. But he
didn't. His courage was too new and timid, the mine was too wonderful,
and the love of Doris too unbelievable.

"One thing I'd better do," he said, dragging his mind back to the
practical, "and that is to cover up this vein before some one goes to
'high-grading' on us. Tommy says Al Freeman's a thief around mines."

He pulled shovel and pick from under a ridge of washed gravel and
began artfully filling the cut so that it looked as if the dirt had
caved in on the side where the vein had been exposed. There was
nothing crude in Bill's work. When he had finished, a stranger would
have sworn that the earth, gravel and rocks had rattled down from
above. Doris kept watch for him, and mourned openly because all that
beautiful ore must be buried out of sight. It seemed to her almost a
sacrilege.

"That's all right," Bill comforted her, standing with his arm around
her shoulders while he contemplated his camouflage. "It can't run away
or spoil, you know. That vein would be enough to tempt any man whose
honesty didn't reach to the middle of his bones. Now you go on up the
gulch while I brush out our tracks around this cut. There's a little
vein up in the next location hole that's just a stringer--but it's
fairly rich, and will do to show. We'll go up there, and I'll do a
little digging and get some samples. And then, if you want me to put
it up to the government men, Doris, I'll do it. But I'll do it on the
strength of what shows up in Parowan Number Two--and we'll just keep
this Number One vein a secret between us. Shall we?"

"Yes-s, if you let me tell daddy and mother," Doris assented. "I don't
believe I could keep it a secret from them, Bill."

"We'll tell them, sure. I'll leave Tommy in charge of camp and go over
with you to the ranch. I'd like to ask your dad what he thinks of it
before I talk to the government men."

"Well, I think that's a good plan. They'll all believe, of course,
that you're going over to see about that water tunnel. You can't
afford to dig tunnels for dad, _now_----" she gave his arm an ecstatic
squeeze "----but they won't know that. Oh, I think it's just dandy to
have to be secret about it!"

"Anyway, it's a darn sight safer," Bill told her laconically, and led
the way to Number Two.




CHAPTER NINE

A "HINT" FROM DORIS


A short cut from Number Two claim led them straight over a low ridge
to camp. Not only did this trail shorten the distance considerably; it
also avoided altogether the gulch and Parowan Number One--with its
secret.

Al Freeman was seen pottering around the camp by the junipers.
Evidently the truce still held, for Tommy had finished his
blacksmithing and was setting the camp to rights, mumbling
unintelligibly over his work.

Bill's plans had taken definite form, which means that he had
half-unconsciously conceded every point brought forth by Doris, who
was accustomed to having her say about things on the ranch. In one
particular only had Bill stood firm. He would not take the experts
into his confidence until he had talked with Don Hunter. To this Doris
readily assented, feeling fairly certain that her dad would advise
whatever Doris herself wanted. Bill reluctantly left the girl's side
and joined Tommy over by the forge.

"I'll have to make a trip over to the Hunter ranch," he announced. "I
guess our mining will have to wait until I get back--unless our
neighbors should happen to move on. But I've about decided that we're
going to need a dugout to store our grub in. Right here in this bank
is a good place to dig. While I'm gone you can be making the dugout,
Tommy--and you can keep an eye on the camp while you're doing it.
Right now, while Miss Hunter is in camp, I'll take you up and show you
the claims. I've got a pretty rich vein and I don't want any one
monkeying around there while I'm gone. I'll leave it to you and Hez."

They went off together over the ridge, and Al Freeman stopped his work
and openly watched their departure. When they were quite out of sight,
he came shambling over to Bill's tent and pulled open the flap.

"Well?" Doris looked up from spreading jam between cold biscuits for
their lunch on the trail. She might have been speaking to one of her
father's ranch hands, for all the emotion she showed.

Al grinned slyly and placatingly.

"Excuse me," he said in his flat voice that grated unpleasantly on the
ear. "I left my terbaccer in here somewhere this morning. If it ain't
botherin' ye none, I just thought I'd come over an' git it."

"It took you a long time to miss it," Doris observed coldly. "Why
didn't you ask Bill for it?"

"I didn't think of it then," Al grinned, edging into the tent.

"Well, I can't let you go pawing around in here while he's gone."
Doris continued to spread other split biscuits with jam. "Go on out,
and wait till Mr. Dale comes."

"He ain't likely to be back very soon," Al argued insinuatingly. "I
just about got to have a smoke, Miss Hunter--no two ways about it.
Won't take me but a minute to look where I laid my terbaccer."

Doris straightened and stood eyeing him attentively, a butcher knife
in her left hand.

"Whereabouts did you lay it, then?" she demanded.

"Right on a sack in this corner. I was gittin' up to go to breakfast,
an' I laid my terbaccer down on a sack in this corner. I mind now that
Mr. Emmett kinda joggled things 'round, pullin' out a box to set on. I
never thought no more about it till I went to make a smoke." He turned
to the corner and stooped, laying hold upon a half-filled sack of
something. "It musta fell over behind," he mumbled.

"You get out of that corner and out of this tent," Doris commanded
sternly, laying down the knife.

Al lifted his lip in a smile that was half a snarl. "Aw, you wouldn't
make a man go without his terbaccer," he whined, lifting the sack and
finding it unexpectedly heavy. "Must be gold bricks in this sack," he
tittered. "I guess that sample he showed at breakfast ain't all he's
got!"

"_Will_ you get out of here?" Doris took a step forward, her eyes, her
whole face, hardening with anger.

"Now, now, no use gittin' excited," Al protested, leering at her. "I
can't go off without my terbaccer--mebby it fell into this sack. I'll
just take a look."

His hand was fumbling inside the sack when Doris fired. Hunkered down
on his heels, Al gave a grotesque leap straight into the air, as the
bullet spatted into the earthen floor and kicked dirt over his toes.
He came down sidewise, sprawled awkwardly and clawing to get up.

"That's just a hint," Doris announced dispassionately through the
drifting little smoke cloud. "In about one minute----"

Al went out on hands and knees and picked himself up and ran. Doris
followed him out, saw him duck into his own tent and laughed a little.

Al, too, was laughing silently, showing his broken, tobacco-stained
teeth. He was staring gloatingly down at the piece of ore he had
dragged from the sack, hidden in the palm of his big hand.

Doris returned to the tent and stood looking reflectively down at the
tilted sack. She stooped, reached inside it and brought out a lump of
ore. She frowned over it, her under lip between her teeth.

"Bill certainly needs a guardian," she said to herself. "Leaving half
a sack of this stuff right where the first sneak thief could help
himself! That fellow must have suspected it was here, too. I'll bet he
never lost any tobacco in here--but it's easy enough to find out."

She made a thorough search of the corner and convinced herself that Al
had been lying to her and that his sole purpose was to get his hands
on that ore. She tilted the sack again, spilling the contents out on
the ground. She had no fear that Al would return. With her lifelong
knowledge of the desert had come the understanding of desert types of
men, and she needed no explanation of Al Freeman. She knew him for
what he was: a coward at heart, mean and treacherous and capable of
crime that might be hidden. She did not know that he had carried off
a piece of the ore, but she knew that he suspected its richness. Only
a tenderfoot will cumber his tent with valueless samples of
mineral,--and Bill Dale was no tenderfoot.

"He thought he could fool me," she analyzed the incident
contemptuously. "Or maybe he thought I'd be scared to say anything to
him." She sorted the pieces of ore, choosing those that showed the
largest specks and splotches of gold. She fondled them, turned them to
the light, feasted her eyes upon them.

"Rich! Bill's rich, this minute. A millionaire, for all we know," she
mused. "And maybe it's like this on my claim, too. Dear old Bill--he
surely deserves a fortune. How he's worked to find it--and he's loved
me all the time and wanted to strike it so we--I'm going to make him
leave the working of the mine to some one else. He can afford to take
life easy now--we'll live in Los Angeles, or maybe we'll travel----"

She was sitting cross-legged, with her lap full of rich pieces of
quartz, when Bill looked in upon her. She scrambled up, her two hands
clutching the prettiest specimens. Bill was laughing at her, his eyes
adoring. Doris pulled her fine eyebrows together and shook her head at
him.

"Good thing you've got some one to look after you, old boy," she
scolded, half in earnest. "You'd have been robbed of all this, and
maybe cleaned out of everything else, if I hadn't scared him off. He
had his hand in the sack, mind you, when I shot at his feet. That put
him on the run. Bill, you'd better tell Tommy to pack a gun while
you're gone. That fellow, Al, needs a whole lot of watching. What in
the world made you keep all this stuff here in the tent? He must have
known it was here, or at least he suspected it----"

"I'll mighty quick settle with _him_," Bill said grimly, and turned
away.

Doris stopped him. "Better let it pass, Bill. You see, I couldn't
_prove_ he wasn't after his tobacco, just as he claimed. He may have
lost it here. I don't believe it, but he had his excuse for coming.
And he didn't steal anything. I scared him off before he had a chance.
Perhaps I should have waited and got the goods on him.

"No, just gather up everything but that sample you had out in sight
this morning, and we'll carry it over and show it to daddy. And have
Tommy watch out. There really isn't anything Al can do, is there?"

"Not unless he bats Tommy on the head; and from all accounts, Tommy's
good at that game. So you took a shot at him, did you?"

"And scared the life out of him, almost. We'll have to hurry, Bill. If
you can pack my outfit on one of the burros, you could ride old
Rambler. I wish you would. And can't we take Luella along?"

Bill said that they could, but he would not ride Rambler. On the
desert a horse seldom travels faster than a walk on a long journey,
especially with a pack animal along. Bill was accustomed to depending
on his own legs, and a twenty-mile hike was his regular day's travel
when on the trail. He therefore packed an emergency camp outfit on
Wise One and set out quite happily, walking beside Doris, sometimes
touching her hand caressingly, his soul still hushed and trembling
lest all this would prove itself a dream.

In violet shadows they approached the house in its square of
cottonwoods and saw a tall, rangy figure step leisurely down from the
porch and come to meet them, holding a big-bowled, briar pipe from
which lazy incense floated upward.

Leaning both arms upon the top board of the yard fence, Don Hunter
waited placidly until they came up, Rambler shuffling into a trot as
he remembered his stall. Occasionally Don placed the pipestem between
his teeth and took comfort from the slow inhalation of smoke. Content
emanated from his personality as perfume of a flower gives a soothing
quality to the air about it. He was a strong man, meant to dominate
those lesser souls with whom he came in contact, and some with souls
as great as his, but humble in their greatness. He was not an
aggressive man, but most men feared to incur his ill will or his
contempt, and his opinion was rated above that of his neighbors; and
although he was slow to give advice, scarcely a day passed but he was
asked for it. Bill did not know a man whom he liked better or
respected more, and his attitude was not greatly influenced by the
fact that Don was the father of Doris. Indeed, he had known Don Hunter
long before he first met the girl. And if his prospecting were frowned
upon by the older man, Bill knew that Don would be the first to throw
up his hat over Bill's success, and never think of his own possible
benefit from the strike.

"Hello, Bill," Don called as the two came up, Bill walking briskly
behind his burro. Doris had professed a reluctance to let daddy and
mother know that night about the tentative engagement, and they had
traveled apart for the last mile across the flat.

"Howdy, Don. Well, we're here, all right."

Don reached out a long arm and swung open the gate. Then he and Bill
shook hands, looking into each other's eyes with frank pleasure in
the meeting.

"Glad to see yuh, Bill. Just slip the bridles off--there's hay in the
corral--and come on in. Supper's been waiting on yuh."

"We're half-starved, Daddy, and that's the truth," Doris declared,
leaning from the saddle to kiss the top of his head as she rode past.
"Bill's about all in, I reckon. We got a late start and hustled right
along."

"Just keep that pace up till you hit the supper table," Don suggested,
and fastened the gate behind them before he returned to the porch.
"They're here, Momma," he called within, and stood in the dusk of the
doorway, waiting.

Bill had stridden ahead and opened the corral gate, and Wise One
nipped through the opening and made for the manger along one side
where fresh hay was piled. Rambler crowded past Bill hurriedly and
went trotting after the burro. Doris rode through, kicked her right
foot free of the stirrup and swung down, landing unexpectedly in
Bill's arms.

"Oh, Bill--daddy'll see us!" she protested weakly as Bill lifted her
face with a palm under her chin.

"Just one more kiss--and say you love me," Bill pleaded softly. "I
can't believe it--it seems it like a dream. Kiss me, little Doris."
In the last few hours Bill had attained a certain masterful manner,
though he still suffered uneasy moments of incredulity that demanded
instant proof of the sweet reality.

Curiously, while they actually hurried, and Bill held her no longer
than a few seconds in his arms, Don Hunter's voice came bellowing from
the porch before they reached the corral gate. He looked at them
searchingly too, when they came into the big kitchen where the light
was mellow and homelike, and where Mrs. Don was spearing mealy, white
potatoes out of an old-fashioned iron kettle.

They were sighing in gastronomic bliss over the thick, quivery custard
pie when Doris looked across at Bill in mild dismay.

"Bill! You forgot Luella! I'll bet she's swearing herself black in the
face, out there."

Bill pushed back his chair and rose. "She must be hungry--thirsty,
too," he said contritely. "Excuse me just four seconds and I'll bring
her in."

"First time I ever knew Bill to forget the parrot," Don observed
drily. "Where's Sister Mitchell and Hezekiah? Didn't leave them
behind, did he?"

"Oh, Bill has a fellow with him in camp. Yes, he only brought Luella.
She doesn't seem to like Tommy very well. She wouldn't say a word,
hardly. Oh, come on, Luella!" But the smile Doris sent toward the door
was too intimate to be wasted on a mere parrot. Don Hunter lifted one
eyebrow, then pulled them both together in a puzzled frown.

"Luella hungry? Let me have her, Bill. Here's a lovely wishbone,
Luella."

Luella tilted her head sidewise and regarded the proffered dainty
suspiciously.

"I can't believe it," she remarked with startling distinctness. "One
more kiss--say you love me. Seems like a dream. Kiss me, Doris.
Daddy'll see us. I can't believe it. We're rich, Bill, dear. I can't
believe it. Do you love me?"

Then, and then only, Luella accepted the wishbone and began daintily
picking off tiny shreds of chicken meat.




CHAPTER TEN

"WE'RE RICH, BILL, DEAR"


Bill started for the door, stumbling against a chair in his flight.
"I'll kill this darned bird!" he threatened viciously. "That's the
second time she's tipped my hand lately."

Luella looked up at him sidewise and blinked in the effort to remember
something.

"Bill Dale's parrot tipped Bill's hand," she muttered, and turned her
head the other way. "We'll lay low. See the recorr-r----" She turned
and walked up Bill's arm to his shoulder, tilting forward there and
making kissy sounds against his crimson cheek. "I can't believe it.
We're rich, Bill, dear." Then she laughed in a shrill falsetto.

"Better come on back and finish your pie before I boot you outside,"
Don observed drily. "I reckon maybe you can explain where the bird
learned all that. Never saw yuh on the run before, Bill."

At that, Bill returned and stood behind his chair, looking down
honestly into Don Hunter's searching eyes.

"She learnt it eavesdropping," Bill said bluntly. "She does that
trick, every once in awhile. She got it straight, too. I--asked Doris
to marry me, and she said it would be a good deal as you two say. I
didn't ask her until I was dead certain I'd be able to give her
luxuries a prospector couldn't afford. I struck the richest vein of
gold-bearing quartz, Don, that I ever saw in the ground. I've got
three claims on the lead, and I located one for Doris, too.

"I didn't come over to go to work. I came to ask you if you'd have me
in the family, and I wanted to get your advice about what to do with
my claims. There are several thousand dollars' worth in sight--at a
rough guess. And the vein looks strong." He smiled at Mrs. Don, who
smiled back mistily. "I didn't mean to spring it all on you folks this
evening. I--kind of wanted to get my nerve tuned up, and tell you with
trimmings. But the darned parrot beat me to it, so----"

"So you'd better sit right down and eat your pie," Mrs. Don finished
for him, laughing tremulously. "You're a good boy, Bill. We--we'd hate
awfully to lose our girl; she's all we've got. But--far as I'm
concerned, I'd rather it would be you--if you're sure you can take
care of her."

"The boss has said it." Don gave his wife the look one bestows upon
some treasured thing. "Sit down--sit down! Don't look as if you
expected to be lynched for it. The women folks run this house, Bill.
So you struck it rich! You say you're sure it ain't just a fluke?"

Doris rose hastily, asking permission with her eyes.

"Fluke!" She glanced eloquently at Bill, then at her father. "You wait
a minute. I'll show you whether it's a fluke. There. I hid it under my
gloves because I was going to wait till morning before we said
anything. Look at _that_, will you, Mother? And cast your critical
glance at _that_, Dad Hunter!" She placed a piece of ore beside each
plate and returned triumphantly to her seat.

A lump came into Bill's throat as he watched those two, slipping past
middle age, never quite reaching rainbow's end except in love. Mrs.
Don lifted the sample, looked at it, leaned and held it under the
direct rays of the lamp, glanced diffidently at Bill, then looked
questioningly across the table at Don.

"It's--gold, isn't it? Without my glasses I--but it looks----"

Don deliberately produced his reading glasses from an inner pocket of
his vest, tucked the bows over his ears and picked up the specimen
which Bill had chipped off the vein and given to Doris. Don moved his
tongue in his cheek while he looked, slanting the rock so that the
lamp shone on it. He was not a miner himself, but he had lived too
long in Nevada not to know minerals fairly well. He pushed his glasses
down his nose until he could look over them at Bill.

"How much of this have you got in sight, did you say?"

"I estimated it roughly at about five thousand dollars. When I first
located the vein I mortared and panned enough to get a fair idea of
how it was running. The vein averaged about ten inches, fairly uniform
so far. The storm last night uncovered it so now it stands out clean
from the side of the cut like an outcropping; or it did, before I
covered it up. I didn't want to come away and leave it open. There are
some strangers camped right beside me. Government men--but I didn't
like the look of their packer."

"Didn't like the look--my goodness, Mother! The fellow came to the
tent when I was there getting ready to start home, and he started
snooping around in the corner where Bill had a lot of this ore. He was
bound and de-_ter_-mined he'd see what was in the sack. I told him
more than once to go--but I had to shoot into the ground beside him
before he'd go. He went then, all right!"

Her mother looked alarmed. "Why, Doris! And where was Bill?"

"I was up at the claims with Tommy," Bill explained. "You can see,
maybe, why I can't be away long--and why I covered up this vein."

"Oh dear!" Mrs. Hunter leaned her head on her hand as if she had
become suddenly aware of a great weariness. "Must _you_ go through all
that fighting and grasping over gold? A boom always seems to me like a
lot of wild animals fighting and tearing at one another, to get a bone
which the first one on the hunting ground has already cleaned." She
closed her eyes tightly for an instant, then looked wistfully from
Doris to Bill. "I don't know but what gold costs more than it's worth,
after all," she said. "And the more you have, the more terrible the
price. I don't know but what I'd just about as soon see you two face
poverty together, as to see you face a boom. You know," she added
apologetically, "I was born in Virginia City. I've seen sudden wealth
and sudden poverty. And the sudden wealth was worse, sometimes--though
I never heard of a man shooting himself because he struck it rich, and
they do sometimes when they lose everything."

"That's what Mr. Rayfield meant, I guess. He said if Bill had a lot of
ore like the sample he saw, he'd have Bill's friends pray that wealth
wouldn't spoil him." Doris smiled tolerantly at her mother, as youth
is wont to smile at experience.

"Who's Rayfield?" Don Hunter pushed back his chair with a rasping
sound on the bare floor. "How did he come to see a sample? Doris, you
help your mother with the dishes; you ought to have a lot to talk
over. Bill, come on out on the porch and let's get at the bottom of
this. So far I can't make head nor tail of anything."

Out on the porch the two men smoked in silence, watching the twinkling
of camp fires half a mile away, where travelers were availing
themselves of running water and shade for one comfortable camp on the
desert. The Hunter ranch saw many such wayfarers, for it lay close to
the highway (such as it was) and formed a sort of oasis, all the more
enticing because one could buy fresh eggs and milk and, if one were
lucky, a loaf or two of delicious bread. Mrs. Don called such revenue
her pin money, and Don himself grinned and wondered sometimes what she
ever did with it.

"Who's Rayfield?" Don repeated his question abruptly, after a lapse of
several minutes.

Bill told him, making few words of it but contriving to paint a very
clear picture in Don's mind.

"They didn't come this way--or if they did, they didn't stop." Don
seemed to consider that omission somewhat derogatory to the character
of the government men.

"They didn't mention this place at all," Bill said. "I got the idea
they diverged from the trail and cut towards the likeliest mineral
showings. That would put them south."

"What's your plan, Bill? Or haven't you got any?" Don inspected his
pipe, prodding at the tobacco with his finger. "Yuh want to cash in as
soon as yuh can, I reckon--anxious for the honeymoon."

"You've been there," Bill retorted. "Sure, I'm anxious. That little
girl has been hankering for the ocean and palm trees all her life, she
said."

"They won't run away in the next year or so, that I know of. Well, I'm
no mining shark, but I reckon I better trail over to your diggin's and
see what you've got. Maybe them fellows over there can be some help,
and then again, maybe you want to steer clear of them. Just because a
man draws down his pay from Uncle Sam don't give him any guarantee
from the Almighty that he's a he angel. Doris seems to think so."

"What I want, Don, is for you to take a hand and help me get started
off on the right foot. I can see it's going to be a mighty big
proposition, and I don't want to have the same experience my dad had.
On the other hand, I don't want to act the darned fool sitting over my
claims with a shotgun, afraid somebody's going to rob me. There's a
safe line betwixt and between that I want to take and keep. And I
wouldn't ask you to make the trip over there, if I didn't _know_ the
stuff's there; acres of it, by the looks."

Don sucked at his pipe for some time before he spoke. Then,

"I'll do all I can, Bill. If you're going to be one of the family I
might as well start bossing yuh now. I want to see yuh make good
without hurting the other fellow. It can be done, and if it's done
rightly, there ain't any cleaner money in the world than what comes
out of the ground. Mines or ranches, you're giving the world something
it never had before; something it needs. Most money-making is just
swapping the ownership of necessities, or else changing the shape and
form of them and selling them that way. But when you take something
outa old Mother Earth, you've got it clean. What I can't stomach is
the way crooks come flockin' around every new strike, and making it
rotten business.

"Every boom suffers from 'em. When the news of this leaks out--_has_
it leaked out, yet?"

Bill shook his head, though Don could not see him in the dark.

"Not so far as I know. I just brought down supplies and a mucker from
Goldfield--and there's something funny happened up there. The darn
parrot was outside while I was in recording the claims, and when I
came out, she commenced talking a new speech that I'll swear _I_ never
taught her. She got it off to-night, if you noticed." Bill blushed
consciously, but went on. "She said, 'Bill Dale's parrot has tipped
Bill's hand. We'll lay low--see the recorder.' Only, she couldn't
quite get the last word out. Now, she heard that said in Goldfield,
while I was in the recorder's office, or she couldn't have repeated
it. I've learned that much about parrots. She talks right along, and
seems to know what she means--way she calls me down, sometimes, is
right human--but she has to hear a sentence before she can say it. One
hearing's enough, if she happens to take a notion to the words. But it
was funny, her saying that." He flicked the ash off his cigarette. "I
shut her up till I was ready to leave," he added. "I guess it didn't
amount to anything. I wasn't trailed, anyway."

"What about these fellows camped up there? You sure they ain't----"

"Oh, they came from Las Vegas way. No, they're not on my trail--or if
they are they're pretty damned smooth."

"Crooks are," Don remarked laconically. "How would the parrot be able
to tip your hand? Ever think that out?"

"No-o--only, I talk to the menagerie in camp, of course. When a fellow
doesn't see a human for weeks at a time, he'll talk to anything; and
Luella's next to human, seems like. Yes, I talked about buying her a
gold perch, I remember, and about striking it. I was one tickled man,
Don, when I first uncovered that vein and saw the gold showing right
up in the rock."

"Mh-hm--well, I reckon she must have overheard you talking about it.
Same as she must have heard some remarks, coming over, that was kind
of embarrassing for a minute, when repeated. I reckon I'll have to get
you outa bed early, to-morrow morning, Bill. I'm getting mighty
curious to see those government men and have a talk with them." He
knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose. "I've learned that one hoof
track is good as a dozen when you're trailin' stock. A critter's got
to be present, to make one track. And I can't seem to see you teachin'
that parrot to say that she's tipped your hand, and you'll lie low.
Some other critter made that track, Bill. If I don't miss my guess,
you'll have somebody trying to horn in somehow. Let's go in. I want to
talk to Doris about that feller she took a shot at, that was nosin'
around your samples."




CHAPTER ELEVEN

MR. RAYFIELD GIVES ADVICE


"I c'uldn't turrn 'em out, Mr. Dale," Tommy explained in a worried
tone, and pensively inspected a plug of tobacco before helping
himself. "Al Freeman packed the burros an' hit the trail yistiddy, he
did--an' phwat was I t' do wit' them experts but leave 'em eat uh your
grub? They're t' pay fer the board--I made that plain to 'em 'fore
they swallied a mout'ful--I did that."

Bill stood with his hands on his hips, looking across to the junipers,
where trampled brush and a tin can or two marked the spot where the
government men had made their camp. Al Freeman had evidently made a
clean job of it, though Tommy had said that the blankets of Rayfield
and Emmett had been left in a pile on a convenient rock. But no food
of any kind. Their canteens and prospectors' picks and sample bags,
and the clothes they walked in constituted their sole equipment for
camping on the desert. Of course, there was nothing for Tommy to do
but take them in and feed them, at least until Bill's return.

"What do you make of it, Don?" Bill relaxed his muscles and turned to
unsaddle.

"Tell you better when I've sized up the experts," Don replied warily.
"Of course, this Al Freeman could expect to hear from you when you got
back; he maybe decided to go while the going was good and he could
have burros and plenty of grub. When his bosses heard about his
performance in your tent, I don't see how they could do anything less
than haze him outa camp with a back pack--do you? The average skunk
like him would beat 'em to it and choose his own pack. He seems to of
been right liberal with himself."

"Wanted to fix it so they couldn't follow him up, I reckon," Bill
added. "When did Rayfield and Emmett find it out, Tommy?"

"When they come in at night, Mr. Dale." Tommy had his chew, now, and
felt more at ease. "Uh coorse, I seen him packin', an' I coulda
stopped 'im easy. But not knowin' their plans, how sh'd I know they
wasn't movin' on, an' Al under orrders t' pack an' go?"

"You couldn't butt in, of course," said Bill. "I'd have stood right
here and watched him carry off the works, and I'd never have thought
to say a word against it. It was sure bold--and he could get away with
it, too. And you couldn't do any less than feed the experts. Where
did they sleep?"

Tommy tilted his head much like Luella. "They slept outa doors, Mr.
Dale. They did, that! I seen 'em look longin' at your bunk, but I says
I has me orrders, an' they slept outside. They did, that! It was Hez
that had the tent to hisself, Mr. Dale--barrin' the turkle which I
left alone, she was that bashful wit' me." He grinned, showing broken
teeth. Then he thought of something.

"They was a growlin' an' a grumblin' from that dorg, Mr. Dale. "But if
anny one wished to enter the tent, he changed his wish, I'm thinkin'.
An' it might 'a' been Mr. Rayfield wantin' a drink from the bucket,
fer I heard him tellin' that other how he was like to make a trip to
the spring in the night, but recalled the canteen not bein' empty. He
got no drink from the bucket befoor sun-up, that I c'ld swear to, Mr.
Dale."

Bill nodded and went thoughtfully about his cooking of an early
supper. Riding the desert--or walking, for that matter--puts an edge
on one's hunger, and eating is the first thought on arriving in camp.
There would still be time to show Don his gold vein on Number One, and
he quizzed Tommy carefully about the movements of the experts. Tommy
had a deep, wide cut in the sidehill to show how his own time had
been spent, and he had seen to it that Bill's tent had not been
entered. Further than that he was vague. The experts had struck off to
the west, that morning. They could have swung back around the hill and
gone up the gulch without Tommy's knowledge, however, and Bill was
uneasy; though with Al Freeman gone there could be no valid reason for
being nervous.

But there is a certain hypnotic quality in native gold. The very sight
of it in its natural form will leave a mark on any man's mind. The
possessor is affected according to his mental caliber. He will lose
his head and spend money recklessly, feeling that he has all nature
behind him; or he will grow wary, eyeing his fellow men with
suspicion, haunted by the fear of being robbed. The higher the
mentality, the more subtle the effect; but it is there, nevertheless.

Don Hunter felt it when he stood beside Bill and stared at the vein
which Bill had just uncovered. He stooped and laid a forefinger upon
one great splotch of gold in the rock. His finger could not quite
cover it from sight. He rubbed the gold almost caressingly. He feasted
his eyes upon the many specks and splotches. Even when he got out his
pipe and sat down on the edge of the cut, he could no more take his
eyes off the gold than could Doris, when she first saw it.

"My God, Bill, that's the richest stuff I ever saw!" he sighed. "I
couldn't help thinking, all along, that you and Doris had got too
excited right in the start. I was afraid maybe you both had a
disappointment coming to you--the way you talked about millions. I
take it all back."

"I knew you felt that way about it," Bill grinned. "And I knew you'd
change your tune when you saw it in the ground yourself. That's why I
wanted you to see it and help me plan the next move. Doris wants to
incorporate and let the company do the mining while we go off and
play. Poor little kid, she wants to see something besides sagebrush,
and I don't blame her. If this mine can't make Doris happy and give
her the things she wants, then it's of no use to me. What do you think
about forming a company, Don? Rayfield claims it's the only thing to
do. I hate the very name 'corporation,' but I know that's partly
prejudice. I don't want to be hidebound. I'm willing to leave it to
you."

"And I ain't going to give snap judgment on a thing the size of this."
Don opened his knife and went over to pick out that big splotch of
gold which seemed to fascinate him. This thing is going to take some
studying."

That night they talked long with the two research men. Don admired the
careful conservatism of Mr. Emmett, but he responded more freely to
Mr. Rayfield's genial manner and his clear, common-sense way of going
at the heart of the subject. He had approached the acquaintance of the
two men with mental reservations. In an hour he and Bill had both
forgotten their caution; the conversation had drifted insensibly into
a consultation.

"My, my! I wish that scoundrel had at least left us our grips," Mr.
Rayfield exclaimed regretfully. It's rather embarrassing to be obliged
to trust that you will take our word in the place of regular
credentials. All our papers, instructions, reports--everything that
could prove our identity and standing, carried off by that pitiful
sneak thief! And I suppose," he added with a grimace, "they'll go to
start his camp fire. I doubt if the man can read; if he can he'll
probably burn our papers as a means of self-protection. You can't
identify slabs of bacon--or burros, either, as far as I'm concerned.
They all look alike to me, the same as Chinamen. So he'll probably
burn all our personal belongings and travel like an honest prospector.
I don't suppose he managed to get any inkling of what you have here,
Mr. Dale?"

Bill replied that he didn't see how Al could have gotten wise to
anything; though his prowling in the tent held a sinister meaning, he
believed.

Mr. Rayfield pursed his lips. "I wouldn't think that would mean
anything more than an attempt to steal whatever he could lay his hands
on," he said judicially. "He had undoubtedly laid his plans to make
off with our outfit, and he was quite willing to add as much of yours
as he could steal. My, my, what a plucky young lady your daughter is,
Mr. Hunter! There isn't a doubt in the world but what she saved Mr.
Dale from being robbed. No," he returned to the point in question, "I
don't see how Al could suspect that you had any rich claims here. He
certainly had no time to locate any ground alongside you before he
left. And that, I think, would be his first move. It would be very
easy to sell his claims in Goldfield without ever showing up here
again. That is, if he could get hold of some of your ore and show it
to the right parties."

"You've been in Goldfield, Mr. Rayfield?" Don lifted one eyebrow at
him.

"Oh, yes. Yes, we try to keep in touch more or less with all the
mining camps. Emmett and I were there just this summer. Nice little
camp there. But the speculators are ready for another stampede,
nevertheless. Do you know, Mr. Hunter, this mining country has
produced a type of men whom I should call professional boomers. A
pernicious type, too, in the long run. For while they undoubtedly do
start things moving when they rush to a new camp, they also knock the
bottom out quite as unthinkingly when they rush off to the next boom
camp.

"I suppose you realize, Mr. Dale, that you'll have to take into
consideration that very thing. I don't see any possibility of avoiding
a boom here at Parowan. The moment the news leaks out in Goldfield
there'll be a rush down here. It will be humanly impossible to prevent
it. The only thing that you can do is to prepare yourself to handle it
when it comes and see to it that the undesirables don't get control."

"Has it occurred to you," Mr. Emmett asked abruptly, "that somebody's
going to lay out a town site here? That's the first thing that will
happen. If you'll take my advice, Mr. Dale, you'll beat them to it. If
you own the town site, you can pretty nearly control the situation."

Bill and Don looked at each other questioningly. Don turned to the
other two, eyeing them quizzically. "What's the matter with you two
laying out the town site yourselves?" he asked. "Seems to me you're
entitled to some benefit here, if it's only to break even on your
outfit."

Mr. Rayfield laughed and threw out his hand in a gesture of
helplessness.

"Our hands are tied, Mr. Hunter. So long as we are in the employ of
the government we are not permitted to profit in any way from the work
that we do or from any mineral which may be uncovered. Sort of
sanctified to the service of Uncle Sam. We'd have to resign before we
could take any active part in your strike, Mr. Dale."

Bill studied that for a moment. "You know all about the best way to
handle this proposition," he said finally. "That town-site idea is a
bird--only I'd be plumb helpless about starting a thing like that in
country that isn't surveyed. I suppose you wouldn't think of such a
thing as resigning from your jobs and taking hold here." He glanced at
Don for approval.

Mr. Rayfield shook his head slowly. "That, I'm afraid, would need some
ve-ry serious consideration. Of course, we're not mere chattels; we
could resign at any time. But there's the ethical point to consider.
Speaking for myself, Mr. Dale, I'd have to feel very sure that I could
be of real service, and that in a field broad enough to justify my
leaving this research work to others. Of course," he went on musingly,
"if I could be sure that I might be able to help develop this district
and make the name Parowan stand for clean, efficient mining, with a
clean, orderly town here, that would be a tremendous achievement for
any man. The research work in this particular district would almost
take care of itself. This whole Parowan neighborhood would be gone
over with a fine-tooth comb by prospectors."

He rose, glancing with his good eye at Mr. Emmett. "I think we'd all
better sleep on the subject," he smiled disarmingly. "Mr. Emmett and I
will in any event be glad to look over your claims and give you our
honest opinion and as much advice as we feel competent to offer. And
as to our resigning and taking hold here--we'll have to think that
over. But I feel free to say, here and now, that we _will_ think it
over; and that, if you only knew it, is a very great compliment to you
folks and to the mine we believe you have got here."

Mr. Emmett had also risen to his feet. He smiled slightly, glancing
from one to the other.

"Walter is more impulsive than I am, more inclined to play hunches.
But we stand pretty close together and I usually agree with him in the
long run. I don't fall in with this idea of resigning. Right now I
call it foolish. We've passed up dozens of chances to make a stake in
some mining boom. I don't know what's got into him to-night. But it's
only fair to tell you that I'm going to talk him out of that notion
if I can."

Mr. Rayfield threw back his head and laughed contagiously. "It isn't a
notion," he denied jovially. "Bill Dale, here--_Hopeful_ Bill
Dale--paid us the high compliment of suggesting it. It's no treason,
John, to think it over. Come along to bed and don't look so solemn."
He turned to Don and Bill, smiling down at them almost paternally.

"Don't mind John Emmett, boys. He has no sense of humor, anyway.
To-morrow, I think we'll just postpone our field work and go into this
proposition very thoroughly with you. Our time and what scant
knowledge we have is at your disposal, and free as the desert air. I
hope you won't hesitate to use both as long as you feel the need. And
whether we decide to roll up our sleeves and help make you a
millionaire, Bill, or whether we go on pecking at rocks for the
government, I hope you'll rely always upon our friendship and good
will."

They had been gone some minutes before Don straightened from his
hunched position on a box and knocked the cold ashes from his pipe.

"We'll try and get them in," he said slowly. "That town-site idea is
worth darn near as much as your mine."




CHAPTER TWELVE

A MAN SHOULDN'T MIX BUSINESS WITH LOVE


The big hotel in Goldfield was humming with talk and laughter, as
people rushed here and there. Arriving guests were lined up at the
desk, waiting anxiously to hear whether they could have a room and
bath, or must content themselves with a plain room. A third of them
betrayed signs of having slept out under the stars or under canvas. A
few of them gazed at these desert dwellers with curiosity that was
more than a little envious. The rest were quite absorbed in their own
affairs and gave no attention to their neighbors. And the loungers in
the great, velvet-upholstered chairs scattered amongst the great
pillars of the lobby, watched the new ones, idly amused or
indifferent.

"That's Bill Dale," a slender, black-eyed man volunteered to his
companion on the right, and waved his cigar toward the elevator. "And
that's his bride--the little Hunter girl. You know Don Hunter, don't
you? Sure, you do! Well, that's his daughter and her mother. Bill?
Why, he's the fellow that discovered Parowan! Gold you could hack out
of the quartz with your knife! Yeah--that's the stuff they've got over
across the street, in the window. Brought in a ton of it and dumped it
in that window like so much dirt!

"Talk about luck! You know how he found it? Why, he was prospecting
around and happened to camp at Parowan spring one night. And I'm
blamed if a young cloud-burst didn't hit that side of the mountain,
that night, and uncovered the whole vein, bare as your hand. Fact.
Bill ran slap on to it when he went to the spring next morning for
water.

"He was cute as the next one. Staked out a group of claims and kept
the whole thing hushed up till he'd got everything nailed down. Laid
out a town site, even. Did that on the quiet, too--Don Hunter got a
surveyor friend of his to go down and run some lines on his ranch.
When he got him down there, he just hitched up and hauled him over to
Bill's claims, and had him lay out Parowan town and survey the group
of claims so there wouldn't be any chance for fraction hunters.
Everything air-tight----

"Huh? No, I didn't say _water_-tight! Bill's incorporated, and
everybody with two bits in his overalls is buying stock. Take my word,
that stock's making a rocket look like a kid climbing a greased pole.
I bought a block at par--first offering was at par, mind you. Nothing
cheap about Bill! But then he's a fine, straight fellow, and everybody
knows he wouldn't stand for any wildcatting. He's _got_ it, you see.
Why, they keep guards standing over that mine with sawed-off
shotguns--or so I heard.

"What's that? Sure, I'll take you down there. If I get a chance, I'll
have you meet Bill. Nothing swell-headed about him--I used to know him
when he packed his grub out of here on two burros; wasn't so long ago,
either, that he did that same thing--but everybody is after him now,
of course. He always was popular and now his millions are not getting
him the cold shoulder any, that I've noticed. Then he was just married
to-day--this morning, upstairs in the parlor--with all the big bugs in
town present. They're leaving to-morrow morning for California on
their honeymoon.

"You know, Fred, if you want a good, safe investment that will bring
quick returns, Parowan's your best bet. Either buy Parowan
Consolidated, or else go down and pick up some lots in the town. As
for the stock, they're shipping gold out of there in the rock right
now and building a mill with the proceeds. There's going to be a
railroad in there soon as it can be put through; two, I heard
to-day--but that may be just street gossip. Some one was saying a
cut-off's coming through from Las Vegas to Parowan, and on to
Goldfield. Don't know how true that is, but I do know for a fact that
a line will be put through from Barstow or thereabouts. That's been
talked of for quite a while, but Goldfield has lost the peak of her
boom in the last few months, and it took this new Parowan strike to
bring things to a head.

"Bill's heading this way. You hold my place--I'm going to wander
across his trail and meet him. If I can, I'll bring him over. I want
you to meet the man that's being talked about more than any other man
in the West to-day."

The black-eyed man manoeuvered cleverly so that he met Bill within six
feet of the settee where his friend was waiting. But Bill was halted
in the middle of a group that seemed disinclined to make their
greetings brief. They were important-looking men, money-makers every
one, if looks meant anything. All were laughing; several were talking
at once. The black-eyed man caught Bill's eye over the shoulder of
those in front, and tilted his head backwards. Bill answered the look
with a slight nod and gradually worked his way toward the signaller.

"How are you, Davis? Pretty crowded here to-night." Mechanically Bill
shook hands, that friendly ceremony having been forced upon him in
the past two months until his hand went out as unconsciously as does
the hand of a politician at election time. Davis held to the hand and
drew him toward the settee.

"Gold's an old story to you, Bill, but all the same I want you to meet
a friend of mine who is just down from Alaska after his own little
clean-up. Fred Moore's his name, and he's not such a bad guy to have
for a friend. Packed me in out of the cold on his back, once, when I
was up there a year or two ago. How many miles was it, Fred, that you
carried me that time?"

Fred had gotten to his feet and was shaking hands with Bill. "Not over
forty," he parried indifferently. "So you're a bloated plutocrat, eh?
Davis has been telling me all about you. Placer or quartz?"

"Free milling gold in quartz," Bill told him, and then excused himself
hastily, with two valid reasons. One was the appearance of Doris by
the elevator, evidently looking for him; and the other was his growing
distaste for the subject of his mine. It seemed to him that every man
he met seized the first opportunity to quiz and question him about
Parowan. Over and over again he had told the truth about finding the
mine. Now he was cynically content to let the garbled newspaper
stories and the gossip of men stand for the truth.

Mr. Rayfield joined him without greeting or apology as Bill made his
way to the elevator,--and his bride. Mr. Emmett saw the two and came
up, so that the three arrived together before Doris.

"Are you going to have time this evening to hold that business
meeting, Bill?" Emmett asked casually. "Your train leaves about nine
o'clock in the morning, doesn't it? We ought to get that straightened
out before you go, or we'll have to pester you with papers to sign and
a lot of detail work. What do you want done about the meeting?"

Bill hesitated, glancing toward Doris. Rayfield came to the rescue,
laying his hand familiarly on Bill's arm, perfectly aware of the fact
that half the men in the lobby were at that moment registering a
certain degree of envy.

"Now, if you don't want to attend that meeting, Bill, just leave it to
us. We can get everything done and you can sign the minutes in the
morning. My, my, events are surely moving fast! There's a bunch of New
York men here to-day--just got in this morning. They want to start a
bank at Parowan just as soon as they can get a roof to put it under.
And that man O'Hara, with the chain of hotels all up and down the
coast, wants a good corner with two hundred feet frontage on Main
Street. He's going to build a hotel. We'll have to take that up
to-night at the meeting. The question is, do we present him with the
ground for the sake of getting him down there, or do we make him pay,
the same as other folks? He argues that the prestige of having an
O'Hara House at Parowan is worth the site to put it on." He pursed his
lips, which was his substitute for a smile.

"Make him pay!" Doris exclaimed, laughing a bit. "You can bet he isn't
going to build an O'Hara House at Parowan just to help make our town
look nice. He'll charge boom prices and clean up a fortune. Why should
we donate to the cause? Won't he be making his money off us and the
things we're doing?"

"_That's_ the way to talk!" Rayfield beamed upon her with his good
eye. "O'Hara's not in the hotel business for his health, you can bet
on that. And if he doesn't build a hotel down there, some one else
will."

"Yes, but let it once be known that O'Hara's going to put up a hotel
in Parowan, and our stock will take another jump. We could well afford
to give him the ground to build on." Mr. Emmett's tone betrayed the
fact that this point had been discussed before.

"Oh, split the difference," Bill suggested impatiently. "Let him pick
his own site, and charge him half price for it. You're both right,
according to my understanding of the case. O'Hara'll clean up a bunch
of money on the investment, just as Doris says. And John's right about
the prestige of having an O'Hara House. Make him call it that trade
name. Then he won't dare work off poor accommodations on the public.
When folks know that they can get O'Hara standard of cooking and so on
at Parowan, they'll come in droves. I reckon that's what makes a
town."

"That's the talk!" Rayfield patted approval on Bill's flat, muscular
shoulder. "Suppose we make that a regular policy, folks? Cut the
prices on building sites for all enterprises that will reflect credit
on the town, to just half the selling price?" He looked from one to
the other eagerly. "The selling price is going up steadily, you know.
Having to pay something for a site will shut out the little shoestring
propositions that go broke and leave empty houses behind them. That
always looks bad in a town. If they have to pay for their building
site, it means they'll have to have capital behind them. And no firm
is going to sink money in real estate unless they mean business."

"Oh, come on up to our sitting room and let's have the meeting there
and get it over with," said Doris. "I'm terribly interested in the
whole thing--but honestly, my feet are just ready to drop off! It's a
radical change from desert shoes to French-heeled pumps, let me tell
you."

"All right--come on up," Bill invited resignedly.

Rayfield looked at Emmett.

"Sure, if your wife isn't too tired," Emmett hesitated. "You've got an
early start to make in the morning, remember."

"Oh, fudge!" Doris placed a finger tip on the elevator button. "This
is important. We don't want to go away and leave a lot of tag ends, do
we, Bill? Because," she added, smiling up at them, "goodness only
knows when we'll come back!"

The elevator slid down, the door slid open and Doris stepped inside,
Bill just behind her, his hand placed solicitously under her elbow.

"We'd better get all the books and bring up, then," Mr. Rayfield
suggested, standing just outside. "I think it will be a good idea to
clean up everything, so John and I won't have to bother you again. You
go on up, and we'll be right along in a few minutes."

He gave them a smile like a benediction. When it was quite certain
that the conversation had terminated, the elevator boy deferentially
closed the door and conveyed bride and groom to the second floor with
the air of one who waits upon royalty.

"Shall I unlock the door for you, sir?" he asked eagerly.

"No, thanks," drawled Bill. "I'm not paralyzed, sonny." But he slid a
coin into the boy's hand to salve the rebuff.

"Now, Bill-dear, you _must_ give enough time to business to let John
and Walter go ahead without having to bother us every day. You know,
we're going to travel around, just wherever we take the notion we want
to go. We don't want Parowan riding our necks all the time. Walter
told me that if you signed the stock books in blank, and the
Corporation check book, he wouldn't have to bother you at all----"

"That's giving them a pretty free hand, honey," Bill objected, laying
his cheek against her silky hair as she stood within his arms.

Doris turned in the embrace so that she could look into his eyes.

"Why, Bill Dale! If you don't _trust_ John and Walter, why have you
got them in the company? Why is Walter Rayfield Vice President and
General Manager, then, and John, Secretary and Treasurer? Bill-dear,
don't you think you are rather inconsistent?"

Bill kissed her.

"Bill, it would just about break my heart to see you tie yourself down
to running Parowan Consolidated. I think that would show a streak of
narrowness in you, dear. It seems to me that the whole advantage of
having the mine and the town site and everything is to be able to let
others do the work and leave you free. You see, dear, they both
resigned from good government positions to take hold and help organize
the company, and the best way to show your gratitude, I think, is to
trust them with the management now. We've got the control, haven't we?
And they certainly have shown that they know exactly how to go ahead
and make money out of the mine.

"Why, dear man, just think! _You'd_ have plugged along, just digging
out the gold and selling it. _They've_ made a fortune for us already,
without taking out more than enough gold to make all the expenses of
the organization and the town-site promotion, and mining and hauling.
I don't know how they do it--but they certainly are wizards at getting
in money."

"I love you, little wife," said Bill irrelevantly. "If money will make
you the happiest woman on earth, they can't dig up too much."

Doris pulled him over to a red velvet couch and sat down beside him,
snuggling against his straight, strong body.

"Bill, you mustn't think I worship money above other things. I don't.
But all my life I've heard one sentence that always grated on my
nerves and my sense of justice. Whenever I wanted something nice,
daddy or mother would say, 'We can't afford it.' They worked hard, and
I worked and tried to do right always--and still we couldn't _afford_
to enjoy life.

"Bill-dear, I never want to hear that said to me again, as long as I
live!" She drew away from him, so that she could look into his face.
Her own was flushed and very earnest. "Now we're rich, I mean to have
the things and enjoy the things we couldn't _afford_. I never want to
wonder whether the money will hold out to the end of the trip. I want
to buy things without asking what they cost. I--I'm just _hungry_ for
the world, Bill! And if you had to hurry back and look after things,
I--I----"

Bill gathered her into his arms, his throat contracting painfully at
the sudden quiver of her lips. One day married, and Doris had tears in
her eyes!

"I'll make you one promise, right now," he said contritely. "I'll
never bring you back to this country unless you want to come. And
I'll fix it so that you'll always be able to afford anything you want.
Why, all _I_ want is to see you happy and keep you loving me,
sweetheart. I could grin at the world if I were a hobo and had your
love. So never worry about having to come back to Parowan or any other
place."

Doris rewarded him properly for that, and immediately made use of her
woman's prerogative and had the last word.

"Then you'd better lay aside that suspiciousness of yours and fix
things so you won't _have_ to come back," she pouted. "John and Walter
are perfectly capable of managing things, and it's to their interest.
Look at the salary they're getting--and the big block of stock you
gave them! Our interests are their interests, Bill-dear--and they can
do the work. You did your share when you tramped the desert and found
the mine. It's their turn now at the job."

Into the echo of that speech walked John and Walter, drawn into
Christian-name intimacy in the past two months. Their arms were full
of books--too precious to be carried by anxious bellboys--their heads
were full of plans and the details of their work. Their hearts were
full, too, of zeal, perchance. One must judge most persons by their
faces and the words they speak.

So Bill spent a weary two hours signing stock certificates in blank,
on the line in the right-hand corner entitled PRESIDENT in small caps.
They were dignified-looking certificates, but Bill grew very tired of
them before he was through.

After that, Bill rubbed the cramp out of his right hand and wrist, and
signed a large book of blank checks with Parowan Consolidated Mining
Company, Incorporated, printed across the face in letters much larger
than the name of the bank. Bill thought suspiciously of certain
dishonest uses to which his signature as president might be put, and
immediately throttled suspicion with the stern hand of loyalty. Doris
was right. If he didn't trust John Emmett and Walter Rayfield, why
were they officers in his company?

"There's one thing I want done," he said abruptly, pushing the signed
blanks away from him with a sigh of relief. "I want that whole
block--the whole _block_, remember--where my tent and dugout stands
made over to me. I want a high board fence built around it, with
spikes in the top. I want a padlock on the gate. I want that tent and
cellar left just as I left it, with Tommy as caretaker. And I want
Tommy to have a block next to it, to do as he pleases with it. Can you
make out the papers to-night?"

They could. Bill sat for some time silent, smoking meditatively and
staring at the door through which the fate of Parowan had passed, in
the persons of John S. Emmett and Walter B. Rayfield.

He was a rich man, even now. He was growing richer so fast that he
felt slightly dizzy when he tried to follow the process by which his
bank account increased. It wasn't the gold in the mine that did
it--yet. Doris was right; the gold shipped had just about paid the
expense of exploitation. People were buying town lots at boom prices
and selling them at double what they paid. He was not the only man who
was growing rich. Even Tommy was talking about starting a saloon and
calling it "Tommy's Place" with naïve triteness.

As Parowan Consolidated was selling in the open market, Bill was a
millionaire. As Parowan lots were selling, Bill's income was better
than a thousand dollars a day--real money, that, with a certain
increase as men flocked to the new camp. Already that camp was
noisy--garish, unwholesome, no place at all for Doris to live. Bill
had tried to prevent that. He had wanted a decent town, had worked and
sweated and sworn to make it so. But Parowan was like a landslide
started with one ill-judged step. It has gathered a devastating power
as it progressed, until now, Bill knew that it was out of hand; a boom
town, living up to the reputation of other boom towns. Only--and Bill
sighed relievedly as he thought of it--_his_ boom had a mine to give
it a solid foundation.

"No reason in the world why Parowan shouldn't be on the map a hundred
years from now," he muttered, and began to unlace the first pair of
patent-leather shoes he had ever worn.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BILL LEARNS ABOUT WOMEN FROM 'ER


A mysterious, clotted haze of gray and blue and smoke smudges, shot
with rose and deeper tints of carmine; a churning of white foam in an
oily sweep of undulating water that caught the lights from the sunset
so that they swam through a magic floating world; screaming gulls
flapping close, their pink legs hanging straight down like little
sticks; bellowing boat whistles, deep siren blasts, pricking lights in
the haze. With frankly confessed eagerness, Doris stood with Bill in
the bow of the ferry and gazed enraptured, her face pallid with
emotion.

Bill looked down at her, knew himself forgotten in that moment of
blissful arrival into her dream world. A vague hurt, a slow
understanding, sobered his face as he watched her. Then, like a blow
that forces open a door, Bill saw. There, mirrored in her eyes, on the
tremulous lips, glowing through the pallor of her cheeks, was a joy,
an incredulous rapture such as he himself had known, not once, but
many times in the past weeks. Doris was trying to feel the reality of
a dream come true. Bill remembered poignantly how he had struggled to
express that emotion, and the paucity of words that had held him dumb.

He had felt it when his lips first touched the lips of Doris; when she
had said that she loved him. Doris--why, Doris had wanted to talk
about the gold, about whatever came into her mind. Things, other than
their love, could claim her thoughts, while she stood abashed before
the miracle. He had thought that Doris was different. She didn't show
her feelings much; women were shy about love. It never occurred to him
to question the depth of her love until that moment.

"Why didn't she have that look in her eyes--_then_?" he thought
sharply. He had never seen just this look in her face; no, nor
anything approaching that look. There was an answer, but Bill shut his
mind against it. And then, as if a devil had prompted the words, Doris
turned and spoke a sentence which Bill recognized.

"I was always scared to dream I'd ever actually be here," she said,
and her voice was hushed. "Oh, Bill-dear, I'm so happy my heart just
_aches_!"

"Are you, honey?" Bill bit his lips and hid something away where even
his own heart must never find it. She had elaborated on his broken
speech there at Parowan Number One, but Bill set that down to a more
versatile vocabulary. He too had been so happy his heart had ached;
but he had not been able to find those words to say.

Desert tan and mail-order trousseau hurt her pride terribly. She
insisted upon a quiet hotel until the defects could be remedied but
Bill only laughed at her vanity. He could call it that now, though he
loved the trait,--since he could gratify it.

"When you've got a million dollars in your fist nobody's going to mind
if you walk into the Palace in a gingham dish apron," he told her
shrewdly. "And besides, if you had everything you think you need,
you'd lose the fun of buying." He paused, glancing from the window of
the taxi,--there were not so many, in those days. "What do you like
best, little lady, diamonds, pearls or rubies?"

"All of them," Doris stated solemnly.

They laughed together, and Doris squeezed Bill's arm and said she was
happy.

Mrs. William Gordon Dale proved herself a capable young woman who
could adapt herself quickly to changed circumstances and surroundings.
Once she discovered that desert tan can scarcely be distinguished from
the carefully cultivated tan of ocean beaches, her self-consciousness
melted into calm assurance. Likewise merged the mail-order trousseau
into the almost-latest fashion of gowns, hats, cloaks, of a restrained
elegance and a clever adaptation to that indefinable thing she called
her "style" and clung to with firmness in the face of gorgeous
temptations.

Wherefore, she arrived in Santa Barbara (Bill accompanying her, of
course) with only five trunks and the sophisticated air of a girl who
was born to luxury.

"You sure don't look as if you've ever had your hands in dough," was
Bill's way of putting it. "I never noticed your hands so much before.
I always loved them, but now I keep looking at them for their beauty."

"There are arts and wiles, Bill-dear, that make a heap of difference.
It just takes time and money--and I have loads of both. Weren't those
people lovely, that we met on the beach?"

"Baker Cole and his wife? Yes, he struck me just about right. Human
cuss, that you can slip an improper remark to without wishing you had
kept your darn mouth shut and concealed your ignorance. I'm sick of
being made to think that desert words put me in the natural-curiosity
class. Darn 'em, I've had more education than half the Johnnies that
give me the tolerant look. There are men in this hotel with more
money than I've got, that say, 'They told he and I----' and never turn
a hair. But if I forget to stand up when a woman comes within rifle
shot, they look as if I had insulted their wives. Lord, little lady,
I've lived too long where there weren't any women! A fellow gets out
of practice."

Doris came over and rumpled his hair with her meticulously manicured
fingers that had won his astonished admiration.

"You know, Bill-dear, there's another thing you forget. You must take
soup from the _side_ of the spoon; and peas, dear man, are eaten with
a fork--out here."

"I know it--but darn it, I like the juice. If I ain't wealthy enough
to take mine with a spoon, I'll get out and rake in more money. Funny,
isn't it, Doris? In the desert I felt myself a Beau Brummel--as I
understand that term--amongst the miners and prospectors I came in
contact with. I was as good as anybody--better than some. Out here,
they make me feel like a cave man with his first clothes on."

"I'm sure your manners are very good, Bill-dear," Doris comforted him
absently. "Just a few little points to remember--things one never
encounters in the desert. If you watch the others --at table, you
know--and do as they do about which fork----"

"Not on your life!" (After six weeks of hotel honeymoon and their
clothes inextricably mixed in the dresser drawers, and Bill constantly
on the alert lest he hurt Doris' feelings, he could argue with his
divinity quite as if she were human.) "I'm not going to make a monkey
of myself, copying the fellow who sits across the table. I'll do
what's comfortable for me and the rest of the bunch, and let it go at
that. I don't aspire to be any lady's man, Doris, nor any society
bird. Men like Baker Cole don't grin behind their hands if you go
first into the dining room and let your wife follow. I know--I saw you
blush for shame last night, honey. But your old Bill wants to break
trail for you all his life. It's second nature for me to go first and
see what's ahead of us, and put it out of your way if it's dangerous."

Doris laughed at him, showing the dimple in her left cheek,--with a
faint film of powder distinguishable there nowadays.

"You dear old silly, just take this view of the matter, and it'll help
you remember the rules, maybe: I might be kidnaped behind your back,
and you wouldn't know it, stalking ahead of me the way you do. You're
supposed to shoo a lady gently before you down the aisle, and see
that handsome villains don't cut in behind you." Her hand slipped
down and patted his lean, freshly shaven jaw.

"Dear man, is the money holding out?" she asked suddenly, coming at
last to the thing that was foremost in her mind.

Bill let his head drop back against the cushioned chair and laughed at
her, his eyes half-closed and feasting on her face.

"You never wanted to ask that question as long as you lived," he
reminded her teasingly.

"I know, dear. I don't mean that I think we're running short. I can't
begin to spend my share that John sends me. But you know, dear, we're
needing more and more, as we get the hang of it. We keep finding out
about things rich people have and do, that I'm sure I never dreamed
of, in the desert. Most of them have things that date back to their
fathers and grandfathers, and we naturally have to spend a lot, just
bringing ourselves up to date. For instance, Mrs. Baker Cole is
thinking about a new automobile and wondering what kind she had better
have. And Bill-dear--_we_ haven't even had our first, yet!"

"Lord, what a world!" chuckled Bill. "And you're wondering if we can
have one. Honey, you wait and see what kind of an automobile Mrs.
Baker Cole buys, and then you buy two just like it. Or else you find
one that costs just twice as much as hers."

"Don't tease so, Bill. But really, I _do_ want one. And I--miss Little
Dorrit, sort of. There are beautiful trails here, winding around
through trees, and I've noticed that the really nicest people ride
every morning. I've wished, when I saw them starting out or coming
back, that I could go, too."

"Do you want Little Dorrit, honey?" Bill lifted the necklace of
Parowan gold spun into the finest of twisted threads and set with
emeralds that made her skin look whiter. Bill had stood over the
jeweler while that necklace was being made, and the result was a happy
one.

"Oh, no--Little Dorrit hasn't got the style. I was wondering if we
couldn't buy a couple of saddle horses. I'm crazy about Mrs.
Burlingame's riding habit, Bill--and I've got one planned that would
beat it. And I know the tailor who made hers. And Bill, couldn't
we--no, I don't want to take a house, either. Not yet. I don't know
enough of the nicest people, and couldn't entertain. I'd rather just
stay here for awhile longer. Wouldn't you?"

Bill secretly loathed hotel life, and his heart had given a great
thump when she almost wanted a house like the Burlingame's. But he did
not mention either his loathing or his desire. Why should he? His
business was to keep Doris happy, to gratify every passing whim,
except when the whim changed before gratification was humanly
possible.

They went together next day and chose an automobile, and hired a
chauffeur warranted to give satisfaction and promised a speedy demise
if ever he forgot to drive cautiously when his mistress was in the
car.

In the new automobile they drove out to a famous horsebreeder's place,
and bought two saddle horses, and Doris ordered her riding habit and
was deliciously happy for several hours. Then she awoke to the fact
that it was a sheer waste of money, time and energy to have no maid to
look after her clothes and do her hair and fetch and carry. Besides,
Bill was getting acquainted with men and wanted to go here and there,
looking up what he called "propositions," and Doris felt that it would
look much better, and give her more real freedom, if she had a maid to
accompany her on drives and at the beach----

"And then I wouldn't have to keep an eye on my parasol and purse and
book and bathrobe, and everything, Bill-dear," she detailed,
unconsciously justifying what she instinctively felt would not meet
with Bill's approval. "My maid would look after everything while I
was in the surf. That would be her business." She was talking to
Bill's back, which made her uncomfortable. She wished he would not
stand staring out of the window, like that, while she talked things
over with him. It was getting to be a regular habit. She always liked
to see a person's face when she talked.

"You don't mind, do you, Bill--if I have a maid? All the nicest----"

"Anything your little heart desires!" Bill said, turning abruptly and
smiling steadfastly down at her where she was sitting on the floor, on
a purple silk cushion, trying on a pair of satin slippers that didn't
seem to want to go on at the heel. He watched her, his eyes studying
her flushed face and tousled hair.

"I reckon you do need help," he said, a dryness in his tone of which
he was not quite aware, and which Doris missed altogether in her
absorption. "If you had somebody to do all the things you spend your
time on, maybe we could enjoy life--better," he added hastily. "We
could be together more, couldn't we?"

"Together more?" Doris looked up, the silver shoehorn poised in her
hand. "Good gracious! Aren't we together every single minute, almost?
Bill, see if you can get this pesky slipper on; the other one's all
right; they're half a size too small, but they're the only pair that
just matches that new lace gown." (Doris had already learned to say
gown and frock, and to avoid the word dress except as a verb.)

Bill knelt and lifted the foot, thrilling again at the touch of her
slim ankle.

"Do you remember the night you came to camp, all wet and cold,
and--you let me unlace your boots?" He smiled wistfully into her eyes.
"I was all a-tremble, honey--I had to keep my lip between my teeth,
and bite down hard to steady me. I was so happy----"

"What about? The privilege of handling wet boot laces?" Doris leaned
and tried to push her toes farther into the slipper.

"They were _your_ boot laces." Bill's soul withdrew from her
matter-of-factness, much as Sister Mitchell used to draw into her
shell at the first blast on the saxophone.

"I wonder if the housekeeper won't have something to stretch this
slipper on," said Doris. "Can you find out, dear? I simply _must_ make
them do for to-night, or I can't wear that gown."

"Why can't you wear something else, then, and be comfortable?" Bill
set her foot on the floor and got up. "You'd better take these back
and change them."

"I can't," Doris said shortly. "I've ordered our table decorated to
harmonize with this particular outfit. You don't understand,
Bill-dear. Men get the effect, all right, and call a woman beautiful
or ugly or just so-so, and never dream that it's because the details
have been thought out, or haven't. I've noticed things. I know exactly
how women get that carelessly beautiful effect. It doesn't just happen
so, dear man. They spend _hours_, just thinking up the careless
touches.

"Now, just to show you," she expanded graciously for Bill's education,
"I have fallen into the habit of telling the head waiter that I'd like
certain flowers, or whatever it is I choose, on our table for dinner.
Then I dress accordingly. Nobody knows it's planned, but I'll bet you,
dear, they get the effect just the same. The stupid ones pile it all
on their persons and merely look new-rich. You've never seen _me_ look
new-rich, have you, Bill?"

"Not on your life." Bill was startled into a fresh appraisal of his
bride. Heretofore he had looked on, amused at her plunge into the
pleasures of fashionable hotel life. Now it struck him suddenly that
the slim, competent desert girl who could break a horse to the saddle
or rope and brand a calf, bake pies and bread to make a chef envious,
was bringing that clever brain into action in a field entirely new to
her, and was demonstrating the same clever competence which had
distinguished her on the ranch.

With a new respect for her intelligence he saw to the detail of having
the slipper stretched. Afterward he observed that Doris had really
achieved a small triumph of harmonious beauty. The table decoration
did add something indefinable to her own sweet self; something which
caused the eyes of others to turn their way in unconscious tribute to
her beauty, as one looks and looks again at any other charming
picture. As a votary of wealth and fashion Mrs. William Gordon Dale
was beyond criticism, destined to become a high priestess of the art
of effective extravagance.




CHAPTER FOURTEEN

BAKER COLE


Baker Cole was a man who did his own thinking and was willing that the
other fellow should do the same; indeed, he was tolerantly disdainful
when the other fellow failed to do the same. He was so rich that he
did not think much about money, or judge a man by his Bradstreet
rating. Money flowed toward Baker Cole apparently of its own volition.
He had started life with a fortune for his birthright, and he had gone
on his way with a humorous philosophy which armored him against
flattery, abuse or the deliberate attacks of other men whose fortunes
equalled his but who were not content with another man's well-being.

Baker Cole's interest was first attracted to Bill's straight
suppleness in the surf, and by the fact that, brown though he was to
shoulders and chest, Bill was just learning to swim. Because of this
incongruity, Baker Cole was given the opportunity of grabbing Bill by
the hair and saving him from a vicious undertow. He wondered a bit,
until he discovered that a man working in a sleeveless, low-necked
undershirt under a desert sun may have the mark of a beach lounger
burned into his skin.

"That accounts for your legs not being tanned." Baker Cole hauled
himself out of the surf like a big, good-looking seal, and lay puffing
and looking Bill over. "Wish I had muscles like yours," he remarked,
crooking his finger toward a young man who immediately hurried up with
cigarettes and matches. Bill accepted a smoke, and the two began to
talk.

An hour later, they went toeing deep in the fine, loose sand to where
a huge, striped umbrella hid all but a shapely, canvas-shod foot. Bill
helped Doris to her feet and introduced Baker Cole, who appraised her
shrewdly with one glance and decided that his wife would like her.

That began the acquaintance. In a week, the Baker Coles and the
William Gordon Dales (Doris had quietly insisted upon full names from
the first hotel register,--and had put it over with complete success)
were pairing off together quite naturally and without deliberate
intent; which is the test of congeniality the world over.

From a surreptitiously acquired paid teacher, Doris had learned
bridge. She succeeded in teaching Bill, chiefly because he couldn't
bear to disappoint her and because it gave him an opportunity to
watch her hands without betraying a fatuous admiration. He had learned
that Doris considered open love-making bad form, and was acquiring a
more restrained manner of worship in accordance with her expressed
wish. Wherefore, Bill willingly learned bridge after hours in their
rooms, when he was dead tired, and watched unobtrusively for some sign
of weariness in the sweet face opposite him. The reward for that was a
more complete intimacy between the Baker Coles and the William Gordon
Dales.

Bill could not remember afterwards just when or how Doris first found
her pleasures apart from him. He saw that "nice" women were becoming
her friends, and of course there were little parties and purely
feminine gatherings to which Doris went with avid enjoyment. She would
sit and tell Bill all about them afterwards, and Bill would listen
bewilderingly to detailed descriptions of gowns and refreshments and
scores and prizes, and to gossip not quite so harmless.

Sometimes his thoughts would wander to certain experiences of his
own,--innocent experiences, though he did not tell her about them
always. Baker Cole was at present amused with the spectacle of money
flowing out of crude oil pumped from the ground. It amazed even him
to see how fast the oil could turn into money. He called Bill's
attention to the phenomenon, and Bill was immediately interested, and
for reasons which he kept to himself.

Through Baker Cole's shrewd acquaintance with the game of directing
and augmenting the flow of money, Bill turned tiny trickles toward his
own bank account, and was amazed at the speed with which they became
swift-moving streams.

"Lord, I thought Parowan was a miracle I'd never see repeated," he
confided one day to Baker Cole. "Money commenced piling up before we
started to move the gold. We laid out a town site, and people came in
droves to buy lots and start building. It used to give me a chill at
the chances they were taking. What if there wasn't a real mine there?
Where would the town get off? Baker, if those men had lost on the
gamble, who'd be responsible--me?"

Baker Cole rolled a fragrant cigar between his lips and regarded Bill
meditatively through half-closed eyes.

"Depends on what or who induced them to speculate," he said bluntly.
"How did you work it, Bill?"

Bill shook his head and looked away to where breakers were beating
white foam against a segment of cliffs.

"Hell, I dunno," he confessed helplessly. "I found the mine. Then some
government men came along and advised me to incorporate and to lay out
a town site. I got them to resign their positions and take hold of it.
We laid out the town site, and took some gold up to Goldfield and
showed it, and that started the parade. Folks tromped each other's
feet to get in."

"What did you do then? Sell out?" Perhaps Baker Cole knew, since he
was an exceedingly well-informed man. But he waited for Bill to tell
him.

"No, I'm president of the company. They fixed things so I wouldn't
have to be on the ground, and we came out here to play around awhile."
Bill started to explain that he had not wanted to leave, but shut his
teeth upon the words. That would be unfair to Doris.

"How are things going, with you out here? Got any idea?"

Bill grinned, with a worried look back of his eyes.

"Two railroads are busting a lung trying to see which one will whistle
first at the depot," he detailed laconically. "I guess that tells the
tale, doesn't it?"

"Several." Baker Cole took out his cigar and looked it over carefully
before he put it back in his mouth.

"The money keeps coming in," Bill went on. "Everything's fine. We're
building a mill and that employs a good many men. A lot of companies
have sprung up, claiming to have discovered gold--which I guess they
have. The _Parowan Record_ comes out every Saturday, and there's a
bank and hotel--you know. It's a _town_. I feel like a loafer," he
admitted ruefully. "But the boys are doing all I could do, I guess.
They say everything is running smooth, and the town's a dandy--for a
boom town. Soon as the railroads get there, so as to haul material
faster, there'll be some fine buildings go up. Contracts are let and
all."

He sighed and looked around at Baker Cole, seeking understanding.

"Parowan kind of rides my neck," he said simply. "It's all right--our
mine is rich enough to hold it up till other mines get to
producing--but I can't help feeling responsible for it, just the same.
I feel as if I ought to be on the job myself."

"The wife likes it here," Baker Cole stated calmly.

"Yes. She hates the desert. I wouldn't take her back there into that
raw mining town--I wouldn't think of such a thing."

Baker Cole finished his cigar. Very deliberately he put out his hand,
drew the ash tray closer and laid the cigar butt exactly in the middle
of the tray, moving it twice, fractions of an inch to the center.
Bill, his eyes fixed upon him, knew that Baker Cole was not conscious
of tray, cigar, or mathematical measurements.

"Bill, I've made money all my life," he said, drawing a long breath as
if an important matter had been successfully accomplished. "As far as
it's possible to make money honestly, I've made it. Silver in Mexico,
copper in Michigan and Montana and Colorado, crude petroleum here in
California; I've taken more millions from the ground, Bill, than you'd
dare believe if I told you. Had half a million when I was born. Then I
was taught how to take care of what I had--and I learned how to make
more.

"This Parowan of yours, now, would be something in my line; only, I'd
want to take it in the start and handle it myself. I wouldn't invest a
dime in the other fellow's game--not if he were my own brother. I'm
not afraid of losing money--I _can't_ lose money, seems like. It's the
game. I see a chance to get something out of the ground that the world
has use for, and I go after it like a dog after a ground squirrel.
Money piles up when I've got it--but I've had the fun of the getting.
And of course the money helps to play again. Dollars, you know, are
mostly what you dig with. Dollars are the master tool of industry--and
I don't see why the working men howl so about the man that can furnish
that master tool. You take Parowan, now. Leaving out the gamblers that
are risking their money, you've helped many a poor man to a job at top
wages. Ain't that so?"

"I reckon it is," Bill assented perfunctorily. "There's always big
wages where there's a boom, and many a man got his start that way. But
you've hit the spot that hurts. It's the fun of doing things that I
want. The money's coming in fast enough for all we want, but I'm a
loafer for the first time in my life, Baker. My Lord! Think of a grown
man putting in day after day just taking a horseback ride in the
morning and a swim in the afternoon; and calling that exercise!

"When I was prospecting, Baker, I put in my time from dawn to dusk,
hiking over the hills or swinging a pick. I ate because I was hungry.
Now, by gosh, folks don't get hungry--they don't give themselves a
chance. They eat because somebody's paid a big price to make grub
taste good! This is a mighty pretty place to play around in,
Baker--but I can't make a business of doing nothing." He made himself
a cigarette--rolling his own whenever he was not under Doris' watchful
eye--and lighted it absently. "Doris likes this sort of thing," he
added pensively. "It's all right for women--but I'll be damned if it's
any kinda life for a man!"

Baker Cole chuckled somewhere down in his chest and laid an impressive
forefinger on Bill's arm.

"You come on and play with _me_, in my game," he invited. "I can't
promise you won't make money at it--but you'll have fun."

"I bet I would, at that," said Bill. "But my wife doesn't want me to
get into business. She wants me to run along and play." It was the
nearest that Bill had ever come to uttering a complaint. He did not
realize that it was even distantly related to a protest against the
future which Doris had mapped out for them.

But as he spoke, he saw a swift, mental panorama of cities and shops
and long, pillared, hotel corridors and suites furnished in velvet
upholstery. He felt his feet sinking into the sickish softness of
deep-piled carpets, and boys with bright buttons and little caps and
silver trays dogging him with the prematurely calculating smirk. He
saw long, shaded avenues down which he was carried swiftly on
cushions,--always cushions and carpets and a smothery, scented
atmosphere that sometimes nauseated him with its cloying sweetness.

He shut his eyes, pressing his lips together in silent revolt against
the picture. And there, sharply outlined before him, were the stark,
barren hills of the desert. Volcanic rubble in the foreground, and
stunted sage, and a lizard ducking its head with a queer, ticking
motion while it watched him from a rock; soft shadows lying at the
foot of great boulders, and all the magic tints of distance; the two
burros shuffling before him, picking their way daintily, setting tiny
feet between the rocks; Sister Mitchell, horny and gray and solemn,
clinging to the canvas with claws thrust out from her shell the size
of a dinner plate; and Luella, a vivid bit of green in the gray
monotone, riding gallantly the pack of Wise One and talking gravely of
things a parrot shouldn't know; and Hez, solemnly herding the little
company and believing himself indispensable,--Bill's teeth came down
hard on his under lip.

"You're homesick," Baker Cole's voice shattered the vision for the
moment.

Bill swallowed and could not meet his eyes. He threw away his
cigarette, gone cold between his lips--bitten, too, in the sharp pain
of remembrance--and reached for his sack of tobacco.

"I want the crunch of gravel under my feet," he admitted, smiling a
twisted smile. "The ocean kind of filled the hankering for
distance--but I want to get out and walk and walk---- Aw, hell! A man
can't have everything at once. I had the desert, and all the while I
dreamed of being rich and not having to eat beans and bacon. I was
almost as sick of that country as Mrs. Dale was. But somehow--she
takes to this life better than I do. She hates to be reminded of
Nevada, and has been trying to coax her folks to sell out and come to
the Coast. I don't blame her--not for one minute. It's no place for a
woman, back there."

Baker Cole rose and flicked cigar ashes off his vest.

"You're dated up with me for a little trip down Bakersfield way," he
grinned. "I'll show you desert--and a game you'll like to play. It's
going to be a stag party, so you'll have to get your wife's
permission. We'll be gone a week, maybe. You'll have to sleep on the
ground and cook over a camp fire. Bring a roll of blankets, if you
like. Can you make it to-morrow?"

Doris thought it was rather sudden. She had several things on for the
week, however,--things which Bill-dear would not enjoy at all.
Moreover, she had learned that close friendship with the Baker Coles
was like being favored by royalty, and the necessity of explaining
that her husband was off somewhere with Baker Cole for a week would
cause the other women to twitter enviously and draw her closer within
their hallowed circle.

"It'll be awfully lonesome, dear man, but I do think you'll enjoy the
change. Don't worry one minute about me, Bill-dear. With my maid and
chauffeur, I shall be all right. And Mrs. Baker Cole has asked me to
stay with her, if I feel at all strange here at the hotel. Perhaps I
shall. I haven't decided, yet."

Had she met the situation with a shade less equanimity, Bill would not
have gone with Baker Cole. And that would have made a great
difference, later on. But Destiny has a way of providing for the
seemingly unimportant things of life,--which are never unimportant,
whether we know it or not. He went with Baker Cole down into a region
where men were pumping wealth from the ground deep under the
sage-covered plains. His going was the beginning of several changes in
Bill's life.




CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"MARY'S GOING TO HAVE A HOME!"


Bill sat in a deep chair and held out his arms. Timorously, as if she
were taking a great risk, a white-capped nurse stooped starchily and
placed within the curve of them a soft little bundle. Bill held his
breath until the precious, warm little body lay cuddled against his
chest.

Once each day, for a stingy ten minutes or so, Bill was permitted to
hold his daughter in his arms. Sometimes, if the nurse and Doris
forgot their vigilance for a space, Bill could fumble and uncover the
smallest, pinkest, squirmiest feet he had ever seen in his life. On
one memorable occasion, when fire engines went clanging past the
silk-hung windows, he had been left unobserved long enough to brush
the soft pink soles against his lips.

Little Miss Mary Dale was growing at the astonishing rate of a pound a
week, which Bill considered phenomenal and told of whenever he decided
that it would not be a breach of etiquette to admit that he was human
enough to be proud of his baby; which tells the story of Bill's
servitude to conventions which he hated even while he meekly obeyed
the rules.

What Bill wanted to do was carry his daughter down into the lobby and
show her off to everybody who came in. Why not, since there wasn't
another baby in San Francisco that could come within a mile of her for
looks and intelligence? What he did do was sneak up to the room set
aside for the nursery--they were still living in a hotel, which at
this particular time was the Palace--and pull down the silken
coverlets and gaze at little Mary until he was discovered and shooed
away. After two months of this, Bill was beginning to feel abused. She
was _his_ baby, as well as Doris'. He believed that he had a right to
look at her now and then, since Doris assumed the privilege of rocking
her and talking unintelligibly to her by the hour.

Still, Bill was accustomed to carrying a proper sense of his
limitations about with him. A year had convinced him that husbands
didn't amount to much, after all; that they were frequently a real
obstacle to a woman's pursuit of happiness. And since his whole soul
was still fixed upon making Doris completely happy, he eliminated
himself from the scene whenever he saw a certain look in the eyes of
his wife, and ministered to her happiness as unobtrusively as
possible. One deep hurt remained with Bill, do what he would to forget
it. Doris had not been pleased about little Mary,--until she had
actually arrived and won her own place in the family. That had hurt
Bill terribly and made his own eagerness seem a fault which he must
hide as best he could.

Well, women had their own ideas of things, their own hopes and
ambitions. Doris didn't seem to have had enough of the glitter of
life, yet. She didn't want to have a house and settle down to real
home life. Bill was beginning to feel that he did not understand her
at all. Home life would be lonely, she complained; would shut her away
from the things she loved best. For instance, Doris never tired of the
big, beautiful dining places with the music and the soft lights, the
flash of jewels and the hovering, obsequious servants. She wanted the
deference that bowed and waited for largess. She loved the smiles and
the nods from rich diners at other tables. She loved to have her maid
telephone to the steward that he would please lay so many extra covers
at the William Gordon Dale table. And would he please see that there
were just a few orchids peeping out from dark-green foliage, massed
very low,--that glossy green which Mrs. Dale likes so well?

And then she liked to forget all about the dinner until the guests
had actually arrived, and to know that the arrangements would be
perfect to the slightest detail,--with Doris herself the most perfect
part of it, smiling and showing the dimple in her left cheek, and
sparkling across at her husband, addressing him humorously as
Bill-dear. Doris, Bill observed (because the good Lord gave him powers
of observation which worked automatically) had begun calling him
Bill-dear openly, in social gatherings, immediately after she heard
Mrs. Baker Cole say "angel husband" in an adorably quizzical tone that
never failed to bring a smile. It rather spoiled the Bill-dear for him
in private, but Doris never guessed that.

Neither did she guess Bill's inner shame that his child should be born
in a hotel. Bill flushed in secret over the thought that, years
afterward, when little Mary asked about her birthplace, her parents
must refer her to suite E, Palace Hotel,--which had housed thousands
before their baby opened her eyes there, and would house thousands
after she had been carried away. Being born in a hotel, in Bill's
estimation, was a little better than being born on a train, but not
much.

So Bill's dream of a home with Doris--a place of their very
own--seemed as far off as ever; and the fact that he could have bought
a mansion fine enough even for Doris with the money he had paid to
hotel cashiers in the past twelve months did not help him to
resignation.

A nomadic life; a life that to Bill seemed inexcusably shiftless,
temporary. They had sampled several hotels, in the several cities they
had visited during the first few months. They were all
alike,--luxurious shelters for the traveling rich. He went about
thinking how all the other guests had homes somewhere; places where
they dropped anchor occasionally, at least, and took stock of
themselves. He began to try and hide the fact that he and Doris had no
home; that they were always tagged with a number and their mail messed
up with forwarding addresses. And now, here was little Miss Mary
without a home that she could look back to afterwards with affection.
To Bill the thing was becoming a disgrace, the blame resting on his
own shoulders. He had promised Doris that she should live where she
pleased. Now he owed another duty to his daughter.

"She's beginning to notice things, Bill-dear." Doris came up and sat
on the arm of a near-by chair. "To-day her eyes followed the flash of
my rings--I tried her out, and she really did notice. Wake up, s'eepy
thing! Show daddy how 'em can smile!"

"We'll have to get a place of our own," Bill began tentatively,
consciously treading thin ice. "We can't have her think a hotel like
this is all the kind of home there is in the world. Honey, don't you
think a nice house up on the hill--or maybe in some other town----"

"Oh, Bill, please don't start that! You're gone half the time,
almost--running around the country playing you're doing important
things. What would I do in a great big house with nobody around but
servants? I'd go crazy, that's all. And then, if we wanted to go
somewhere, like New York or Europe, there would be the house to worry
about. As it is, all we have to do is pack our trunks--and we can hire
professional packers to do that. We have every comfort we could
possibly have at home, and a lot besides. And I can see people, Bill,
without giving a dinner or a card party or something. I'm going to
have an at-home day--lots of permanent guests here do. And if I want
to entertain, look at the advantages.

"Besides," she added artfully, "you know you couldn't keep in touch
with men half so easily if you were struck off in a big house on Nob
Hill or somewhere."

Bill did not answer for a minute. He was apparently quite absorbed
with the baby's hands; he had never seen such tiny, soft hands
before.

"I wouldn't run around so much, honey, if I had a home," he said
quietly, looking up at Doris.

"Oh, fudge! Men with homes are gone _more_. You can't fool me! I've
heard the women talk who have homes. Their husbands are always gone
somewhere, their servants are always stealing them blind or quitting,
and the house is a white elephant. Besides, I don't know where I'd
like to live permanently. I can't picture myself settling down in any
one town--can you, Bill? Now be honest."

"Yes. Parowan."

Well, she had wanted him honest, and she got the truth. Nor did she
relish it, judging from the look on her face.

"Parowan! Of all the places in the world----"

"It's where we got the money to spend here," Bill stated stubbornly.
"I've had some mighty happy times there, even if I did eat bacon and
beans and hike a hundred miles after them sometimes. It made our stake
for us--that same Parowan. Only for that mountain, you'd still be
hazing your dad's cattle away from the _loco_ patches, maybe, and
helping your mother with the dishes. I don't wish you were--I'm
tickled to death that you can wear diamonds and hire a nigger to comb
your hair for you. But just the same, Doris, let's not get our heads
so high in the air we can't see what Parowan ought to mean to us.

"This baby's mine--and yours. We've got her, and we haven't got a roof
for her to sleep under, except what we hire by the week. Only for
Parowan, we couldn't have married at all; don't forget that. You
wouldn't have married a poor prospector, and if you would, I wouldn't
have let you. It was the gold I found on that mountain side that made
it possible for me to ask you to marry me. And it was the gold that
made you say yes."

He swallowed as if there were some obstruction in his throat and went
on, staring straight before him,--seeing that cut in the gulch's side,
perhaps, and the slim girl in the stained khaki riding skirt and
cotton shirt waist staring at the vein of yellow-flecked rock.

"You can't think of any place where you want to give our child a home.
Well, I can! She's going to have one, whether it's ever lived in or
not. It's going to be at Parowan, on the spot where her daddy lived
when he found the gold that made her possible. I wouldn't do it for
you, against your wish. You like this froth, and I want you to have
what you like best. But _Mary's going to have a home_."

He did not raise his voice; indeed he almost whispered the words. Yet
they struck Doris like a lash. Never before had Bill opposed her
wishes, or declared that he would do a thing which Doris had not first
decided to do.

"You can't take her away from me," she said breathlessly.

"I don't intend to take her away from you." Bill's tone was flat,
emotionless, because he dared not slip the leash from his emotions.
"Some day, when she's old enough to know what she's missing, the kid
may want to come--home. There's going to be one for her. It's her
right."

"In that case," said Doris coldly, "why not build it in civilization,
at least, where she can use it?"

"I'm hoping," said Bill, very quietly, "that when my girl grows up
she'll have some sense."




CHAPTER SIXTEEN

SO BILL GOES BACK


Parowan sprawled over the slope of the mountain without much
regularity in her streets and with no dignity whatever. Bill had read
faithfully each copy of the _Parowan Record_ as soon as he received
it, and he had calmly believed that he was keeping in close touch with
the town. For instance, he had studied the picture of the new,
two-story concrete schoolhouse with its graded yard and young shade
trees and the cement walks and all. He had told Doris proudly that the
building would reflect credit on any California town,--which was true,
so far as the picture went.

Just at first he did not recognize the schoolhouse as he came up the
street from the pagoda-roofed, cement depot with its arches that
purported to be Moorish or Mission, no one seemed to know which. The
depot had looked cunning in the picture, Doris had thought, and Bill
had enthusiastically agreed with her. It did not look so cunning in
reality; merely pretentious in a cheap way that irritated him. When
he failed to recognize the schoolhouse, a cracker-box edifice of ugly
cement blocks surrounded by raw, unpainted shacks, Bill was shocked.
He had mistaken it for the jail until he observed the absence of bars
at the windows, and the trampled ground in front.

He strode up the board walk--hastily laid, of cheap lumber and already
showing wide cracks and broken sections where knot holes had weakened
the wood and much trampling had done the rest. The Parowan Security
and Trust Savings Bank stared at him from the next corner. This
building he recognized the moment he saw it, and with reason. Parowan
Consolidated occupied the entire front of the second story, and the
building was printed in miniature upon the Company's letterheads, with
the sign showing distinctly across the upper windows.

Across from the bank, the O'Hara House floated a green pennant with
the O'Hara in white upon it; which was the sign of the O'Hara House in
cities all through the West. Bill and Doris had tried one in Portland,
and had found it almost good enough for Doris, although
"two-rooms-and-bath" were the best accommodations the place afforded,
with the bath connecting, which was terrible. But the cuisine was
above criticism. O'Hara food always was perfect and immaculately
served. Nevertheless, Bill curled his lips at the sign and went into a
grocery store and bought a can of tomatoes, a pound of coffee, a
little flour and butter and onions and potatoes and such other
supplies as he happened to see or remember, and called a loafing
Mexican to carry the stuff to his old camp, Bill walking ahead with
his suitcase to show the way.

Tommy, it appeared, had been faithful to his trust. The camp was
enclosed by a highboard fence, and there were signs which said, "KEEP
OUT!! THIS MEANS YOU!!" Bill grinned happily and had the Mexican set
the things down by the gate and go back whence he had come, an extra
dollar in his overalls pocket and a wide smile on his face.

Tommy had sent the extra padlock key to Bill, perhaps in proof of his
good faith. Bill opened the gate and was set upon with deadly intent
by Hezekiah, who evidently failed to remember him until Bill spoke his
name. Then his joy became hysterical and brought a lump into Bill's
throat.

His tent stood just as he had left it, with the forge under the
juniper tree and the dugout cellar in the bank. His bunk was neatly
spread with his blankets, though dust lay on the calico-covered
pillow. His dishes were placed in orderly rows upon the box shelves,
a pile of dry wood lay behind the cook stove. And from the ridgepole,
suspended by a bit of rope tied through the handle, hung a black
leather case,--the silver saxophone.

Bill laughed a little when he glanced up and saw the symbol of one
secret hope, but there was no mirth in the laughter. He was thinking
what a fool he had been to dream of playing "Love's Old, Sweet Song"
with Doris. Doris never sang nowadays. She would not sing the old
songs Bill loved, because they were so absolutely back-woodsy and she
did not seem to care about learning the new ones. Besides, she
explained, her voice had never been cultivated; an omission for which
Bill thanked God in his heart, after hearing other women strain their
vocal chords with technical skill and little melody. Doris did not
even know about the saxophone. It seemed unlikely now that she ever
would know.

Bill started a fire, laid his coat across the pillow, removed his
cuffs and his collar and began to peel the potatoes. He missed Luella,
but he knew that she was down in Tommy's Place, in the back room where
her speech would not be too corrupted, and he did not want to meet any
one until he had eaten and smoked and planned exactly what he would
do. Until he was actually on the ground he could not choose a site
for the home he meant to build,--a home worthy his little Mary.

Doris had not seemed to mind his coming, and she had made no open
objection to his errand. She had adopted a neutral attitude, a
slightly tolerant manner toward Bill and his plan. If he wanted to
build a house for the baby, years before the baby would be able to
appreciate the gift, that was his own affair. She supposed he realized
that the house would be all out of date long before Mary was big
enough to live in it,--and did he actually mean to furnish the thing?

"It's going to be ready to step into and hang up your hat and the
baby's bonnet, before I leave it," Bill had assured her steadfastly.
"Whether you ever see the inside of it or not makes no difference.
That will be up to you, honey. But I'm going to do my part. I'll make
the home."

Well, he was here for that purpose. He had the plans in his suitcase,
and the builders had ordered the material and shipped two carloads. He
was to choose the site and wire whether Parowan could furnish cement
workers competent to lay the foundation. He had left only one thing
undone: he had not told any one in Parowan that he was coming.
Wherefore, he was surprised to hear the gate open and shut, and to see
Tommy presently thrust his spectacled face belligerently into the
tent opening.

"An' it's yerself, is ut, Mr. Dale?" Tommy stood within the tent,
goggling at Bill, his leathery face relaxing into a wide grin. "I was
toold uh somewan makin' hisself free wit' this place, an' I left Dugan
in charrge of the s'loon an' come along over t' have it out wit' the
boorglar. I did that!"

For the first time in months, the old, sunny twinkle was back in
Bill's eyes. He would not have believed that he would ever be so glad
to see Tommy.

"You go back and get Luella, darn yuh," he commanded, trying to be
harsh about it. "And don't let on I'm back, will you, Tommy? I want to
surprise the boys. If you haven't eaten, we'll have a real feed. Good
old onions and spuds fried in bacon grease!"

"I've been stoppin' at the O'Hara House, Mr. Dale," said Tommy
stiffly. "They set a foine table--they do, that! Pie an' ice cream
bot' at the same meal, Mr. Dale, an' no extry charrge fer that same. I
been settin' the buttons forrard on my vest since I been boardin' wit'
O'Hara, an' it's the trut' I'm tellin' yuh now." He took a step toward
the doorway and stopped, loath to go.

"An' if it's the gin'ral manager uh Parowan yuh mean t' supprise, Mr.
Dale, yuh'll do that same or I mistake. I ast 'im yisterday was yuh
ever comin' back t' take holt, an' he says you was too busy makin' the
money fly. An' I says to him, I says, 'It's to Parowan he sh'd come
fer that,' I says, 'fer I never in all my born days seen the like.'"

Bill rescued the coffee from boiling over.

"Thought I was going broke or something, did he?"

"I dunno as to that, Mr. Dale. But he says you bin makin' it fly, an'
c'llectin' yoor share fast as it comes in, he says. I take it he meant
you been cuttin' a wide swathe, Mr. Dale--which nobody's got a better
right, that I know. The best has been none too good, he says to me,
an' named over the hotels yuh been boarding at. An' phwat business it
was uh hisn I dunno, fer it's yer own money yuh been spendin'. An' I
toold him that same, I did."

"I'm going to spend some more too," Bill declared, and smiled queerly
to himself.

"Yuh'll never spend more than yuh've got, Mr. Dale--well I know that,"
drawled Tommy. "My last dime'd back that statement. It would that. An'
it'd be well if I could put my good money on some others--which I
would not." With that somewhat cryptic observation, Tommy withdrew to
bring the parrot.

Bill sat himself down to what he considered the most satisfying meal
he had eaten in many a day. He was not a primitive soul, fit only to
enjoy the cruder things of life; but there was something within him
that rebelled against smiles and handshakes where no good will begot
them, and at the servility of hotel servants hoping for tips, and the
insipid, painted faces of women who bared their shoulders and
whispered malicious gossip behind jeweled hands. He could remember
some wonderful evenings filled with music or the genius of great
actors picturing life before him on the stage; and he could also
remember evenings when he had been too bored and resentful to see the
humor that lay beneath the surface of the peacock parade. And more
than anything else, Doris had made mealtime an occasion for studied
display that should seem unconscious. He had come to dread dinner
especially.

Wherefore he enjoyed his onions and potatoes, his stewed tomatoes and
fried corn all the more because he knew how certain eyebrows would
lift in astonishment could their owners look in upon the wealthy
William Gordon Dale, and see how he was enjoying his plebeian fare.

"Doris would like a taste of this grub," he told himself gayly as he
filled his plate the second time. "She's hypnotized now with the
novelty of it--dazzled with the glamor. But it's no natural life for
anybody that has lived the real thing; seen life stripped down to
reality. It's all pretense--and Doris is more than half pretending,
herself. Pretending she likes that sort of thing--when she's probably
half homesick, right now, for the desert, and won't admit it.

"Wait till she sees the house I'll build for her! No great barn of a
place that she couldn't use, out here--but a jewel of a home.
Everything she likes that will fit in here. _I_ know! I've watched her
eyes when we struck some new place. Big, rock fireplace--Parowan rock;
beamed ceilings, broad stairway, hardwood floors--great, long
stretches of space with arches--and a big window framing the desert
like a picture. What she calls a vista. I know--you bet I know! She
thinks I'm going to build some darned box of a place, perhaps of
cement. I let her think so. It'll be all rock, and glass, and
hardwoods that will last a century and longer.

"I'll find a hillside where the town won't be right under her nose,
and I'll frame a vista for her with every window in the house! She can
have house parties, if she wants to--lots of those city folks would
be crazy to come and spend a week or two over here. In fact, they've
thrown out hints about it, some of them--only Doris wouldn't take it
that way.

"Things'll grow, here," he went on, thinking and planning more
hopefully than he had done for months. "I'll have grounds laid out,
and things planted that will make our home a garden spot. It may cost
something, but----" He grinned then, and offered Hez a bacon rind and
held his chops for a minute so that he could gaze deep into his eyes.

"Hez, you old devil, I believe you're kind of glad I came home," he
said, and lingered wistfully on the last word. "You can be bodyguard
for little Mary, when she gets to toddling around. I'll have to put a
fence around the place to keep her in, I expect. You'd take care of
the snakes and scorpions and such, wouldn't you, old boy? Never saw a
bug get away from you yet."

Tommy came, with Luella riding solemnly on his shoulder. Bill rose to
greet her, having been schooled in his deportment toward ladies.
Luella craned her neck and eyed him suspiciously while he coaxed her,
then remembered and stepped gravely upon his inviting forefinger.

"I'll be damned," she observed, looking at him with her head tilted.
"Look who's here! When did you get in?"

"You can't tell me this bird ain't human," Bill exclaimed much
impressed by the remark.

"She's heard that talk in the s'loon," Tommy discounted her
intelligence. "If she don't speak worse things I'll be contint. Your
turkle's gone, Mr. Dale. I'm thinkin' she's wandered away, an' I've a
reward out fer her--if it's a her, which I dunno--an' I'm hopin'
she'll be returned to yuh. It's a week ago she disappeared--she did
that."

"Holed up for the winter, maybe. They do, you know."

"That's a hell of a note!" cried Luella sharply.

"Well, I must be gittin' back, Mr. Dale. An' when it pleases yuh,
maybe yuh'll step into my place an' have a bit of a drink on the
house. An' I'll be proud to see yuh enter the door--I will that."

"First place I hit, Tommy, will be yours. And mind you, I want to
surprise the boys."

"It's the town itself'll be glad to see yer face, Mr. Dale," Tommy
muttered and went off, wagging his head.

Bill was trying to persuade Luella to kiss him, and did not hear.




CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

BILL GIVES THE PUBLIC MIND A LIFT


Bill brushed past the sleek-haired office girl who attempted to bar
his way and turned the knob on the door marked PRIVATE. He did not
know which man he would find within; he was slightly relieved to find
Walter Rayfield sitting behind a great, mahogany desk, staring at him
in blank astonishment.

"Hullo, Walter." Bill crossed the room, his hand outstretched in
greeting, the old, humorous grin on his face that had lost much of its
tan.

"Well, well! The prodigal come home for the fatted calf?" Rayfield
pulled himself together and rose, his lips pursed. "Veal's bringing a
good price, Bill. Have to make it a small calf."

Bill did not know what he meant by that; nothing, probably, unless he
was aiming at a witty remark. A year had made a difference in Walter
B. Rayfield. He was fatter, and there were heavy pouches under his
eyes. The milky one was almost hidden under a drooping lid, which gave
him a facetious appearance of winking slily at whomever he chanced to
be looking. His face had lines graven deep by the responsibilities of
the past months. Altogether, Walter Rayfield looked older and less
paternal, Bill thought.

"How are things going?" Bill sat down in the chair pulled close to the
desk and reached for his tobacco and papers. "According to the
_Record_, things are still humming at Parowan."

Rayfield glanced down at a pile of correspondence on the desk. Then,
knowing that Bill would probably stay until he had smoked one
cigarette at least, he pushed the tray back resignedly and leaned
forward, his fingers lightly clasped and tapping one another
rhythmically.

"Things are humming," Rayfield confirmed guardedly. "I suppose you
read of our shutdown to replace certain machinery?"

"Sure. That was last summer, sometime. Got it in, yet?"

Rayfield shook his head. "Those things take time," he said. "Stock has
fallen off a few points in consequence--naturally. And how is Mrs.
Dale and daughter?"

"Just fine. Doris sent regards."

"Which I return fourfold." Rayfield smiled gallantly. "When are you
going back? Of course, I take it you did not bring them with you."

"No, I didn't bring them. They're camped at the Palace for the
winter. I'm going to stick here for awhile." Bill glanced out of the
window and down into the squalid street, and wondered how Doris would
like that particular vista. He did not see the peculiar stiffening of
the muscles along Rayfield's jaw.

"Going to stay? That's great news, Bill. Come back to try and speed
things up, I suppose?"

Bill looked at him. Did Walter resent his coming, as betraying a lack
of confidence in the present management? His tone had sounded mildly
aggrieved.

"No need of that, is there? Things seem to be going all right, far as
I've heard. No, Walter, I came back to take charge--of building us a
home here. I'd like to see a plan of the town and look over any
available ground left in the residence district. I'll want a full
block, at least; high ground, where there's a view of the desert and
the hills. I expect it will take a few months to build it, but I'm
going to rush it right through. And say, by the way! Can you tell me
whether there's anybody in town that's able to lay the foundation?
I've got all the plans and specifications--copies of them--with me.
I'm going to have the builders come on from San Francisco, but they're
just finishing up a contract now, and I can save time by having the
foundation ready when they're free to come. Think I'd better take bids
on it, or just give the contract to the best man? A few dollars, one
way or the other, won't make any difference. I want a good job; one
that'll stand forever."

Rayfield's mouth had opened slightly in the beginning, and had closed
in his genial smile. The paternal look was back in his face.

"My, my! That will be great news to the town, it surely will! I've had
some little trouble, Bill, convincing people that you hadn't just made
your clean-up and quit the town cold. When it's known that you are
back and building a home, that will silence all criticism." Rayfield
nodded and drummed his fingers animatedly.

"Criticism--of me?" Bill's face clouded. "I thought you kept writing I
wasn't needed."

"Perfectly true. Unless you feel that John and I have shown that we
are incompetent, you are not needed at all. But you know people will
talk--and with you gone so long and showing no interest, it began to
look to some of the leading business men as if you had--well,
unloaded."

What Bill would have replied to that was not known. They were
interrupted by the entrance of John Emmett, who had evidently been in
a hurry, but forgot his haste to stare at Bill.

"Time I came home," said Bill, getting up to shake hands. "Everybody
looks as if I were a ghost that ought to get back under my marble
monument and stay there."

"Not at all," Emmett protested. "Your back was to the light, and I
couldn't make out who you were, at first. Well, how are you?"

"News for the town, John," Rayfield interrupted briskly. "Bill's here
to build a fine home for his family. I've promised to help him look up
a building site, and get a contractor on the job to lay the
foundation. Going to start right away--that right, Bill? I got the
impression you were in something of a hurry to begin."

Emmett looked from one to the other and laughed a little.

"Thought you'd come to fire us because we're about to pass a
dividend," he said. "I was just writing you to that effect."

Rayfield pursed his lips. "Bill is not a child," he said reprovingly.
"He knows dividends aren't paid out of extension costs. Once we're
running full blast again, we'll be paying double what we have in the
past, and Parowan Consolidated will soar again. We've done well to pay
last quarter's dividends--with the mill shut down and the men out on
strike."

"I didn't know we'd had a strike," Bill said inquiringly.

Rayfield threw back his head and laughed silently.

"Well, it was sort of hushed up in the paper, naturally. The men did
walk out--and we seized the opportunity to make the necessary changes
and repairs in the plant. John and I were rather glad, on the whole.
Saved us laying men off, which would have looked bad. Company wasn't
out a dollar on the strike, and to keep the stockholders easy in their
minds, we paid last quarter's dividends out of our sinking fund. Now,
because the alterations are taking longer than we expected, we have
thought it best to pass this dividend and explain just why. Your
appearance, with the intention of building a home in Parowan, should
counteract any ill effect on the public mind." He stopped and looked
at Bill inquiringly as a thought seemed to strike him suddenly.

"You--er--you have sufficient funds, I take it, to carry out your
plans," he ventured. "Because, in the event that you haven't, I should
strongly advise you to postpone your building until the mine is
producing again. These repairs and changes run into money, my boy, and
the Company will not be able to advance anything, I'm afraid, for
another three or four months. I was on the point of writing you to
trim sails a bit--until we are turning the wheels again."

Bill chewed his lip thoughtfully, turning his eyes again to the
window.

"I'm safe on the building, I reckon," he said, after a pause which was
not too comfortable for the others. "I saved that out." He turned
toward them smilingly. "She's going to be a dandy, too," he said.
"Parowan will sit up and take notice when my shack is finished. Not so
very big, you know--but a gem all the way through. I've calculated to
put about seventy-five thousand dollars into the building itself.
She'll stand me a round hundred thousand when she's ready to walk
into.

His partners looked at each other. Rayfield sucked in his breath
sharply.

"My, my! And I was afraid you were short of money!" he chuckled, when
he had recovered his breath. "Bill, you're a wonder. Way you've been
living----"

"About all the money I've spent," said Bill grimly, "is on hotel
bills--and a few trinkets for Doris. Her income that you have been
sending her she spent on clothes and truck. Didn't give me a chance.
She liked to spend her own money, she said. So--I can build the house,
all right. I've got money enough."

"And what about your wife?" Rayfield spoke unguardedly. "She won't be
getting any more from this office, for awhile." He waved a deprecating
hand. "Pardon my apparent presumption, Bill. I merely want to make
sure that you can ride along for the next ninety days or so without
any money from us."

"Why, sure! That's all right, Walter. I don't gamble or drink, you
see. And I didn't play the races--which is gambling, too. So I didn't
get away with all you sent me. I can make out all right for awhile."

He rose and picked his hat off the desk.

"I'll be going, I reckon. You've got work to do--hope your salaries
will go on?" he looked at them.

"Yes--oh, yes. It's only the dividends that must be omitted this
quarter," Rayfield hastened to assure him.

"Well, that's all fine, then. I'm afraid you'll have to go on earning
your money. I've got this house to build, and I want to see that it's
built the right way. I'm going to stand guard over them. Just now, I'm
going downstairs and have an account opened for me. I've got the house
money with me, and if it's in the bank, Parowan will know I'm not
four-flushing about the home. If the public mind needs a tonic, that
ought to help."

Rayfield stood up and leaned with his knuckles on the desk.

"It will help amazingly," he said solemnly. "It will serve to instil
new life in the commercial veins of this town. I tell you frankly,
Bill, I did not like to pass this dividend just now, when the town has
passed the first fever of enthusiasm and should be stimulated to go on
with full confidence in the future. The fact that you have sufficient
confidence to invest in a fine house here will have a tremendous
effect on the morale of the town."

"All right," Bill grinned. "I'll go slide a pinchbar under the public
mind and give it a lift. And say! Who's the best man to talk
foundation to?"

"Fellow name of McGaran," Emmett told him promptly. "You'll find his
sign down the street in the next block. He did our cement work, and
he's a good man."

Bill went out and down the stairs, humming a little tune just above
his breath. Presently, the president of the Parowan Security, Trust
and Savings Bank was giving his hands a dry wash and smiling and
bowing at almost everything Bill said. Teller, cashier and assistant
cashier were bustling out of sight with slips of paper in their hands,
looking extremely important until the ground-glass partition hid them
from the front, and whispering then, heads close together, with the
bookkeeper, trying his best to edge in a question or two.

"Bill Dale--he's here--just deposited sixty-thousand dollars,
cashier's check from the Hibernian, in 'Frisco!" The teller took
hurried pity on the bookkeeper. "He's with the boss now. Come out in a
minute and consult me about a check, and take a look at him. Boy, he
looks like a regular fellow!"

The bookkeeper almost missed him, at that. Bill was having his busy
day. Before the bank employees quit buzzing, Bill was conferring with
McGaran about cement and making time the essence of the contract, as
lawyers say.

From McGaran's office Bill went to a place said to be the Town-site
Office,--just behind the bank, it was. And in fifteen minutes he was
riding a hard-driven automobile over slopes which had furnished scant
grazing for his burros not so long ago. For himself he would have
built the house beside his tent, but for Doris that wouldn't do at
all. The working class had crowded into that part of town, because it
was close to the mine. Wherefore, Bill examined vacant plots far
removed from the grime and the noise of money-getting.

Before noon he had acquired personal title to a knoll not too far from
the business section, nor so close that any part of the magnificent
sweep of desert and distant mountains could ever be hidden from the
windows and wide porches of his Mary's home. Laying aside his
sentiment for his old camp ground, and trying to see all this with the
eyes of Doris and, later, of his little Mary, Bill looked long and
said to himself that he had done well.

By then, all Parowan knew that Bill Dale had returned and meant to
start immediately upon the building of a mansion. A new light shone in
the eyes of certain men who had been looking anxiously for some sign
in the heavens to tell them whether the prosperity of Parowan would
break or hold.

For this there was a reason. Other prospects had been exploited far
beyond their deserts. Their little bubbles had glowed iridescent for a
time, and were going the way of all bubbles. Parowan Consolidated was
the only real mine behind the town, the one big industry that could
hold prosperity upon the mountain side. Other small camps had appeared
in near-by canyons, desert mushrooms more or less poisonous to the
unwary.

At first it had been believed that the gold Bill Dale had found would
be uncovered elsewhere in the district. The promoters of Parowan had
carefully fostered that belief, and even yet the men on the outside
were unaware of the fact that certain other opulently named companies
were riding precariously up the tail of Bill Dale's kite. They
advertised their properties as being "adjoining the Parowan
Consolidated properties," and sold stock on the strength of that
statement rather than because of any particular value in their own
claims. And the _Parowan Record_ was doing all that any boom-town
newspaper could do to discourage discouragement and foster faith in
the district.

There was meaning in Rayfield's declaration that the passing of a
dividend by Parowan Consolidated was unfortunate at that particular
time, and that the coming of Bill was likely to prove a godsend to the
town.

The business men watched Bill covertly for a time, still anxious.
Then, when material for the big house began to arrive, and expert
builders from the city; when trucks and men were busy on the knoll,
certain of the watchers breathed freer and relinquished certain secret
plans they had been making to leave Parowan as quietly as possible
while they could pull out with a profit.

Bill himself was enough to put heart into the most timorous. He was so
happy to be back and to be building his home that his voice lifted the
spirits and set men to smiling at nothing in particular. The twinkle
was back in his eyes; his laugh was a tonic. With Hez slouching along
at his heels and Luella riding his shoulder, he walked the streets and
had a word for every man who met his eye with friendly glance; bossed
the job of the building. When he made brief visits to Doris and the
baby, Parowan was uneasy until he returned.

The passing of the dividend created scarcely a ripple of comment,
since Bill Dale was there, spending money on a home, and since Bill
said that Parowan Consolidated was merely getting ready to shovel out
the gold in chunks.

"Can't pay dividends, boys, when we're spending money on new
machinery," he said easily, believing it all in the bottom of his
heart.

Those who had begun to sell a little of their Parowan stock wished
they had kept it. And those who could, bought more. Four times par
they paid for it, and called it a good investment. Bill told them that
it was beyond question a deep, rich, permanent mine, and that as long
as he had anything to do with it, Parowan was not going to turn a
dishonest dollar.

That winter the town continued to grow and to prosper. And on the
fourteenth day of February Parowan Consolidated asked for extra guards
for the express car, and made a valentine shipment of gold. Almost
immediately, stockholders were notified that the regular dividend
would be made.

So Parowan had passed its critical period of uncertainty and was
accepted as a permanent town that might even rival Goldfield and
Tonopah in wealth, give it a little time.




CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE YARN AL FREEMAN TOLD


Al Freeman, slouched forward on a box, dangled a cold cigarette from
his loose lips and gave Bill the slinking, slant-eyed regard of a
trapped coyote. Behind him, Tommy stood grim, with his underjaw lifted
and thrust forward in a comical attempt to look as deadly as he felt.
Thrust within the waistband of his sagging gray trousers was an
ivory-handled revolver which had lately done its share toward
intimidating the man before him. Bill held his underlip between his
teeth, lest he smile and so spoil a dramatic situation evidently quite
precious to the little Irishman, whom Nature had never meant for a
swashbuckling hero.

"Spake up, now!" Thus Tommy cracked the whip of authority over Al.
"Tell t' Mr. Dale phwat I heard yuh tellin' t' Jack Bole in my
s'loon--an' tell it the same er I'll let the daylight t'rough yuh! I
will, that." He rolled the words out with unction, with an eye canted
up through his glasses to observe the effect of his harshness upon
Bill. A small boy patting a tame bear could never have felt himself
more dare-devilishly courageous.

"'Tis a foine tale I heard him tellin', Mr. Dale, an' one that
concerns you an' yoors. I'll have it outa him, never fear."

"Shall I heat the poker Tommy?" Bill's tone was innocent, if his eyes
were not. "Or have you put the fear of the Lord in him already?"

"Aw, he ain't able t' scare a rabbit," Al protested with an
ingratiating smile that managed to make itself mighty unpleasant, in
spite of him. "What I tolt Jack Bole I'm willin' t' tell you, Mr.
Dale--only I wisht to say that I never meant yuh no harm, an' fur as I
kin see I ain't done yuh no harm neither. You made yer pile, an' I was
only tryin' t' make a livin' best way I could. An' seein' yo're rich
an' I'm broke, I cain't see as I done ye no harm. Which I wouldn't of
wanted t' do yuh nohow."

"Clear as the Colorado River in flood time," Bill made cheerful
comment. "Let's have the story, and never mind the footnotes. Go
ahead. I'll keep Tommy off your back--if I can. He's a hard man to
stop, once he gets started, but I'll protect you if possible."

Whereat Tommy scowled and clamped his jaws together anew, not
perceiving the joke. And his captive, actuated by motives of his own,
proceeded to tell his story, which startled Bill more than he would
like to own.

Since Al's illiterate speech is not particularly attractive and his
manner of telling the tale wearisome with a frequent sez-e and sez-I,
here is the gist of the matter which Tommy had thought fit for Bill's
ears and best attention:

In coming to Parowan as packer for the government research men, Al had
come with instructions to do exactly what he had done. He declared
that the sole object of Rayfield and Emmett had been to discover what
value there was in Bill's claims. They had been first attracted by the
parrot, talking unguardedly in Goldfield--Al here repeated almost
verbatim what the parrot had said, since Jim Lambert had jotted down
the sentences and had seen fit to study them seriously--and had laid
their plans carefully before ever they left the town.

Al said that he was taken up to Jim Lambert's office, and there he
first heard of the scheme, agreed to play his part in it and was
promised an interest in all that was gained. The three had followed
Bill, keeping well out of sight. They had done this because they did
not know just where he was going,--Parowan being a large mountain with
wide shoulders and many gulches and canyons. They had timed their
arrival so as to take advantage of the storm and share Bill's shelter,
whatever it was. This, Al said, was intended to induce intimacy and
the exchange of confidences.

They were to secure samples, and what details they could, whereupon Al
was to carry off the camp equipment and leave Rayfield and Emmett
stranded there, so that Bill must take them in. This, he said, was to
induce further intimacy and to make it more permanent.

There Al's duty ended. After he had reported to Jim Lambert, he was to
have the burro and the outfit, and could go where he pleased, so long
as he kept his mouth shut and remained away from Goldfield. He was to
be paid top packer's wages and a share in whatever was made out of
Bill's claims.

"Then what are you breaking your word with them for?" was Bill's first
surprising question. "Why aren't you keeping your mouth shut?"

"Wal, they hain't played square with me, Mr. Dale. They hain't give me
the share they agreed to." Al lifted his dingy hat to scratch a head
that looked as if it needed scratching.

"Haven't you got a written agreement?"

"No, I hain't. They wouldn't have any writin' on it. They said it
wouldn't be best."

"Well, that's good sense. It wouldn't." Bill got up and put more wood
in the stove, for a raw wind was blowing up from the desert. "Well,
what do you expect me to do about it?" He turned on Al so abruptly
that Al dodged, expecting a blow perhaps.

"Wal, I dunno--onless it might mebby be worth somethin' to yuh, t'
know about the frame-up." Cupidity flared for a moment in Al's eyes.
"Yo're a rich man, Mr. Dale," he whined. "I ain't got a dime to my
name."

Bill replaced the lid on the stove, scraped pieces of bark from the
surface with the poker and sat down again, eyeing Al contemptuously.

"Yes, I'm a rich man--according to your standard. Did you ever hear of
crooks making a man rich, Al? Doesn't that strike you as kind of
funny--a crook doing that?"

"Wal, I dunno's it does, Mr. Dale--not if they was gittin' five
dollars, say, whilst you was gittin' one."

Bill laughed contemptuously.

"If they were all that generous, they'd be pretty apt to pay you
enough to keep your mouth shut, anyway. Or give some one a few dollars
to bump you off. There are thin spots in your yarn, Al. I'm afraid it
isn't worth much."

"Wall, they paid me some," Al retorted with a craven kind of acrimony.
"An' they don't b'lieve in killin'. They say that's crewd an'
danger'us."

"They'll pay you more," Bill snapped, "if they're afraid of your
tongue. You're a cheap skate, Al--an awful cheap skate. If you'll take
my advice, you'll get out of town--to-night. The world's full of
places besides Parowan. Take him out, Tommy; and dump him somewhere
outside the city limits. And if you want to bring any more like him
into camp, give them a good scrubbing first. I'll have to clean house
after him. Get!"

This last command was to Al, who overturned the box in his haste to
get off it. Tommy herded him out with the ivory-handled gun, looking a
bit crestfallen and a good deal puzzled. Tommy's thought processes
were too simple to follow Bill's logic, or to understand his attitude.
It seemed to him that Bill was almost criminally indifferent to his
own interests, and that his leniency with Al Freeman fell but little
short of approval. It had been labor wasted, bringing Al there to tell
Bill his story, and he regretted now that he had not been content to
kick Al out of the saloon and let it go at that.

But after he was gone, Bill sat dejectedly beside the stove, his arms
folded across his lifted knees, feet in the oven, and brooded over the
amazing story. It seemed incredible that Al could be telling the
truth,--and yet, there were some things that Al could not possibly
have imagined. If there were thin spots in his story, there were also
details that carried conviction.

Luella, having retired under the bunk during the interview, came
stalking out and climbed, beak and claws, up Bill's back and perched
upon his shoulder, leaning forward and making kissing sounds against
his cheek, which was her way of coaxing his attention. Bill reached up
a hand and stroked her back absently.

"Speak up now," Luella admonished, having liked the sound of that
phrase. "That's a hell of a note, ain't it?"

Bill pulled her down and held her on her back between his hands,
rolling her gently from side to side.

"It is," he answered gravely. "You've stated the case exactly." He set
the parrot on his knee, where she immediately began to preen her
ruffled feathers.

That was the convincing part of Al's story,--repeating the things
Luella had said before the courthouse. Al claimed to have been there,
and to have heard her talk. He had chanced to pass by the steps just
as Jim Lambert, Rayfield and Emmett were coming up to the courthouse
from town. He claimed to have been in the offices of Jim Lambert
later, when the plot was hatched. If that were a lie, how could Al
repeat what the parrot must have said? How could he know that the
burros, and the parrot with them, had waited before the courthouse
steps alone or otherwise? Al had named the very day and the very hour
of Bill's visit to the recorder's office. The date and hour were
written upon his location filing, together with book and page of the
record. Had Bill chanced to forget, that record would serve to remind
him; but Bill did not forget. Al had never seen those papers. He could
not possibly have told about Luella unless he had both seen and heard
her there.

The incredible feature of the yarn was the fact that Rayfield and
Emmett--John and Walter, he had come to call them in his mind--had
been the chief instigators of the plot. And there again Bill
floundered in vain speculation. What _was_ the plot? Not the mere
creation of jobs for themselves, surely? Al had professed ignorance of
their governmental position. They may have been research men, as they
claimed. He didn't know, and he had never heard that talked about,
except as a plausible reason for their showing up at Bill's claims. He
was sure that they had lied about working out from Las Vegas west,
however; having been in Goldfield, they could not have been
prospecting Forty Mile Canyon at that particular time.

What had they gained? A block of stock for each of them, to be sure.
Bill had been generous; had given them each fifty thousand shares of
the promotion stock. He could scarcely credit any plot to get it,
however. Still, that meant fifty thousand dollars immediately after
the company was organized. Bill had known of many a murder committed
for a fraction of that amount.

One discrepancy in the story eluded him for some time, though he
groped for it vaguely. Then Al's retort came to him with force--"Not
if they was gittin' five dollars where you was gittin' one"--and set
him scowling, vacant-eyed, at the tent wall.

_Were_ they getting five dollars to his one? How? They had full
control, to be sure. But their control seemed to be of the
conservative, constructive kind that favored dividends. And there was
the thing that seemed incredible. Would crooks, of the bold type that
would follow a prospector and lay cunning plans to grab what he had
found, play a straight game afterwards? It did not seem to Bill that
it could be possible. A crook is a crook. Once in control, they could
have raided and wrecked the company a dozen times in his absence.
Instead, they had worried over one passed dividend.

Bill lay that night staring up at the whitish blur of his tent roof
with a cloudy moon above it, and thought circles around the thing.
Walter and John _couldn't_ be the thieves Al Freeman had called them.
A thief cannot keep his fingers off other men's money. Walter and John
had made money for many a man. But that painfully exact report of
seeing and hearing Luella in Goldfield was true. It had to be true.
That was something which no man could build convincingly out of his
imagination; not to Bill, where Luella was concerned. She had a
certain fixed idea in her talk, always. She seemed able to
discriminate between subjects, and to stick to one for minutes at a
time before drifting into other sentences that conveyed an entirely
different impression of what might be going on back of those
observant, yellow eyes. To one who did not know Luella, it would be
impossible to simulate her uncanny imitation of intelligence,--which
Bill more than half believed to be genuine reasoning power. Perhaps
the bird was especially quick to read faces and to connect certain
expressions on the countenance with certain groups of words. It could
not be accident, in Bill's opinion. Accidents do not happen with
consistent regularity, and Luella's remarks were usually pithy and to
the point. It was therefore a fixed basis of reasoning, in Bill's
mind, to grant the authenticity of Al Freeman's contention that Luella
was at the bottom of the plot.

Beyond that point, however, Bill continued to flounder in doubts. He
hated himself for even speculating upon the dishonesty of Walter and
John, although he had found them a bit touchy, a shade jealous of
their authority and their judgment. Walter had assumed executive
control; John, as treasurer, had the responsibility of keeping the
accounts impeccable. Bill had attended the annual stockholders'
meeting, on the last afternoon of the year, and he had been almost
awed by the meticulousness of John Emmett's financial report. It had
sounded like some carefully compiled government statistics, and Bill
had been compelled to sit and listen to a careful reading.

The reëlection of the Board of Directors had been a mere form. Bill,
Walter and John were the directors,--Nevada demanding only three. They
were as inevitably reëlected to the same offices. There had not been
many stockholders present, the day being almost a holiday. Those who
were present voted perfunctorily and with complete unanimity; indeed,
so harmonious had been the meeting that every one may as well have
stayed at home, save the secretary, Bill thought.

Therefore, in their pardonable desire to be left alone to run the
machinery, since they had started it in the first place, Bill saw the
full approval of the resident stockholders. And if the stockholders
whose very business life depended upon the success of Parowan
Consolidated and the integrity of her officers were satisfied, surely
there was no reason why the president should meddle. The business men
of Parowan would be the first to know if anything went wrong, Bill
told himself over and over.

Yet the story Al Freeman had told would not erase itself from his
mind, nor could he call it a venomous bit of spite and so discount it.
There had been bothersome details which a lawyer would call
corroborative evidence. There was the ineffectual campsetting, the
night of their arrival; rather, the late afternoon. Tommy had declared
then that Al Freeman had been bluffing, that he had not tried to get
their tent up and pegged down securely before the storm broke. Al
confirmed Tommy's assertion. The plan, he declared, had been to manage
to pass the night with Bill. They had decided that when they first
glimpsed his tent.

Then the invasion of the tent while Doris was there alone he had
explained. Emmett had seen the sample sack half full of ore, but had
not dared to investigate the contents at the time. He had ordered Al
to go back and see what was in that sack. It it were the rich ore they
suspected, he was to abstract what he could, load the burros and hurry
back to Goldfield, leaving Rayfield and Emmett nothing but their
blankets. He said they knew that Bill had plenty of grub.

These details fitted in with what had occurred within Bill's
knowledge. If Al were lying, he was assuredly making a fine, artistic
job of it all. The inconceivable part was the personality of the two
men he accused, and the part they had played and were still playing in
Parowan Consolidated and in the town. They had promoted their campaign
cleverly and efficiently, mostly by the power of suggestion.

"If it's true," said Bill harassedly at breakfast next morning,
"they're the tamest bandits I ever saw in my life. I can't believe
it."

"Seems like a dream," Luella assented promptly, pausing in her
nibbling of coffee-soaked crust. "Ain't that a hell of a note! I can't
believe it." Then, blinking rapidly as memory revived another speech,
she added softly, "Kiss me, Doris. Say you love me."

Bill's face paled. He looked at the bird, swept out an impulsive arm
and pushed her off the table, soaked crust and all. He bit his lip,
fighting the spasm of loneliness, or heartsick longing for the life he
had dreamed of living with Doris.

Of a sudden his head went down upon a curved arm, his shoulders
twitching a bit as he still fought. Luella, crawling up to forgive and
be forgiven, made her clicking, kissing sounds in vain against his
cheek.

"Hell of a note!" she complained at last, when Bill gave no sign of
response. "I can't believe it. Seems like a dream. You don't say!"
Then, spying the butter unguarded, she stepped down upon the table and
pigeon-toed in that direction. "Help yourself," she invited gravely.
"Plenty more where that came from. Help yourself."

And Bill, his soul flayed with bitter memories, with dreams slowly
strangled and returning wraithlike to mock his loneliness, did not
even hear.




CHAPTER NINETEEN

"THERE'LL BE MORE TO COME OF IT"


Walter Rayfield reached out his hand with deliberate firmness and laid
his forefinger upon the push button on his desk. In the distance could
be heard a faint buzzing. Almost immediately thereafter, John Emmett
opened a door and walked in, a yellow invoice in his hand and a look
of inquiry on his face.

Rayfield waved a plump hand toward a chair.

"Sit down, John, and listen to the story that Bill has brought us this
morning. The most outrageous thing I ever heard in my life. Go on,
Bill--but go back to the beginning, if you don't mind. I want John to
hear what you have just told me."

Impassively Bill obeyed. When he had finished--and he spared no
details in the recital--he sat back and folded his arms, waiting to
see how they would take it; watching, too, for some sign that should
guide his judgment of the matter. He was still ashamed to doubt them,
still ready to believe that Al, having overheard the parrot, and
suspecting the significance of her remarks, had yet concocted the
rest of the story from some dark purpose of his own; revenge, perhaps,
but more likely in the hope of profiting by the tale. But Bill had not
spoken of his own belief in the two. He had told them what Al said,
making no comment of any kind, keeping his voice and his face
carefully neutral.

Rayfield and Emmett looked at each other. Emmett smiled slightly,
shrugged his shoulders and glanced down at the yellow invoice.

"Interesting bit of libel," he said contemptuously. "If there was any
truth in it, I wouldn't be getting a hump in my shoulders and ruining
my eyes over the Company books. Did you O K the order for these engine
parts, Walter? This invoice is not correct. The total is wrong, and
moreover the name of purchaser is not here. I wish you'd call up the
shop and ask about it. Tell them I can't accept it as it stands. Make
it plain that they must furnish a correct invoice, or take back the
merchandise." He dropped the invoice before Rayfield. "And once more
let me say that I absolutely refuse to accept anything that is not
signed by the purchaser. Who did this buying? The engineer at the
plant?"

"Now, now, never mind the invoice for a minute, John! I want to ask
Bill just one question. It may not be beneath your dignity, either,
to join me in wanting to know why Bill did not bring this Al Freeman
to us with that story. That hurts me, Bill. I can't understand why you
heard him out and did not give us the chance to face him with it. I--I
dislike to think that you gave the story any credence; but since----"

Emmett turned and came back to the desk. His hard brown eyes fixed
themselves upon Bill's face.

"If Bill took enough stock in the yarn to listen to it, there's just
one thing for me to do. I'm responsible for the Company's funds. I
think I shall demand that you bring an auditor to examine the books."

"An auditor has gone over the books, hasn't he? You showed his
certificate at the annual meeting. And Al didn't say you had juggled
the accounts, John."

"No, he could hardly say that," Rayfield put in. "At this late
day--hoping, I suppose, that we could not prosecute him for stealing
our outfit--he claims that we arranged for him to steal it so that we
could board with Bill!" He threw back his head suddenly and laughed,
his sides and rounded front shaking with mirth.

"A fine tribute to your cooking, Bill! You should have given him a
dollar or two for that!"

"I thought you two ought to know what he's saying," Bill replied
soberly. He had no heart for joking, that morning. "He was telling it
in Tommy's Place, and Tommy overheard him and made him come to me and
repeat what he had said to others. I thought it was no more than right
to let you know."

"We appreciate your spirit, Bill, but I can't seem to understand his
object. Did he give you any valid reason for concocting such a yarn?"

"He said that you hadn't played fair with him. He said you had paid
him some money, but not what you had promised." Bill sighed,--a purely
physical incident caused by his general depression and the ache in his
heart for Doris. This conspiracy tale did not seem important, now that
he had told it to Walter and John. The sunny, well-regulated offices,
the sight of John and Walter on the job, busy with Parowan affairs,
reassured and shamed him--though he reflected that he had not really
doubted them, even in his midnight musings when a man's faith burns
weakest.

"I told him you'd have paid enough to keep his mouth shut," he added.
"And I wouldn't make enough of the yarn to bring him to you. I told
Tommy to take him out and dump him outside the city limits."

"In that case," said John in a tone of displeasure, "I don't see just
what you can expect us to do about it; or why you came to us with it
during office hours. Walter may have all the time in the world to
gossip--but I happen to have work to do. When you decide what you're
going to do about it, let me know and I'll stand any investigation you
may want to start. But I can't stand here discussing a crazy yarn like
that unless it's of some importance to the Company."

Bill rose and picked up his hat.

"I came and told you the yarn so you'll know what to do if Al Freeman
shows up again in Parowan. I won't be here for a week or two, maybe.
I'm taking the noon train. You can get me at the Palace Hotel in
Frisco, any time it's necessary."

"Going to bring the Missus back with you?" Rayfield pursed his lips
good-humoredly. "Hope you mean to give a house-warming when you move
into that mansion. I'd like to have some of these Parowan folks see
what you've got there. Well, so-long, old man. And after all, I guess
we're both grateful to you for warning us about Al Freeman. I'll put
the Chief of Police on his trail. If he shows up we'll land him in the
penitentiary for that robbery of our camp outfit. A man like that's
dangerous, left running at large and slandering his betters."

Bill agreed with him and went down the stairs wondering just how much
of a fool he had made of himself. But that thought was presently
swallowed up in his anticipation of seeing Doris and little Baby Mary
within twenty-four hours. He had not intended to leave so soon. He had
meant to write Doris that the house was finished and furnished, and to
invite her, in a purely joking way, to invite her to come and inspect
his job. But up in the office he had suddenly sickened of the town,
and of Walter and John. He had a fierce desire to look into one pair
of eyes that he knew was loyal. Doris might not agree with him always,
she might fall short of his ideal as a wife, but at least their
interests were identical and she could never be guilty of treachery.
He was not so sure of the rest of the world.

He hurried to camp and got Luella, taking her to Tommy's Place. He
wanted Tommy to sleep up in the new house for safety's sake, and he
wanted to know what had become of Al.

He found Tommy in a rather difficult mood and did not stay to explain
his reasons for turning Al out with so little thought of his
importance. It seemed to Tommy that Bill was playing into the hands of
crooks, and as plainly as he dared Tommy told Bill so.

"Al's gone, Mr. Dale--but there'll be more to come of it," he said
carpingly. "Kape wan eye open, is my advice to yuh. For I tell yuh
plain that Al was not lyin', though yuh might think it. He c'uldn't
look yuh in the eye, Mr. Dale--an' when he's tellin' one of his lies
he has that way of lookin' at yuh, he puts the school books t' shame
that says a liar cannot look a man in the eye. So I know----"

"Train's whistling, Tommy. Keep your own eyes open and look after the
new house." It disturbed Bill to have Tommy voice something which Bill
himself would not concede to his consciousness. He did not believe
Al's story, because he refused to doubt the integrity of his partners.
He refused to doubt them, because to do so would pull down his faith
in the stability of Parowan, which he had chosen for Mary's home. It
was a round-about way to fight a doubt, but it was the best Bill could
do at that time. For, as is well known, nothing ever thrives quite so
luxuriantly as the seeds of suspicion.

    *    *    *    *    *

Doris was glad to see Bill, though she was not enthusiastic over the
invitation to Parowan. She had thought that they might take a trip
east, now that the baby was old enough to travel, and had cut her
first two teeth. Of course, Doris would like to see her mother and
dad, but Parowan----

"Well, you've got a hundred-thousand-dollar house to step into, honey,
if you want to go." Bill looked at her wistfully. "I've heard several
women wishing they could visit a real mining camp, and I thought maybe
you'd like to take a party over for a week or two, and give a sort of
house-warming. Mrs. Baker Cole helped me choose the furnishings, and
she thought the plan of the house was perfect. You won't be ashamed to
have your friends see it. And there are some nice folks in Parowan
now."

Doris considered the matter. If Sophy Cole had helped Bill, of course,
that was different. The nice folks in Parowan, of course, did not
appeal to her in the slightest degree; but the house-party idea was
not a bad one. And she did want to see the old home again, she
discovered.

"We'd have to take servants from here, Bill--and you know I positively
couldn't think of staying longer than a couple of weeks or so. And I'd
have to see the place first, before I could ask any one over. You're a
dear, and all that, but a man simply _can't_ know about the little
things that count when one is giving a party. And besides, I'd have to
arrange for amusements for the guests. There is so little that one can
do in the desert for entertainment."

"I'd like to have you go with me alone," Bill confessed. "I'd like to
have you all to myself for a little while in the new home. Has it ever
struck you, Doris, that we have lived before the public ever since we
were married?"

"I don't see how you can call this public," Doris retorted, glancing
around the room. "And until you went back to Nevada on this wild
scheme of yours, I'm sure we were together all the time--and by
ourselves too, an awful lot."

Bill extended an arm and tapped lightly against the wall. "Six or
eight inches between us and our neighbors. I call that living in
public. Well, shall we go over there together, just us two and the
baby?"

"I'll see," said Doris lightly. "Perhaps--with servants, of course.
I'm rather curious to see what kind of a house you and Sophy Cole
would build, anyway."

"Next week, then, let's go." Bill drew her toward him and kissed her.
"It would be to-morrow, but I've got something to look after, first.
Honey, don't think me a fool just because I love you so; and don't
laugh at me for wanting to see my wife and my baby under our own roof.
I can't help it. I'm human."

"You're extravagant," Doris corrected, patting him on the shoulder
with a slight condescension which Bill did not miss. "Think of
spending all that money on a house in the desert! I never heard of
such a thing. I'll bet folks over there are calling it Dale's Folly,
this minute."

Bill's eyebrows drew together. He looked down at her somberly.

"They're sure mistaken, then," he said grimly. "_That's_ not Dale's
folly."

"You don't mean me, I hope?" A sparkle came into her eyes.

But Bill took his hat and left the room without even remembering that
he should ask to be excused, or make some courteous explanation of his
sudden departure.




CHAPTER TWENTY

LUELLA ENTERTAINS


Bill stood on the south veranda and looked down upon the town, where
smoke was rising lazily from bent stovepipe and brick chimney--the
supper fires of Parowan's inhabitants--and away across the desert
beyond, where the Funeral Mountains stood shoulder deep in purple
shadows, the peaks smiling yet in rosetinted afterglow.

"Home!" he said between his teeth. "I made a mistake. I've only built
a house. I'm a damned fool. It takes two to make a home."

Behind him came faint murmurs of talk, high-keyed laughter, little
silences shattered suddenly by the refined babel of several women
exclaiming in unison. The clink of china punctuating the pauses. Then,
frank, uncompromising, came the voice of Luella, speaking with awful
distinctness.

"What the hell! Damned bunch of gossips. Won't you ever settle down?
Doris, for God sake listen."

A pause, then voices exclaiming once more. Slippered feet came
tack-tack across polished floors, muffled on the rugs, clicking when
the rug was passed. A ripple, rustle, quite close. Then silence.
Without turning his head Bill knew that Doris was standing in the open
doorway, looking at him in hot anger. Unconsciously he braced himself,
his face setting into forced serenity.

It came.

"Bill, I wish to heaven you'd come and get that parrot! She's in
there, walking up and down, looking at the floor and saying the most
awful things! You'll have to explain it somehow to my guests--her
calling them a bunch of damned gossips. It's beyond human endurance.
She's talking something _awful_. I'll call a servant to take her out
and wring her neck, if you don't come and get her. I mean that, Bill."

Bill clicked his teeth together and faced her, smiling. But in the
pockets of his Palm Beach coat his hands were clenched, so that
trimmed nails dug into flesh.

"Your guests wanted to see Luella and hear her talk," he reminded her
with gentle raillery. "You told them how she would go up to baby Mary
and smooth down the baby's dress with her beak, and make kissing
sounds, and say, "She looks like you, Bill. Damned if she don't." I
heard you telling them. She's heard Don say that, every time he comes
here. Your _guests_ begged to have her brought in----"

"Yes, and what did she _do_?" Doris was almost in tears; but ladies
with carefully powdered cheeks cannot afford tears, so Doris pressed a
twenty-five-dollar handkerchief to her lips and controlled herself.
"I'll tell you what she did! I brought the baby and held her down for
the parrot to talk to. And what did she _say_? 'What the hell! You
damned huzzy, git outa here!' _That's_ what she said, to _your own
baby_! Now those women will go home and say that's the way you talk to
your family."

Bill's chuckle did not soothe her appreciably. She stood looking at
him as if she wanted to box his ears. Bill in cream colored Palm Beach
coat and trousers, soft silk shirt, white canvas shoes, was the
handsomest man in Parowan,--or in all Esmeralda County, for that
matter. The women guests of Doris recognized that fact, if Doris
herself overlooked it. Wherefore, when he yielded the point and
returned to the midst of the assembly, he saw eyes that brightened as
he looked into them, lips that smiled, a subdued little flutter at his
coming.

In the wide arch that Bill had designed to give Doris the long "vista"
which she so admired in other houses, Luella was pigeon-toeing back
and forth, her tail spread slightly, her eyes swift-flashing bits of
amber. She was peeved at something, in Bill's opinion. She paused and
tilted her head at him.

"Look who's here! Well, I'll be damned!"

Ladies laughed titteringly behind their fingers, and looked at one
another. Bill, feeling himself an elephant at a doll's tea-party,
stooped and let Luella step upon his hand.

"Hell of a note! I just can't _stand_ this place! Not a soul worth
knowing. Ignorant----"

Bill mercifully squelched her with his hand pressing down her head
hard. He bit his lip, trying hard not to laugh right out in meeting,
and turned to make a dignified retreat of it, when a pair of
human-looking eyes in the crowd met his, and one lid drooped a bit.

Bill stopped short, took the second look to make sure, and turned
toward the wives and daughters of Parowan's leading citizens. He
grinned,--the old, Bill Dale smile in the face of discouragement, the
smile and the twinkle that had gone far to win him his nickname of
Hopeful Bill.

"Aw, shucks! You've all raised children that were brought out to act
pretty before company, I guess." His voice wheedled them. "They
generally wound up with a spanking after the company was gone, didn't
they? Well, we're in that fix right now. Luella's been and gone and
done it, just like any other kid. That's what I get for leaving her
with a--gentleman that keeps a saloon, while we were in California for
about a year. And--you've caught me with the goods, I guess. I do
cuss, now and then. Every time the baby tries to say something else,
I'm apt to holler, 'Doris, for so-and-so listen!' Luella's got it down
pat." He looked around at them with his Hopeful Bill smile. "I hope I
shut her off before she told that on me," he said.

They laughed, much relieved, glad of his example so that they dared be
human for a minute. Doris, with her perfect social manner, had kept
them stiff-backed and guarding their tongues. One old lady who had
been the wife of a governor and could afford to be herself on that
account, waved half a wafer at Bill imperiously.

"Don't take her away, whatever you do," she cried. "That would be a
confession of guilt. I wouldn't have a parrot that couldn't swear--or
a monkey that wouldn't steal the guests' earrings. Put her down and
let her cuss. It's about the only chance we'll ever get to hear how
men talk when we're not around."

Bill hesitated, until he caught the eye of Doris, over by the door.
Then he shook his head.

"My wife's trying to reform me before the baby's old enough to repeat
things," he said. "Luella's influence is considered bad enough as it
is. It would never do to encourage her. The custom is to shut her in a
dark closet whenever she speaks in an unrefined manner. We hope to
purify her speech before little Mary is old enough to copy it."

He gave them all an endearing smile and carried Luella off. The
awkwardness of the situation was considerably relieved, and Doris did
her careful best to efface the memory of those last interrupted
remarks of Luella's. She hoped that no one had noticed how the
parrot's voice had changed, imitating her own tones. Luella never
learned that in the saloon, at least; there was enough to set the
ladies of Parowan thinking.

The ladies of Parowan did think--and they talked, as well. They had
felt all along, they said, that Bill Dale's wife held herself above
the rest of the town; though why she should was beyond their powers of
imagination. Everybody knew she was Don Hunter's girl,--respectable
enough, but nobody in particular, and certainly not rich. Don had made
some money out of Parowan, but they still ate in the kitchen, and Mrs.
Hunter didn't even keep a hired girl. And here was Doris, trailing
silken gowns over the polished floors, the Persian rugs of the mansion
on the hill, and speaking loftily of this servant and that
servant--by their last names--and bewailing the hardships of living in
Parowan and trying to entertain with no caterer in town and cut
flowers a practical impossibility on short notice or if the trains
happened to be late.

The ladies of Parowan descended to the satisfying luxury of speaking
their minds. Some of the minds harbored spite and malice and envy, at
that, and the things they said were not pleasant. It was fortunate
that the series of "at homes" which Doris had condescended to give to
the ladies in Parowan ended with what Bill unfeelingly dubbed
"Luella's party."

Five afternoons had been devoted to that memorable series. Twenty-five
women to an afternoon, and the house decorated differently each day,
and the prizes for the card games real, costly trifles such as Mrs.
Baker Cole and her set always gave. Parowan society would have been
content with a china plate or a doily for first prize, even at the
bridge table,--which was new to Parowan. Plain whist and five hundred
were the games usually played by the ladies of Parowan, and Doris had
overawed them, intimidated them even, with her "bridge tables" ever
since her arrival.

Her house-party from Santa Barbara and San Francisco, arriving in a
private car, twittering through the "camp" for a week and departing
as they had come, had impressed even the ex-governor's wife. There had
been a grand, house-warming ball, and the very elect of Parowan had
been permitted to attend it; but the house-party of wealthy strangers
had held themselves a bit aloof, and one woman had been overheard to
express her surprise and disappointment because the natives had
neglected to appear in red shirts and high boots, with six-shooters
dangling at their hips. Parowan hadn't quite forgiven that, even yet.

But Doris had responded to the involuntary deference which Parowan
showed to the wife of Bill Dale. She had glowed secretly with pride in
the house Bill had built on the hillside. It was a beautiful house;
even her critical eye could find no flaw in its design, in its perfect
appointments. Bill had been building a dream into the house. Love had
gone into it, and a wistful longing for a home that should dumbly
express his love for Doris and for his child. Hope had gone into the
building of that house; the hope that Doris would love it and would
want to call it home.

He had visioned her standing at the great window that was set like the
frame of a picture into the west end of the long drawing-room. The
scene it framed each day was the sunset,--glorious sunsets such as
only the desert may know. A great window of flawless plate glass,
framing the far peaks that flamed each night anew.

In the eastern wall the mate to that window was set cunningly so that
it should frame a glory which Bill called dawn. Doris had never seen
that picture, though Bill seldom missed it. But he had dreamed of her
standing before the west window, looking upon the sunset. He had
dreamed of other pictures of Doris in that house. Once or twice his
heart had beat faster, believing that his dream was coming true. For
Doris had been stimulated by the praise of her guests of the
house-party. She had read in their faces a delight in this house set
upon the edge of the wilderness. A few had asked if they might come
back. So Doris was lingering in Parowan and playing great lady to the
town,--and dramatizing herself to herself, with her California
acquaintances for an imaginary audience. She had seen that they
expected her to love the desert. Wherefore, she was professing to love
the desert and the town, and to dread tearing herself away at the
first frost. She meant to have her friends over again, she declared.
She had thought of a perfectly original bit of fun for them. She would
dress them all in miners' clothes and lead them right down into the
mine, and let each one dig some gold for a souvenir. She wrote of
this to Mrs. Baker Cole, who told her it was a wonderful idea.

And now, here were the Parowan women gossiping about that wretched
parrot. Doris did not need to hear what they were saying, in order to
be sure that they were talking. She felt a difference in their
attitude; thinly veiled resentment--and some sentiments which were not
veiled at all. She would have left Parowan then, spurning it
contemptuously as an impossible place to live in, but for one thing.

Doris Hunter, born in the desert, knew desert ways and desert people.
Though she would not admit it, she knew what would have been her own
attitude, three or four years ago, toward a woman of wealth who lived
in a mansion and patronized her friends. She knew that she would have
resented the woman intensely, would have hated everything the woman
said or did. And if the woman bungled her patronage and then left the
place, Doris would have curled her lip and would have said that the
woman left because she discovered that even in the desert people had
their own ideas and refused to run after snobs.

Knowing all that, Doris stayed, holding her head up proudly, as was
her privilege. She had her house-party, and could be seen merrymaking
on the broad porches, with colored lights and music and dancing, on
cool nights after the days had been hot. Parowan was not invited to
those frolics, but must view the colored lights and listen to the
music from a distance.

She returned with the party to Los Angeles and the beaches there, and
was gone for a month or more. But she returned, quite unexpectedly to
Bill and to the town, and made some pretense at being glad to be at
home.

And all the while gossip was flowing, a turgid underground stream fed
by some unknown source. All the while it was taking to itself a bitter
flavor which had not been there when it had been merely a thin trickle
of feminine resentment. Men were talking,--in confidential undertones
at first, later with an uneasy hope that certain rumors would be
proven false; rumors that held an ugly meaning for the town.

And Bill, keeping pretty much to himself when Doris was not at home,
and devoting himself to her whims and her service when she was with
him, leaving suddenly for short trips and returning more imperturbable
than he had been before, never heard the gossip, or dreamed of what
would happen when the whisperings grew into shouts.




CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

BILL AND THE TAME BANDITS


Bill stood on the top step of the front porch, looking down into the
scowling faces of a committee of workmen from the mine. Seamed, not
too clean some of them, hard-eyed every one, they stood looking up at
him, measuring as they were being measured. He had seen them coming up
the hill, had thought some accident had happened, had come to meet
them. There he stopped short, on guard. He had seen miners' committees
before now. They needed no banner to announce their kind and purpose.

"Come in, boys," he said, when the silence became marked. "You seem to
have something on your chests."

He turned to the door, and they followed him, saying nothing. That in
itself was of unfriendly portent. Many of these men he knew by sight,
a few had speaking acquaintance with him. He had returned the evening
before from the Coast, and he felt a swift desire for a full record of
the day since he had left Parowan. Something must have happened, some
grievance of which he was wholly in ignorance must have arisen in his
absence.

Bill saw how they stared around at the beautiful room, and looked at
one another afterwards with a grim significance. He stiffened
mentally.

"All right, now, let's have it--since you are here. But the office is
the proper place for business, you know. Why didn't you go there?"

"It's you we want to see this morning, Mr. Dale," a small,
shrewd-faced man said quietly. "Mr. Rayfield and Mr. Emmett have done
all they can for us. We'll have to talk straight from the shoulder,
now, so we came to the man who's responsible."

"All right." Bill sat down and crossed one leg over the other,--a
habit of which Doris did not approve. "Responsible for what?"

"For getting away with the money, so our wages haven't been paid this
month. And so the company can't go ahead and find the ore again. The
boss has done his best. He's proved that. When the Company failed to
meet the payroll, Mr. Rayfield and Mr. Emmett lent a lot of the boys
money out of their own pockets to tide things over. And we had just
stood a cut in wages----"

"If you'll excuse me just a minute," said Bill in his best city
manner, "I'll call the office."

They seemed to suspect some trick, even in that. But the small man did
nothing to prevent Bill from leaving the room, so no one else did
anything. But Bill had only reached the door when he swung back.

"We'll go down to the office together," he said quietly. "You fellows
aren't here just to pass the time away, I take it. And I just got back
last night. I don't know what's happened while I was away, so we'll
just go down where I can find out the truth of the matter."

They were a taciturn lot. They said nothing whatever to that, but rose
and followed him out, skidding a little on the polished floor. Bill
was thankful for their silence. He wanted to think, and he needed to
think swiftly.

For two months, a new rule at the mine had shut him out almost
entirely from the works. Rayfield had explained that it was because
some one had tampered with the safety of the men,--had in fact set
fire to a section of timbering. The effect was that no man was
permitted on the works without a special, written permit from the
general manager.

Bill had run into that restriction unawares. The superintendent had
been sorry, but firm. Rayfield, he said, would not excuse any
violation of the rule. Bill must go to him for a permit. Bill had
gone and had received the permit, which was good only for one visit.
Rayfield could not risk the misuses of a pass, he said. He had too
much on his shoulders.

Bill had taken the permit and had torn it in two before Walter's eyes.
"And who writes the permit for _you_?" he had asked contemptuously and
had stalked out. Rayfield had attempted to make light of the affront,
but he had not recalled the order.

Bill would not run to him for permission when he wanted to go into his
own mine, so he had kept away from the works, and as far as possible
he had kept away from the office as well. Who was he to butt in? he
had asked himself resentfully. _He_ was only the president of the
Company. And, having matters of his own to occupy his mind and his
time, he had not concerned himself further with the management of the
mine.

Two or three men whom he met on the street looked at them strangely,
but the group continued to the office without being questioned by
any,--though Bill fancied that he could read anxiety in more than one
pair of eyes that met him on the street. The silence of the mine
machinery was noticeable and depressing. Bill was bracing himself for
the worst.

The worst met him in the office of Parowan Consolidated, and it met
him with a soothing pat on the shoulder--which did not soothe--and a
deprecatory shake of Walter Rayfield's head. Emmett was in the room,
also, standing by the window with his hands in his pockets as if he
were out of a job. Which he was, as a matter of fact.

"I was going to send for you, Bill," said Walter. "I wasn't sure you
came home last night, however."

Bill passed the civilities by as of no moment.

"What's all this about the mine being on the rocks?" He did not mince
matters. He was past that.

Walter looked at him reproachfully with his good eye and pursed his
lips.

"You saw it coming," he said mildly. "I kept preaching retrenchment,
you know, when our ore began to pinch out. Hopeful Bill wouldn't
listen." He glanced swiftly at the committee of six. "So the result
that I warned you of has come to pass. We have no ore, no money, and
some debts. The boys haven't had their wages this payday, Bill." His
tone was maddeningly reproachful. It implied that Bill was to blame
for all this. Bill accepted the challenge.

"How do you blame _me_ for that?" Again he was clenching his hands in
his pockets, holding his temper rigidly under control. He wanted to
get to the bottom of this amazing state of affairs. He _had_ to get to
the bottom of it.

"Wel-l----" Walter fiddled with a pencil on the desk, "----of course
we know it costs money to build fine houses, and dividends must be
paid promptly to meet the needs of--the occasion. But one can't go on
paying dividends unless there is some income to warrant it. I admit
that I erred in my judgment in one respect. I was in hopes that the
ore would hold out longer than it did. We might have carried things
along until the first of the year, at least. Then, John and I intended
to resign and let you take the load on your own shoulders. We have
done the best we could but----" he shook his head regretfully "----we
couldn't keep the dollars rolling in quite fast enough. Not--quite."

Bill stared at him stupidly. He looked at John Emmett, who had turned
and was facing them, his hard eyes fixed on Bill.

"I should like," said Bill, "to bring in an auditor to go over the
books. How you've worked it I don't pretend to know--but I see you've
done it. I don't suppose the books will show it either. I reckon
you've been too cute for that--since you've been working out a plan
from the start. But we'll go through the motions of getting at the
bottom of this. And before we go any farther, I'll admit that I know
almost exactly how much of a damned fool I've been. But you're slick,
you two. It took me so long to figure you out that you got away with
it before I was in a position to stop you. There's nothing," he
sneered, "like the friendship game to skin a man with. It beats a
knife in the dark, any time. John, let's see the cash balance--if
there is any; or did you two dig out the corners?"

Rayfield sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Emmett lifted his lip at
Bill like a wolf and did not move.

"No use trying to put up any bluff," he snarled. "You're the president
of this Company--you sign all the checks, don't you? If you don't know
where the Company stands, who would?"

The small, shrewd-faced man interrupted, standing a bit forward from
the group.

"All this is interesting," he said, "but it don't get us fellows
anywhere. We came to find out about the payroll. We've been stood off
now for ten days. We want to know where we stand."

Bill turned his head and studied the men briefly, the small man
longest.

"You stand in line, along with the rest of the bunch," he said, with a
heartening grin. "Go back and tell the men to mosey down here to the
office. They'll get their pay, all right."

They looked at him, and from him their eyes went to the other two. The
small man turned to the door.

"They'll be here, Mr. Dale," he said. Bill never could decide
afterwards just what lay behind the little man's words. They had
sounded somewhat like a threat.

"Get out the payroll, John," he said crisply. "And the nice, big check
book I've kept signed up for you. The men will be here, and they'll
have to be paid."

"There's not enough money in the bank to pay them." Emmett's voice was
surly.

"Get the books, I said. The men are going to be paid."

Perhaps Emmett thought it would not be worth while to oppose him.
Perhaps he knew the temper the men would be in. He brought the books,
slapping them down on Rayfield's desk ill-naturedly.

"They've waited ten days," said Bill. "You begin figuring their time
up to and including to-day."

Rayfield ceased for a moment to drum his fingers. "They've been out
for two days, Bill," he said. "Quit of their own accord."

"Up to and including to-day," Bill repeated distinctly. He picked up
the telephone and called the bank, asked for the Company's balance and
got it. The modesty of that balance astonished him, even now.

"Send up a messenger for a deposit," he said easily and put down the
'phone. "Now, what's the payroll?"

"Including our salaries, which have not been paid for the last three
months----"

Bill reached out a long arm and got him by the front, pulling him
close. "I'd love to smash every bone in your body, you tame bandit,"
he gritted. "But we won't add any rough stuff to this--yet. I want to
find out, first, just how rough to make it."

He let John go with a savage push that slammed him against the wall.
"I want you two crooks to know just where I stand," he said between
his teeth. "You've raided and wrecked my Company, deliberately, and as
completely as you could. You've squeezed the lemon dry, and you've
been peddling lies about me and mine, to cover up your dirty work. I
don't need to be knocked down with a club, once my eyes are open.
You've asked me to accept paper for my dividends, all summer, so there
would be a decent cut for the rest. I did it,--and don't you reckon I
can't _prove_ it?

"Now, you're going to come clean. It won't get you anything but whole
bones, because I mean to send you to the pen for this, if I can prove
it on you. I fight for my own. And now, how much will it take to cover
the payroll? The messenger's outside."

Emmett growled the amount, and Bill wrote a check, asked for the bank
book and got it just as the messenger rapped on the door.

"Wait a minute, sonny," he called, when the boy was leaving. "I want
you to do an errand for me, if you will."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Dale." Boys must worship heroes, and Bill was the man
this youngster had chosen for his own. One read it in his eyes, in his
voice, in his glowing eagerness to serve.

Bill scribbled a short note to Tommy, and held it out with a dollar.
The boy shook his head at the money, took the note and bowed himself
out with a quaint courtesy that would have amused Bill at any other
time.

"Now, you'll write the checks, John. And you'll say no word to the
men--that goes for both. Stay right where you are, Walter."

There was a heavy trampling on the stairs, and Bill threw open the
door into the outer office.

"You can go," he said to the girl, sitting wide-eyed behind her
typewriting desk. "Or, rather, come in here. I may need you later
on." He raised his voice. "Come on in, boys. A's come first into the
private office, B's follow, and so on. And as you get your checks,
please go right on out. Saves crowding."

He needn't have worried about their going right out. The first A
headed straight down to the bank, and the second A was presently at
his heels. The workmen of Parowan Consolidated had listened to ugly
rumors too long to take chances.

A late comer squeezed past and into the private office, accompanied by
inquiries as to how he spelled his name. Bill turned his head and
nodded at Tommy.

"All right--you sit over there by the window," he said carelessly, and
went on with his work of watching Emmett write the pay checks, taking
each one damp from his fingers, calling out the name of the man to
whom it belonged and placing a pen in his fingers for the signing of
the payroll.

Bill saw the flare of surprise in more than one man's eyes as he read
the amount of his pay. Bill's hand would clamp down on the man's
shoulder for an instant with a friendly pressure as he spun the fellow
out of the way of the next. He spoke to none, but he had a nod and a
smile for many. He looked into the faces of men whom he believed were
guilty of treachery to the Company and to him, but he gave no sign of
suspicion. There were others who could have told him much, but he
asked no question. The routine of payday was observed without comment.
The only change was the paying of the men in the office.

So presently the last man had clumped down the stairs and into the
bank, and only Tommy remained, sitting grimly in his corner, staring
owlishly through his thick-lensed glasses. Bill shot him a sidelong
glance, lifted an eyebrow and bent over the check book before Emmett.
John had a wonderful head for figures. The balance on the last stub
would not have bought a dinner at the O'Hara House.

"Not much chance to graft off that," grinned Bill, and pointed at the
figures. "Now, you spoke about debts. Dig 'em up, John."

"What's that roughneck doing here?" Emmett growled, looking at Tommy
insultingly. "We don't owe him anything."

"Oh, yes, you do," Bill retorted evenly. "You owe him about the only
thing in the world you're able to pay. Implicit obedience." He paused
to let those two words sink in. "I never thought I'd ever have to call
in a gun-man to camp on your shadow. But he's here, and he's got too
many notches on his gun to be scared about adding another one or two.
Tommy, you'll go with Mr. Emmett into the other office, and stand over
him while he digs up Bills Payable. He should find them in a book--not
in the right-hand drawer of his desk! You're a gun-man. You know what
I mean, I guess."

"I do that, Mr. Dale," Tommy rumbled ominously. "He'll return wit' the
Bills Payable, have no doubt of that."

"Bill, this is an outrage!" Walter Rayfield reached for the telephone,
but Bill snatched it away from his finger tips.

"You're damned right, it's an outrage. But the remedy is going to be
applied as fast as possible."

"You're letting the lies that Al Freeman told poison your mind. John
and I have worked hard for this Company. We've gone without our
salaries for three months now, because the funds were getting low. And
this is all the thanks we get. You come blustering in here at the last
minute, trying to bully and play the bad man. You can't get away with
it, Bill." Rayfield shook his head sorrowfully. "Bluffing won't lift
the Company out of the hole it's in. You've paid off the men--but
there are the stockholders to think of, and the debts. And the ore has
petered out, Bill. One of those rich surface deposits with no depth
to it." He pursed his lips, drumming on the table with his fingers.
"Your fine friends from San Francisco dug out the last of it, Bill,
for souvenirs. A fitting end to Parowan and the fortunes of Hopeful
Bill Dale. A picturesque ending--but the end, nevertheless."

Bill did not trouble to answer him. In a moment, Emmett returned with
his arms full of books, the dangerous Tommy treading close on his
heels.

"Not knowin' which would be the right wan, I had him bring them all,
Mr. Dale. An' his gun was not in the right-hand drawer. It was in his
pocket. Here it is, Mr. Dale,--in case yuh've neglected to pack wan
yourself. An' if yuh don't mind, Mr. Dale, I'd like fer to have yuh
search him fer a knife. Them's the kind of crooks that packs 'em, Mr.
Dale,--as it's been my experience to know. An' I'd search the other
wan whilst I was about it, Mr. Dale. I would that."

Tommy's suggestion was gravely complied with, in the presence and to
the horror of the wide-eyed typist. Bill apologized to her with a
smile, but he did not suggest that she leave the room. Messrs.
Rayfield and Emmett were wily gentlemen. The girl might easily be in
their confidence and their private pay. He did not know where they had
gotten her, but he remembered that she had reigned supreme over the
outer office ever since Parowan Consolidated had established itself
there.

"Now, John, write checks for all these bills. All of them, that is,
that are authentic. Have this girl get them ready for the mail. If
you'll come with me, young lady, I'll help you bring your typewriter
in here for sake of convenience. Mr. Emmett and Mr. Rayfield are not
moving about much, to-day."




CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

BILL BUYS PAROWAN


On the streets groups of men stood and talked together, scanned
eagerly the faces of pedestrians, asked questions that halted men in
their stride, formed new groups as some fresh bit of news became
known. And without exception, all up and down the town, men talked of
Bill Dale and Parowan Consolidated.

Before the bank a prominent group had gathered. Men went up and down
the stairs to the office, coming out upon the street to run the
gauntlet of human eyes, and sometimes saying, "I got mine, all
right--maybe." A trip in to the teller's window, and a nod of
assurance as they came out again.

Glances went up and clung to the windows of the office where a queer
gathering sat silent, or did what Bill Dale commanded. Emmett and
Rayfield had turned surly. The typist was in tears, having broken
unexpectedly into speech. Things she had seen, sentences which she had
overheard, trifles most of them, she told to Bill. Nothing was
sufficiently definite to serve as evidence of fraud, but she
accomplished one thing at least: She convinced Bill that she was not
in their plot, that she was innocent of all knowledge of the inner
workings of the office.

Bill had a lawyer there,--a man whom he trusted to a certain extent,
though he was not really trusting any one save Tommy, just now. The
lawyer took the girl's name and address, and told her that she might
go for the time being. "Which left Bill freer in his mind. He had not
wanted to seem harsh with the girl if he could possibly avoid it.

Rayfield looked up at him and sneered when the door closed behind her.

"Now you've done every melodramatic stunt you can think of, with a
lawyer in one room and an auditor in the next, and a roughneck with a
gun at our backs, just what do you really expect to accomplish? It's
all well enough to dissolve the Corporation, as you say you intend to
do; but you surely don't expect to keep us here until that is
accomplished, do you?"

"It won't take so long," said Bill. "The written consent of the
stockholders, waiving a meeting, and so on--Fuller, here, has all the
dope, and can give you the details--why, it won't take long, at all."

"With stock scattered from Coast to Coast? You'll have a nice time,
Bill, getting the signatures of the stockholders!" Then the necessity
of fighting for his honor occurred to Rayfield. He blustered a good
deal about the outrage, and about Bill's insanity and his ingratitude.

"That's all right," Bill retorted imperturbably. "And Parowan stock is
not scattered as badly as you think, maybe. I hold most of it myself.
Been picking it up all summer, fast as I could without sending the
price up. And you've helped quite a lot, unloading what you held, and
lying about me and the way I've been squandering the money. I didn't
know all of it, until yesterday. I thought you meant to carry things
along smooth on the surface till the last minute, and then duck. I was
ready for that. But you took me by surprise, working it this way.
However," he yawned, "I'm an adaptable cuss.

"You don't know it, but there's a bunch of bulletins being put up,
right now, saying that Bill Dale will buy Parowan Consolidated at two
dollars a share. Some will make money at that, and some will lose. But
it can't be helped; I can't trail down every buyer and find out just
what he paid. And the losers won't lose so much as if you had played
it through your way."

"You damn fool," said Rayfield softly, "You'll spend your last dime
for nothing. The ore's gone. I made sure of that. No depth--like so
many of these rich strikes." His good eye dwelt speculatively upon the
lawyer. "Everything has been done properly, Mr. Fuller. Bill's biting
off more than a mouthful, and it's your duty to tell him that he is
not obliged to buy in the stock. John knows to a dollar what his
income has been. It was big, I admit that. He's had close to a million
dollars out of the mine so far--and the town site. What he's managed
to spend is not my business, of course. But if he hadn't spent a
dollar, you can see where he will wind up if he tries to buy up
Parowan stock. I wish he would," he sighed. "I hold some shares I
should like to dispose of."

"Oh, you're going to get rid of them," said Bill. "Right now while I'm
in the mood, if you've got any sense. But don't think I'll pay you any
fancy price. Ten cents a share for all you've got will be about
right."

Rayfield studied him, gave up trying to read his mind, and accepted
the price. With less grace, Emmett followed. They hadn't much, and the
insignificance of their holdings, their acceptance of his offer which
he had intended as an insult, was more enlightening to Bill than all
their protestations had been.

They believed the mine had been worked out. They had held up the faith
of the public until they could unload their stock; it was quite
possible that his agents had bought in theirs and paid them a good
price for it. The market was broken now. A panic was growing in the
town. People were leaving by the dozens. They could not have gone out
of the office and sold Parowan stock for one tenth of what Bill had
contemptuously offered them.

A man came in, holding a long envelope in his hand. He moved
deprecatingly toward Bill.

"It says down on the street that you're paying two dollars for
Parowan," he said. "I paid six for mine, but if you'll take it at two
dollars you can have it--and glad to get rid of it," he added in a
mutter that Bill caught quite plainly.

"Here's your money. Go back and tell the rest it's no dream," Bill
said shortly, blotting the check with a vicious thump of his fist.
"Ask them not to obstruct the traffic, if they can help it, and to
please form in line."

The man folded his check and hurried out, ashamed of his act, but
manifestly relieved to have recovered a part of his investment. In
five minutes there were five other men in the office.

All that day, Bill bought Parowan. The broker down the street, having
been enterprising enough to wire Goldfield, Tonopah, all the towns
within reach, came and sold to Bill Parowan stock,--stock which he
could not deliver until the mail came in.

That night Doris met him in the door of the big house on the hill. Her
face was white, her eyes clouded with troubled anger.

"Bill, you haven't been buying Parowan stock!" she began, trembling
all over. "They told me you've been buying like a madman, for two
dollars a share. It must be a lie. You aren't _that_ crazy!"

Her emphasis hit Bill's pride. He grinned down at her, though his eyes
were tired and a bit sunken in his head.

"Yup, I'm _that_ crazy," he said. "Sign this slip of paper, and I'll
have bought yours, too. Only I'm paying top price for yours, old girl.
You get five dollars."

"Five hundred thousand dollars?" She looked at him strangely. "All
right, Bill. Only, where's the money? I'd have to sell for cash,
dear."

"Cash in the bank, sure. I haven't that much on me, right now." Bill
sat down at the nearest table, pushed away a costly vase with flowers
from Los Angeles drooping toward him, and shook his fountain pen.

His check fluttering faintly in her white fingers, he watched her
scrawl her name under the agreement of sale. "Doris Mary Dale," she
wrote, and he saw how her right hand shook, and that there was no
breeze to flutter his check in her left hand. She stood up, breathing
quickly.

"There's that much you can't throw away on strangers," she said
triumphantly. "And you can't possibly have much more. But what
possessed you to buy stock you know is worthless? These people have
made their money out of Parowan. Let them go! They'll get it back in
the next boom. They're just rushing out of town as if we had the
plague here," she continued. "The bottom's dropped out of everything,
I heard. And you stayed in that office and paid two dollars a share
for Parowan stock! Bill, what did you _do_ it for?"

"Well, because I wanted Parowan stock, I guess," Bill evaded her
flippantly. "And these poor devils needed to sell, I reckon. And there
is such a thing as honor."

"Honor!" Doris stared at him. "Do you mean to tell me there is any
honor in throwing away your last dollar? I wonder," she said, "whether
you've got enough to cover this check! Have you gone over your
account, Bill, since you started this--this orgy of honor? You
_can't_ have this much left!"

Bill flushed, then paled slowly.

"So you think I'd give you a bad check?" His own voice shook slightly.
"Do you think that? When I've given you all of myself, and let this
mine go to hell because I couldn't be away from you, and you wanted to
be where you could dazzle and be dazzled--do you think, when the whole
thing smashes, I'd give you a bad check for your stock? You can give
that check back to me, Doris." His eyes burned into hers. "As soon as
mail can travel to Frisco and back, I'll have the money for you. Or
place it on deposit for you at the Hibernian--if you can trust the
bank's word when you get it! Since the committee called here at the
house, I've been writing checks. There hasn't been a drunken Bohunk
that asked if my check was good! Parowan has mopped them up and been
glad to get them. It remains for my _wife_ to question my honesty!"

He picked up his hat and left the house again, going back into the
town. His nerves were raw, his pride had been seared over and over by
the open distrust of men who had grown prosperous in the town he had
created. He wanted sympathy, Doris' arms around his neck, her
indignant condemnation of the thieves who had after all wrecked the
mine. He had thought that Doris would understand his reasons for doing
what he had done. He had believed that her own pride would demand that
they stand back of Parowan with their last dollar.

He sent a long code telegram to Baker Cole, and one to his bank. Then,
with hell still in his heart, he walked up the other slope, across the
gulch, and entered the tent (now boarded and roofed and floored, but
otherwise not changed) where he felt that he could at least call
himself at home.

Luella, banished since the fateful party that had set the gossips
talking, greeted him with hysterical chatter. Hez poked a cold nose
ingratiatingly into his palm. Even Sister Mitchell, long ago retrieved
from her winter quarters under a rock by the cellar, crawled from
under the stove and craned her long neck at him, begging for something
green. Bill looked in the cupboard and found nothing eatable. He had
been away too long, he remembered now. He had lost count of the time,
so completely had his mind been given to meet a humiliating situation
in such a way that he need never be ashamed to look any man in the
face.

Well, his menagerie was hungry and begging for food. He went out
again, hurried to the nearest grocery and bought what he wanted,
careless of the curious looks he excited. He stopped at Tommy's Place
and told Tommy that he wouldn't be needed, close-herding anybody. The
auditor had reported to Bill that he could find nothing wrong with the
books, and there was not much chance of getting hold of any actual
proof of crookedness against either Rayfield or Emmett.

"And are yuh still buyin' Parowan stock, Mr. Dale?" Tommy's soft voice
was softer, more plaintive than ever.

"As long as there's a share out, I'm in the market," Bill answered
shortly--defiantly too, though there was no reason for defiance.

He returned to his camp and fed Sister Mitchell her lettuce, Luella a
cookie, and flung a stale mutton chop outside the door for Hez. He did
not cook anything for himself. He was too heartsick to think of food.
The whole damnable robbery, the treachery,--and then, Doris!

He tried to recall what words had passed between them; to remember
just what Doris had said. But then he knew that it was not the words;
she had not actually said anything awful, he suspected. But her tones,
the hard, condemning look in her eyes! He could see her again,
trembling with anger because he was spending money to keep his
name--and hers--above reproach among men. In all the time since they
were married, Bill had never seen Doris like that. The months had not
been altogether peaceful, to be sure. Doris had frequently found
something in her husband that required correcting, had enumerated his
faults to him many, many times. She had often hurt Bill, had made him
angry, so that he would go away until he forgot it. But there had been
nothing like this.

"Damn money, if that's what it does to people!" Bill groaned aloud,
when Luella recalled him to his surroundings by crying, "Give us a
light! Give us a light!" He lighted a lantern and hung it from the
hook on the ridgepole, and for a long while he stood staring at the
cased saxophone.

Only two years ago he had dreamed of learning to play that thing,--to
forward his wooing of Doris!

"I didn't need music," he told himself bitterly, all her hysteria over
money and luxury flooding his mind with a nauseating enlightenment.
"She took me, quick enough, when she saw the gold! Money, money!
That's all she has thought of, from the day I showed her the vein.
Little peacock, strutting around, showing off her finery. What a blind
fool a man can be. And it had to wind up this way. She took money from
me for her stock--thinking it was my last dollar. Afraid my account
wouldn't cover it! If she thinks I'm that near broke, why did she take
that check? Sell out, just like all the rest, because Parowan's on the
rocks and the stock's not worth a damn, and she stood to lose
something if she didn't unload quick. So she unloaded--five dollars a
share because I offered it--to _me_! Her own husband, the man who gave
her the claim that put her in the Company to begin with.

"What has she ever done to help? What's she doing now? Looking after
her own little dollar pile--that's what. And she didn't _need_ it! I
gave her half a million in bonds, last Christmas. My God, even
Rayfield wouldn't have done what she did to-night! And the way she's
treated her folks. That shows the stuff she's made of. I don't blame
Don for turning me down every time I tried to do something for him.
They're proud--the right kind of pride. They're proud to make their
own way. But Doris--neglecting them and not wanting them in California
for a visit--excuses, the thinnest kind of excuses. Ashamed to have
them at the hotels, that was why. She couldn't bear the thought of
leading her pudgy old mother and her big, awkward dad into the dining
room to her table! Afraid they might eat their salad with the fork
dedicated to fish! Old Don might possibly put his soup spoon into his
mouth front end forward! Snob! Cold-blooded, heartless little snob!"

So he railed at her, lashing his anger with the memory of her
foolishness. But when he thought of baby Mary, his heart failed him.
Beginning to toddle now, she was. And squinting her nose at him and
laughing, and hiding her head in a cushion when he went down on his
hands and knees and boo-ooed at her. Holding out her little arms to
him and pleading "Take!" when the nurse came to carry her off to bed.

She must be in her little white nightgown now, with pink toes
wriggling, little white teeth flashing when she laughed. He wondered,
hungrily, if she missed her daddy,--wanted him to come and play
little-pigs-going-to-market.

Bill couldn't stand it. He put on his hat and went out, locking the
gate after him and steeling himself against Luella's protestations. He
would go back to the big house on the hill. He couldn't leave his baby
girl to go "bye-bye" without kissing her daddy good night.

But when he had walked to where the house stood revealed to him, bold
against the starry sky, his steps slowed, faltered, stopped
altogether. All the big rooms were lighted brilliantly, as if there
were a party in the house. He knew the look,--having had his fill of
that mockery of hospitality which Doris called entertaining. It would
be like her, he told himself between clenched teeth. With Parowan
fortunes sliding into the abyss of cataclysmic failure, it would be
like Doris to throw wide her doors to merrymaking, to fling her
defiance into the face of the town over which disaster hovered
vulturelike, waiting to feed upon the broken fortunes left in the wake
of the boom.

He looked for what seemed a long while at the window upstairs, where a
dim light was burning in the corner room. He knew well the meaning of
that light also. It meant that baby Mary was in her bed, tucked in by
the nurse, while her mother laughed and talked and "entertained" in
the drawing-rooms below.

Bill muttered a great oath, turned and went back to his dingy little
board-and-canvas camp.




CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

BILL IS BACK WHERE HE STARTED


Bill bought Parowan stock. When he saw that the price he had named was
holding back many sales, that many a stockholder suspected a shrewd
motive in his buying and held on in the hope of riding another high
wave of frenzied finance, Bill gave a snort and sent another bulletin
out from Parowan headquarters. He would buy Parowan stock at
one-fifty.

That day he wrote checks, an unpleasant curl of the lip betraying his
consciousness of his wife, of the look in her eyes, of the hard
bitterness of her tones because he was spending money on something
other than her whims. His anger held and hardened with the congealing
quality of his contempt for her selfishness, her cold-blooded
acquisitiveness. He felt that the greatest ease he could know was
never to see Doris again so long as he lived.

Wherefore, he did not go home. But Doris called him on the telephone,
just before noon.

"Bill, are you going to be home for luncheon?"

"No."

"When _are_ you coming, then? Don't you realize what people will be
saying? I should think you might have some little consideration for
_me_."

"I can trust you to attend to that matter," Bill replied evenly. "I
have never yet known you to fail. When I hear from San Francisco I
shall let you know. I wired last evening, and should hear to-day or
to-morrow."

"Bill Dale, you----"

"Yes. Certainly. Good-by." Bill hung up and turned back unemotionally
to his work. His lawyer, who sat within three feet of him, believed
that Bill was speaking to a client, or an employee of some kind.

The next day, Parowan Consolidated dropped to one dollar, and people
were selling by wire,--and Bill was buying. He was appalled at the
amount of stock which had been placed on the market and sold at boom
prices. The incorporation had been for two million shares. There had
been two million, seven hundred thousand shares issued. The auditor
had discovered that for Bill.

Bill had a happy half-hour, thinking that he had "got the goods" on
Rayfield and Emmett. But Fuller, the attorney, dug into the records
and discovered just when and where and how the capital stock had been
increased nearly one million shares. Bill called to mind the times
when he had been asked, just as he put on his hat to leave after some
brief visit to the office, "Oh, just sign up these minutes, Mr.
President. Catch you while I can, is the only way I can get at you!"
And Bill, knowing that Doris was waiting for him, had signed minutes,
documents, stock and check books hastily, without giving the time he
should have devoted to the reading. So the capital stock had been
increased with his official sanction, but without his knowledge. There
was nothing that he could say, nothing that he could do. An officer of
a corporation is supposed to know the official acts of his
organization.

Well, he had himself to blame, if there were more Parowan stock
floating around than he had any idea of. He was prepared to buy every
share that he himself did not hold,--and Doris. He had counted on
Doris standing at his shoulder, since she had more than half a million
in her own right and could never want for money unless she
deliberately squandered it. Now, when he should be nearing the end of
his buying, he found himself far from the goal.

He went out and wired again to Baker Cole--an urgent call to liquidate
at once all his holdings in the big Baker-Cole oil interests--and to
place the money at his disposal in the Hibernian.

Then he went back to the office and continued to buy Parowan at one
dollar. More stock was coming in. The gamblers, having no inside
information--though they tried hard enough to get hold of it--lost
their nerve and began to let go. But not fast enough for Bill, who was
impatient to be through with the thing.

Parowan dropped to ninety, the new price being sent out imperturbably
from Bill's office. More stock came in. The papers were full of the
crash, full of wild rumors of the cause, full of Bill Dale's insane
buying--or was it insane? Certainly, it was sensational. No
stockholder could possibly remain in ignorance of the facts, the worst
of the rumors concerning Bill and the mine.

"Sell! Sell!" Every one was crying it. Sell before Bill Dale goes
broke or quits buying because he has enough. They sold frantically.
After Bill had bought so much, the most credulous old woman who held
ten shares could not fail to see that she was hopelessly in the
minority; that she would never get one dime for Parowan, unless Bill
Dale willed that she should.

So it went on for a week. At the end of that time, the silence was
broken between Bill and Doris. One evening, in a cape borrowed from
her maid, Doris visited Bill at his camp.

Bill thought that it was Tommy, until Doris had closed the rough door
behind her and stood there looking around the crude little place with
its canvas walls and roof (inside, the room was still nearly all
canvas) and at Bill hunkered down before the cookstove, blowing up his
fire. She stood looking at him in silence. Perhaps she remembered that
other night when she had cried, "Bill! Bill Dale! Let me in!" Perhaps
she remembered the light in Bill's eyes then, the happy quiver of his
lips which he could not hold from smiling just because she was
there----

"Oh, hello," he greeted involuntarily when she did not speak. "I
thought it was Tommy." He stood up, looking down at her. There was no
light in his eyes now. His lips were pressed together in a straight
line, and he waited guardedly for her to speak first. She came up and
held her ringed hands over the stove, for the night was cool. Perhaps,
too, she wanted to be near him, to watch his face.

"Well, Bill, since I am to be left a widow," she said lightly, "I'm
going back to the Coast. Well, of course, I'm joking about the
widow--though I'm sure I don't know what folks are saying about you
not being home for days. I never saw such an ugly temper as you've
got. I came to say that I'm leaving for Santa Barbara to-morrow. I
want to be early so as to get a good suite before the crowd arrives.
I suppose you'll at least help me get there and get settled?"

Bill smiled darkly. "Any girl that's able to sling a pack on a horse
and get out on this desert alone, and think nothing of it," he said,
"ought to be able to take a train ride alone--with two hired women to
wait on her."

"Do you mean you won't go?"

"I mean, I won't leave here. I might convoy you to your pet hotel, if
you'll wait till I have time. But if you want to go now, you'll have
to go alone."

"Bill, sometimes I think I _hate_ you!"

"Never mind. That'll soon settle into a fixed habit--soon as I'm
broke."

"You're the most stubborn man I ever saw in my life. No one knows what
I have endured from you. Everything must be your way--nothing that I
say or do is worth your consideration. You never would listen to me--I
know now that you must have been making money on the side, that you
never told me about. If you hadn't you never could have acted the fool
and kept it up the way you have, buying in worthless stock."

"_You_ didn't find it worthless," Bill could not refrain from
reminding her. "You made a good thing out of yours, don't you think?
There's not a man in the country can call Parowan stock worthless.
What are _you_ kicking about?"

Doris looked him over scornfully. "What a fool you are!" she said.
"Beggaring yourself just so you may have the satisfaction of saying
that Parowan stock is worth par."

"Ninety cents," Bill corrected her calmly. "I dropped it a bit
to-day--shaking loose a few that have been hanging on."

"I suppose," said Doris, "you consider it a great achievement, buying
up Parowan. Cornering a worn-out mine!"

Bill reached for the coffeepot, measured out coffee and poured in
water from a dented tea-kettle. He was sick of fruitless argument with
Doris. She was as she was made, he told himself resignedly. Some
persons are unable by nature to see beyond a dollar, and Doris, he
considered, was one of them.

"Have you ever thought of me, in this performance of yours?" she
cried, stung by his silence. "I am your wife. What right had you to
throw away money the way you have done, without even asking me what I
thought about it? Throwing away----"

"You aren't worrying about your hotel bill, are you? I believe you
still have a few nickels left. You ought to make out--for awhile,
anyway. I can land a job, maybe, after this blows over."

"A job! You'll land in the insane asylum, if you keep on. I wish I'd
never seen you, Bill Dale!"

"In that case," said Bill, looking up from slicing bacon, "you'd still
be punchin' cows for your dad, most likely."

Doris gave him one furious glare and swept past him. "I hate the
ground you walk on!" she cried. "I hope I never see you again, as long
as I live!"

Bill went on slicing bacon, even after he had heard the gate slam.
When he came to himself, he had sliced enough for ten hungry men.

"You won't, if I can help it," he said tardily; so tardily that Doris
was probably at home by that time.

But nothing is immutable save the Law, and Bill was up at the big
house, the next day, attending to the small details of departure. Baby
Mary was in his arms, bonneted and ready to go, a full hour before the
train left. Bill wondered dully how he was ever going to loosen his
clasp of her warm little body and let her go with Doris,--out of his
life, since the break between him and her mother was irrevocable.

He wondered if Doris would divorce him. But he would have bitten his
tongue in two before he would ask. She was keeping up the pretense,
speaking to him pleasantly when a servant was within hearing, ignoring
his presence when they chanced to be alone.

At the depot, whither he accompanied them, still carrying little Mary
in his arms, Doris chatted lightly of trivial things and smiled
frequently at Bill. The eyes of Parowan were upon them, and Doris
would give them nothing more to roll under their tongues.

"I wired for reservations at the hotel," Bill told her, as he was
helping her on the train. "I asked for our old suite back, if
possible. Thought you'd like it."

"I thought I'd get one in the other wing," Doris answered perversely.
"But that's all right, dear. Well, I'll write immediately, of course.
Good-by, dear!"

Bill hugged little Mary to him, gave her one kiss and put her in her
nurse's arms. The last he heard was the baby's voice screaming,
"Daddy, _take_!"

He went back to the office and bought Parowan stock with a fierce
eagerness that made Fuller, the attorney, look at him queerly.

Before the week was out, Parowan Consolidated was dissolved and Bill
was watching the last of the town's inhabitants leaving on the trail
down the mountain side, and by train. The boom was "busted." From the
Bill Dale mansion on the hill to the meanest shack perched on the edge
of the gulch, the houses of Parowan stood empty. Bill had not lied to
them. He had told them that there would be nothing for them in the
town. He had advised anxious-eyed storekeepers to get out while they
could, carry their stock to some other town and sell it or open
another store. They had taken his advice. The exodus, while orderly,
had been complete.

One little store, the one nearest Bill's camp, remained much as it had
been when Bill made his last purchases there. The storekeeper had a
wife and a lot of children, and he had wanted to get out on a ranch
that he owned near Reno. He was sick of business. He tried to sell,
and nobody would buy. They had enough on their hands, getting out with
their own goods, and landing business. They needed all their cash, and
more too, they said. So Bill, hearing it all while he purchased coffee
and a pound of butter and a few cans of milk, set down his packages
and bought the man out. Not that he was trying to see how much money
he could spend, but because he would need supplies and he thought that
this was the cheapest way to stock up.

One night, then, Bill sat down to his supper in the tent-shack and
told Luella and Hez that they had the place to themselves. Parowan, as
a town, was a thing of the past. That day, the train had made its last
trip into the deserted camp. Its sole freight consisted of six cases
of wine and whisky for Tommy's place--a consignment delayed somewhere
in transit.

"What are _you_ kicking about?" Luella inquired sharply.

"Nothing," said Bill stubbornly. "Nothing at all."

Tommy came in, peering through his glasses at Bill. He grinned,
setting his lantern down on the table.

"The ghosts'll be out this night, I'm thinkin', Mr. Dale," he observed
slily. "I've been all over the town, an' here's the only stovepipe
that's smokin' t'night. Not mine--I thought mebby yuh might ast me t'
eat wit' yuh, an' so I cooked nawthin' fer m'self."

Bill nodded and got another cup and plate. "I thought you went
to-day," he said.

"Me? Wit' the stock I've bought an' the stock I've helt befoor, I've a
right t' stay wit' my investment."

Bill studied him. "So it's you has been holding out on Parowan!" He
laughed shortly not quite pleased. "Well, you'd better fork over,
Tommy. I'll buy your stock. You know, don't you, that the Company's
dissolved--there _ain't_ no more Parowan Consolidated. What's left of
the mine belongs to Bill Dale. Right where it began, it finishes. How
much have you got?" Almost mechanically he reached for his fountain
pen. The thought struck him that now, at last, he might not be able to
buy Tommy out for any decent price. He might not have money enough. As
poor as when he had followed his burros into Goldfield was Bill. But
he had his mine; he had his self-respect.

"I'm not sellin' Parowan stock," said Tommy stiffly. "When I seen you
was buyin', I bought from them that come in the s'loon an' talkin'. If
they's no Company left, I can thank Gawd fer that. An' we'll own the
mine, the two of us. Fer I have no wish t' sell, Mr. Dale. Phwat's
good enough fer you that found it, sh'd be good enough fer me. I'm
keepin' my share. An' I'm thinkin' we'll find the ore, Mr. Dale, spite
o' the experts that says it's gone. 'Tis not gone s' far but we can
find it--you an' me worrkin' t'gether--though phwat yer plan is I
dunno----"

Bill gulped. His eyes shone wet between his lashes, though he tried to
laugh.

"You bought--because I bought. Tommy, you're the biggest damn fool in
Nevada. You ought to be shot."

"Yiss," said Tommy, and blinked at him. "But not fer quittin' a
friend, Mr. Dale. The durrty houn's that came an' fed from yer hand,
an' when yuh had no more for them, they streaked it outa town an' left
yuh holdin' the sack----"

"Aw, shut up!" Bill's tone was gruff. "This may not be O'Hara cooking,
but--fill your plate. I'll do my killing in the morning."

"Yuh will not--Bill." And Tommy pulled up a box, threw his hat into a
corner and snickered happily over his supper.




CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THE TOWN THAT WAS


Every day after that Bill would go up to the mine, Tommy and Hez
shambling along at his heels. First of all, Bill must examine the
workings closely to see where and why the vein first showed signs of
"petering out." He knew that rich veins are tricky, that they seldom
hold up under mining. Either the values drop as the ore body increases
in volume, or the vein will pinch out, perhaps never to be
rediscovered. He had to know just what had been done, what formations
had been cut, just how the vein had dipped into the hill.

He took his time, and his work was simplified because the workings
were not really extensive. It sickened him to see how they had gutted
the rich vein and passed up tiny stringers that might lead to other
rich deposits. So far as he could determine, Rayfield had not
attempted to explore the further resources of the mine. He had taken
what was in sight, easy to mine, and had neglected the development of
other possible veins.

Well, he had probably been frightened off with Al Freeman's story and
had proceeded to rake in as much loot as possible before the crash
came. All the better for Bill, if he could pick up the vein again, or
locate further deposits. It would be slow, with only two pairs of
hands for the work. Bill could not even keep the compressor going, so
that they could use the air drills.

"It's the hand-drilling for us, Tommy," he decided, one night while
they planned. "I can't afford to run that machinery--that's flat. I'm
broke, so far as working men and machinery are concerned. I want you
to know it before I start in. I've got less than a thousand dollars in
the bank. I could borrow--I've a friend in California that would come
in here and open things wide up, and like the fun of it. He doesn't
know how rich he is; doesn't care. Never saw the bottom of his dollar
pile, anyway.

"But the truth of the matter is, I want to do this alone. If it takes
the rest of my life, I mean to stick here and find that ore. I mean to
bring Parowan to the front again. That's why I bought everything up
and spent practically my last dollar to do it. But you don't have to
stick. It isn't _your_ pride that was ground under their heels. If I
hadn't been able--well, that doesn't matter, now. But thank the Lord
my money held out! They can call me crazy, but they can't say I'm a
quitter."

"They can not. An' Tommy'll be right here when the boom comes
back--make no mistake, Bill. The furrst place of business will be
Tommy's Place--an' I'm keepin' it swep' out an' the glasses wiped,
agin that day when we strike ore. I am, that."

Bill did not answer. He was thinking of one other place that was swept
and dusted regularly every Sunday. Not because he had any hope that
Doris would live in it, nor because of any desire, even. It troubled
him now and then to think how his heart was hardening toward Doris.
Perhaps he did it for baby Mary; because he had built her a home. She
wouldn't remember--but some day, when she was a woman, she could come
back and see her little crib, up in the corner bedroom. A scuffed pair
of shoes left in a drawer. A broken, rubber doll with the whistle torn
out. And she would know that she had crept over these floors, had
slept under this roof; that this had been her home.

Never once did it occur to Bill that he could sell the furnishings of
the house for enough money to hire miners, run his machinery, expedite
his work in a dozen different ways. He would have fought the man who
suggested such a thing.

He would walk through the room--wearing rich-man's shoes so that the
floors would not be marred--and dream of the baby, trying all the
while to shut Doris out of his mind. She had not seemed like _his_
Doris, this proud young woman who rustled her silken gowns through the
house, flashed her jewels and spoke imperiously to her servants. No,
that was not the Doris he had loved. His Doris had been tanned and
frank of eye and of speech. She had been lithe and competent, and
looked life honestly in the face. His heart was very empty, sometimes,
very hungry for that Doris whom he had loved. He even caught himself
dreaming about her, now and then,--almost forgetting the other Doris
who had kissed him good-by because others were watching and would
gossip if the parting seemed too cold. A Judas kiss, it had seemed to
Bill. He tried to forget it, lest his hatred grow against her.

Every Sunday, Tommy would sweep and dust and polish,--and dream,
perchance, some hidden little dream of his own. Bill would disappear
for hours, coming in after sunset with tired eyes and with lines
beside his mouth. And neither would speak of how the time had been
spent.

But the rest of Parowan was given over to the winds of the desert
spaces. Doors began to sag, windows rattled. When the wind blew
strong, corrugated iron roof would hammer like anvil blows. Old
papers swept through the streets to lodge ghostlike in the corners. It
was a place of desolation, watched over proudly by the big house on
the hill, with its sheeted furniture and its big, plate-glass windows
that looked and looked, and framed no face but Bill's, staring out
through them moodily upon the town and the desert beyond.

For a time there had been a certain somber activity about the camp,
daytimes. Men hauled away salvage where ownership could be proved to
Bill's satisfaction,--and Bill was hard to satisfy, these days.
Precious time was lost from their mine while he and Tommy guarded
against looting. For practically all of Parowan belonged to Bill Dale,
and he was showing himself hard, grasping, suspicious, a man who
carried a gun for the first time in years, and who would shoot, give
him provocation.

A railroad gang appeared--with flat cars and their cookhouse--and took
up the rails, leaving the ties on the roadbed. Twenty miles away,
running past the Hunter ranch with a flag station at his largest
spring, the railroad still continued to give service of a sort between
Los Angeles and Tonopah. But Parowan was wiped disdainfully off its
map. It became a speck, away out on the southern slope of the
mountain,--too far away to tempt the idly curious, especially with
Bill Dale, said to be "a little off," resenting prowlers in the town
that was; too dead to bring the meanest man there for gain. In this
fashion was Parowan set apart from other decadent mining camps.
Loot--men prowling through the buildings looking for whatever might be
carried off--Parowan was saved that indignity. The big house on the
hill must have been a temptation; but no one quite wanted to risk it.
The general opinion was that Bill lived in the house, and spent much
of his time watching the town.

This opinion was strengthened by the fact that Bill did come down from
the big house, one Sunday, and drive a looting party out of town with
the silent ferocity of a jungle tiger. They did not come back. Bill
had emptied his six-shooter after them, furrowing the dirt just behind
their heels. It was close shooting. They took the hint.

For awhile, Bill and Tommy occupied themselves with packing the best
railroad ties up to the mine, using Wise One and Angelface--and the
two other burros which Bill had bought, and which had been called
whatever came handiest--principally epithets coined for the occasion.
The ties made splendid mine timbers. They were preparing for a long
siege.

Fall chilled to winter. Sister Mitchell disappeared, and Bill began to
hunt mittens for Tommy and himself. They had all the supplies they
would need for a long, long time. The little store had catered to
miners and carried a well-balanced stock of general supplies, ranging
from needles and thread and candy and gum, to picks and overalls and
shoes. And in the shed behind was a full ton of grain. The burros
would not suffer in the work before them. For the burros, too, would
have to help.

Bill rigged a sweep arrangement which miners call a whim. It was the
duty of the burros to walk round and round in a circle, and hoist the
muck, when the two men settled down to their mining. They didn't like
it, but they did like their pint of rolled barley at the end of the
shift, so that even the burros became resigned to their labor; so
resigned that they would walk of their own accord into their places,
ready to be harnessed to the whim.

One evening, when Tommy failed to show up after supper, Bill unhooked
the saxophone case from its nail in the ridgepole and took out the
instrument, fitting it together tentatively as if he were not at all
sure that he would want to play it or do more than look it over. That
first winter on the Coast, before his dreams had died of starvation,
Bill had yielded to temptation and arranged for lessons on the
saxophone. A Sunday advertisement had given him the idea, and Bill had
worked hard, practising for two hours a day at a studio under the
tutelage of a stern but thorough teacher. That was before he awoke to
the fact that saxophones were not for the elect, and that Doris
declined to agree with him that it would be nice if they could play
things together.

The valves were stiff, to begin with. Bill oiled them carefully and
tried out his fingering. Swinging a single-jack, he discovered, did
not tend to increase the flexibility of the fingers, but not all his
patient work in the studio was lost. He wiped the mouthpiece absently,
adjusted the reed to his liking and began to play, while Luella
screamed at him hysterically.

"Fer Gawd sake, Bill!" she implored, just as Tommy came panting into
the yard, having run all the way from his saloon.

"Don't _you_ start in," Bill warned, looking up under his eyebrows at
Tommy while he went down to low C and lingered there heartrendingly,
finishing "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep" to his own satisfaction,
at least.

"Fer Gaw-wd _sake_!" Tommy breathed in an awed half-whisper.
"There'll be no pinochle this night, Bill Dale. Yuh'll be playin'
music--an' it hits the spot--it does that!" He did not mention what
spot, and Bill did not ask.

To Bill, the saxophone marked a milestone in his troubles. He could
play it and enjoy himself without thinking too bitterly of Doris. But
he never explained to himself why it was that he stuck to the things
he had learned in San Francisco; why it was that he never played
"Love's Old Sweet Song."




CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

HOPELESS BILL DALE


Christmas came, by the big calendar that hung on the wall of Tommy's
Place. It did not come in the heart of Bill Dale. Don Hunter, riding
thoughtfully to dead Parowan, begged Bill to come and spend the
holiday at the ranch. Mother Hunter, he said, had made fresh mincemeat
and was fattening a turkey, and she'd feel hurt if Bill didn't show up
to help celebrate.

Bill was standing by the whim, watching Tommy unhitch the burros from
the sweeps. Bill's face was grimed, his shoulders drooped a bit. He
had put in five long holes since noon, and the rock was hard. His eyes
went down to the empty roofs of Parowan that was; wandered farther, to
where the big house stood staunchly upon its knoll, solid,
beautiful,--but with no smoke curling up into the nipping air.

"Tell her I'm sorry, Don. I can't--keep Christmas." He swung away and
went down the trail, biting his lip, fighting the hot surge of
rebellious thoughts. Christmas! Good God, did they think he was made
of stone? Did they think, because he wouldn't whine like a beaten
dog--did they think it meant so little to him--all this desolation?

"Dead--inside and out," he muttered fiercely. "And they think I can
eat turkey and mince pie and call it--Christmas!"

Behind him, hazing the burros, Tommy was talking plaintively to Don.

"I wouldn't urrge 'im, Mr. Hunter. He worrks like tin men, he does.
An' he eats hearty, an' he plays pinochle wit' me of an evenin'. He's
havin' 'is joke wit' me an' the burrd an' the dorg--but I've eyes in
me head, Mr. Hunter. The heart of 'im's weepin' tears of blood whilst
the lips of 'em's laughin' belike. It shows in the eyes of 'im. It
does that, Mr. Hunter."

There was no Christmas in Parowan, then. On that day Bill worked
harder than ever, and mortared and panned some pieces of quartz that
seemed "likely looking rock." He got colors in the pan and professed
to be very much encouraged, he talked about formations and ore
deposits and bedding planes, on Christmas night, until Tommy fell
asleep in his chair and dropped his pipe, breaking the mouthpiece.

"I'll make you a bargain, Tommy," Bill said then, his eyes brighter
than they should be, "We'll go over to my store, and you can pick out
the best pipe there. And then, if you're human, you'll invite me into
your 'Place' and set 'em up. I'd like to get drunk--stony, blind
drunk. But I don't think I shall, because I want to put in a
thundering big day to-morrow."

Tommy blinked and couldn't find his hat, which was on his head. And
Bill laughed at him all the way to the store. He laughed, too, when he
pushed Tommy behind the bar to serve the drinks; made him put on a
white apron, polish the bar with a towel before and afterwards,--do
the thing in style. But neither of them mentioned Christmas.

After that, Bill went away, still laughing at something funny. He said
that he was going to bed. But the next morning, when Tommy went over
to Bill's camp for breakfast, there were Bill's tracks in the
fresh-fallen snow,--tracks coming up from across the gulch and turning
in at the gate. Seeing them there, Tommy blinked again. He knew that
it had not snowed until dawn was breaking.

One day, when Tommy was washing the dishes--Bill taking a turn at the
blacksmithing--he came across two letters tucked behind a jar of
fermenting peaches which should have gone into the discard days ago.
Tommy pulled out the envelopes, goggled down at them and saw that one
was addressed to Parowan, Nevada, and that the address had been
covered by a red stamped notice, "NO SUCH POSTOFFICE." Below that was
another address--where the Hunters got their mail. The other envelope
bore a later date, and was addressed in care of D. L. Hunter. Neither
envelope had been opened,--an over-sight which caused Tommy some
anxiety. He thought it was darned careless of Don Hunter to put them
up in the cupboard and say nothing about them.

So, "Here's a coupla letters Mr. Hunter musta brought yuh an' fergot
to give yuh," he said, the moment Bill stepped inside for a drink.

Bill took the letters, glanced at them, lifted the lid of the stove
and thrust them deep into the fire.




CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

BILL ACQUIRES A COOK


"We're on the right track," said Bill, and gathered up an armful of
dulled steel to sharpen the next morning, preferring his own little
forge by the camp for that purpose, and passing by the bigger shop at
the mill.

"We are that," Tommy agreed, just as he had agreed every day for the
past month. "She's talkin' to us, Bill. She's t'rowed out 'er thread
uh gold, an' says, 'Will yuh folly the t'read, now, byes?' A mont' ago
she said that--she did."

"We're on the trail," Bill repeated mechanically. "It may be a damn
long one, but it's got to end."

"It has," said Tommy, bouncing a rock off Wise One's rump. "Ivery
trail has got an ind to it, Bill--it has, that."

Bill walked several paces. "I wonder," he said then.

"Did yuh leave a fire, Bill, in the stove?" Tommy broke a moody
silence. "She's smokin' yit."

"It's Don," Bill said indifferently. "I wish they'd quit worrying over
me. Hell, you'd think I never spent months in the desert before! I
hate to be treated like a sick kid," he added querulously.

"Wit' a fire starrted a'ready, supper'll be quicker got," Tommy
observed plaintively, and made for the camp. "I'll warrm up the beans
an' bile the coffee in the time it takes t' tell it," he said.

Bill went on with his steel and dumped it beside the blacksmith shop.
The heads of two horses showed over the front gate,--Don's horses.
Bill felt a contraction of the throat. He wished they would leave him
alone; their unspoken loyalty hurt; their sympathy made him writhe.
And then, Don might bring letters. Bill felt as if he could not bear
to see another letter.

So he walked into the camp--from which Tommy had fled--and confronted
Doris. Bill pushed the door shut behind him and leaned against it, not
knowing that he did so. He did not speak.

Doris, in khaki riding skirt and flannel shirt, her hair braided down
her back, was standing by the table, on which were three plates, three
cups. She was holding a can of tomatoes in one hand, and with the
other she was trying to open the can with a dull can-opener.

"Did the man ever live," she asked, "that kept a decently sharp knife
or anything on the place?"

Bill came forward mechanically, took the can from her and opened it.
Doris stood back and watched him, her breath coming unevenly. Bill's
eyes were fixed upon the slight task. He did not look up.

"Everything else is all--ready," Doris said. "I thought maybe--I
thought I'd use up those cold biscuits in a tomato stew. Tommy says he
boards himself. I--would you rather have them cold out of the can?"

Bill looked into her face. His eyes seemed hard and bitter, with those
hollows beneath.

"What's the matter? Did your money play out?" His voice was hard,
too--though God knows he did not mean to be hard. He was trying so
hard not to be a fool!

"Why, no." Doris winced a bit before she straightened her shoulders.
"I can stew them in just a minute, if you'd rather." She stood waiting
his decision, the can in her two hands before her. Her own eyes were
sparkling, but social training helps a lot when one wants to cover
emotion deep out of sight. "Which?"

"Oh--any way." Bill turned away to the wash basin, feeling the old,
baffled bewilderment. He washed his face, caught himself wishing he
had shaved, swore at himself silently for the craven thought. Doris
had chosen to come. Let her take him as she found him, or--not at all.
He dried his hands carefully, glad of his broken nails. He combed his
hair before the little, square mirror, spitefully pleased with Tommy's
attempt at a haircut,--though his remarks had been biting at the time.

"Well, how's the social elect?" he asked ironically, unconsciously
responding to her presence so far that he stood beside his chair until
she was seated. He never did that for Tommy.

Doris poured his coffee with the grace he had loved when they were on
their honeymoon,--when the coffeepot was silver and the cups toy
things of china. She held out his chipped enamel cup to him with
gracious composure.

"The elect? They're riding and golfing and swimming and bridging, as
usual." Then, unexpectedly, "I left baby down with mother and daddy.
She's awfully well--little monkey; she trots around all over the
place."

Bill set his teeth and kept his composure. In a moment he could risk
speaking. His voice was so steady that it was brutal.

"And the maid and the nurse--are they down there, too?"

"Oh, no. They're canned. And that reminds me. Those are peach
preserves in that jar."

Bill lifted his head a trifle, so that he could send her a sidelong
glance. What, in heaven's name, had brought her here, in the dead of
winter? Wanting him to go back with her, probably. Wanted to dodge the
gossiping. But he would not ask her. She was here; let her tell her
object in coming.

"I don't suppose you've heard any news lately," Doris remarked, when
Bill had declined every dish of food on the table, and was merely
pretending to drink his coffee. "I heard it just as I was leaving the
ranch. Walter and John and another man, and that Al Freeman--the one I
shot out of here that time, you know--all had a terrible fight in this
other man's office, in Goldfield. About money, they said. Walter and
the other man were shot, and the other two are in jail. They think
Walter won't live. I was thinking, Bill, maybe you ought to go and see
him. He--they cheated you somehow, didn't they? Walter might tell, if
you went to him and asked about it. I think he'd tell, to get even
with John."

"What's the use?" Bill pushed back his chair. "What's the use of
anything? Doris, did you make the ride over here to tell me _that_?"

Doris also was making a pretense of eating. She pushed back her plate
and began rolling a bit of bread under her forefinger, patting it
carefully into a flat little cake. Bill noticed then that she was
wearing no rings, save her wedding ring and one with a Parowan
nugget,--the first one he found in the claim.

"Why, no. I just happened to think of that. No. What I really came
for--well I _really_ came for, was--well, I thought there was no sense
in spending money living at a hotel when I have a wonderful home here,
and--when the mine needs the money. I don't know whether you need any
of mine, but I wish you'd take it and use it, Bill. I--it's a darned
shame for you to be working like--like a Bohunk!"

Bill was studying her fixedly.

"I was working like a Bohunk when I found the mine in the first
place," he said. "I guess there's nothing the matter with my back. It
can stand up under a little more work. I haven't," he said
deliberately, "found the ore yet. I may never find it. So you may need
your money."

"Our money," corrected Doris, under her breath. "Well, I suppose I
can't get around it--you're the stubbornest mule of a man I ever saw
in my life! I _really_ came to say I've been a beast. I don't see
why," she cried indignantly, "a man can get rich and make a darned
fool of himself, and it's all right. But if a _woman_ goes on a
perfectly respectable society spree, it--it's _something awful_!" Her
voice broke. "If it had been _you_--if you'd got drunk and gambled
and--raised Cain generally, don't--don't you suppose I'd have
overlooked it when you--so-sobered up and--wanted to get a fresh
start?"

Bill stared at her.

"What I _really_ came over for," she said, sniffling a little, "was to
be w-with you. If you can s-stand it like this, I--can't. I just about
went _crazy_, seeing other women with their husbands and--being around
those darned hotels alone, and you here working like a dog--I
_couldn't sta-and_ it!"

"You poor little kid!" Bill whispered against her hair. "You poor
little kid!" He laughed shakily, holding her close. "Sobered up with
an awful head on her, I'll bet!"

That was not what he expected to say, but Bill was never much of a
hand to express his deeper emotions.

    *    *    *    *    *

"Anyway, I can cook for you and Tommy, I hope!" Doris was, as usual,
withering in her sarcasm. "If you're _determined_ to grub along like
this, all right. I'm game for it. I never liked cooking--much. But I
can do it. We can move up to the house----"

"Not till we've struck the ore. Call me stubborn if you want to--I
can't help it. I found the ore in the first place, and I'll find it
again. Without touching a dollar of your money. I can't afford to keep
up that big house. This is about my limit."

Doris eyed the limited space, chewing her lip meditatively.

"It isn't much of a place to bring baby," she said. "She'd have her
little hands full of slivers, the first thing, off these rough boards.
And I can't see the sense, Bill-dear. Not when there's the kitchen up
there, and the breakfast room and maid's room that could be shut off
from the rest of the house. I'd like to know how it's going to cost
more to live there. Do you think you boys would _eat_ more in that
kitchen than you do here?"

"Aw, hell! Come on, be a shport!" cried Luella into the silence,
evidently believing that the two were playing pinochle.

    *    *    *    *    *

The winter passed quickly, after that. Bill wondered sometimes if
there hadn't been some mistake about that honeymoon trip to
California. This was the kind of honeymoon he had dreamed of, when he
dared to dream of so remote a bliss. Baby Mary was just a lump of
sweetness thrown in for good measure; by the way, you should have seen
how she took to mining. On warm days, Doris and the baby would go up
to the mine, little Mary smiling back over her daddy's shoulder until
they overtook Tommy and the burros, when she would insist upon riding
burro-back.

Sometimes she had her way, if one of the burros on shift chanced to be
Wise One. Luella, of course, would go along, language and all. They
would have a hot lunch, cooked over the camp fire by Doris, who wore
khaki, these days, and high-laced boots, and did not look in the least
like a lady millionaire. Lady millionaires do not as a rule drive two
burros round and round in a circle, hoisting muck from a mine.

They were up there--baby Mary trying her little best to lift a
single-jack, and wrinkling her nose at Doris, who was busy with the
burros--one morning in April. Bill and Tommy were both below,
examining the effect of their "shots" of the evening before. Parowan
was "talkin' to 'em louder 'n' the noon whistle," according to Tommy,
and when Doris received the hoisting signal, she answered it and then
picked up a double handful of rocks, with which to pelt the two
burros whom nobody loved. Bill and Tommy had not been down underground
longer than five minutes. Doris put an unexpected sharpness into her
tone. The burros broke into a trot,--proving that the load was not
muck.

Bill heaved himself out of the bucket, his eyes dancing.

"Ever see anything like that before?" he asked triumphantly, holding
out a piece of rock the size of his fist.

"Why--it's gold, isn't it?" The same old thrill hushed her voice as
she took the quartz in her hand. Tiny, yellow specks showed here and
there,--Parowan gold.

"Busted right into it!" crowed Bill. "I told you last night I was
willing to bet we'd get a change this morning. There she is, old girl.
Whole face of the tunnel in quartz--gold ore or I'm a Chinaman. It
won't be so rich as the surface ore was, but it'll be a darn sight
more permanent. We trailed her close to a hundred feet--but we sure
overhauled her at last!"

"Oh, Bill-dear, isn't it simply great! Well, what are you going to do
now? Organize----"

"Not on your life. The crooks aren't all dead and in jail--not by any
means! I'll borrow some money from my wife and put in a crew of men
here and go to mining!"

"I suppose," said Doris, "you wouldn't consider selling an interest in
the mine--to your wife? You couldn't borrow what's yours, you great,
big silly!"

Bill gave the ore to baby Mary, who tried harder than ever to lift the
single-jack so that she could smash it down on the rock. His eyes
strayed down the hill to the empty town, with the two-story cement
bank standing up high above the wooden buildings around it. And the
O'Hara House with staring, empty windows and no pennant at all.

"The town'll come back," he said, squatting on his haunches beside
Doris and beginning to plan and dream again. "I almost wish it
wouldn't. This has been a great winter, honey. But it's bound to come
back. I don't know what the darned railroad will do about it," he
grinned. "We've swiped most of their ties!"

"That's a hell of a note, ain't it!" cried Luella, and began crawling,
beak and claws, up Bill's back.


THE END


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CLAIM NUMBER ONE

Dr. Warren Slavens drew claim number one, which entitled him to first
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CAPTAIN SCRAGGS

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DESERT VALLEY

A college professor sets out with his daughter to find gold. They meet
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MAN TO MAN

Encircled with enemies, distrusted, Steve defends his rights. How he
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Judith Sanford part owner of a cattle ranch realizes she is being
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THE SHORT CUT

Wayne is suspected of killing his brother after a violent quarrel.
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THE JOYOUS TROUBLE MAKER

A reporter sets up housekeeping close to Beatrice's Ranch much to her
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SIX FEET FOUR

Beatrice Waverly is robbed of $5,000 and suspicion fastens upon Buck
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WOLF BREED

No Luck Drennan had grown hard through loss of faith in men he had
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Why was Barbara held captive in a deserted hermit's hut for days by a
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Twenty-four hours after his release from prison Bruce Lawn finds
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The heroine of this story was a consort of thieves. The man was fine,
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JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD'S

STORIES OF ADVENTURE

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    THE COUNTRY BEYOND

    THE FLAMING FOREST

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    NOMADS OF THE NORTH

    KAZAN

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    TO THE LAST MAN

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    DESERT GOLD

    BETTY ZANE

    *    *    *    *    *

LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS

The life story of "Buffalo Bill" by his sister Helen Cody Wetmore,
with Foreword and conclusion by Zane Grey.

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