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 enoughto 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'tthatcrazy!"
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'mthatcrazy," 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 youdoit 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 youstarted this—this orgy of honor? Youcan'thave 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 mywifeto 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 allwrecked 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 reproachamong 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 forher 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—tome! 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'tneedit! 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 tofish! 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 thelook,—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.
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."
"Whenareyou coming, then? Don't you realize what people will be saying? I should think you might have some little consideration forme."
"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 millionshares. 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 hadclosed 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 goodsuite 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 Ihateyou!"
"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."
"Youdidn'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 nota man in the country can call Parowan stock worthless. What areyoukicking 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. Buthe 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 thelast 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 areyoukicking 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 notquite pleased. "Well, you'd better fork over, Tommy. I'll buy your stock. You know, don't you, that the Company's dissolved—thereain'tno 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.
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'tyourpride 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 likehisDoris, 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. Theties 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 playit 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'tyoustart 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-wdsake!" Tommy breathed in anawed 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."