THE SHADOW
The old, settled quiet returned to sleepy Keno--the quiet of the desert
and of empty, noiseless houses stretching in long, sunburned rows down
the canyon. The black lava patch, laid across the gray rhyolite flank of
Shadow Mountain like the shade of an angry cloud, still frowned down
upon the town like a portent of storms to come. But the sky was hot and
gleaming and no storms came; nor did Wiley Holman return, though the
Widow waited for him patiently. After all his boldness, his unbelievable
effrontery in trying to steal her Paymaster stock, he had gone on
laughing to seek other adventures and left her with the mine on her
hands. But he would come back, she knew it; and with her gun loaded with
buckshot she watched from the shelter of the gallery.
Yet the days went by and then the weeks and at last the Widow, with a
sigh of vexation, put up her gun and retired within. Now that the
episode was over she felt vaguely regretful that he had failed, after
all, in his purpose. If he had procured his option, under cover of her
blindness, and obtained her quit-claim to the mine, she would at least
have had the satisfaction of obtaining her own terms--and she would have
the twenty thousand to spend. It was maddening, disgusting, when she
thought it over, that he had turned out to be Holman's son, and she
never quite forgave Virginia for dinning the fact into her ears. For
what you don't know will never hurt you, and she had lost her last
chance to sell. When she went back into the house she went back into the
kitchen, and there she would have to stay. Either that or take Honest
John's money.
But he wanted the property--the Widow knew it--else why had he sent his
son? All the wise-acres in Keno agreed with the Widow that Honest John
had designs on her property and Death Valley Charley, who had jumped
half the claims in the district, began once more to carry his gun. It
was by virtue of that, more than of assessment work done or of any other
legal right, that Charley held title to his claims; and until Wiley had
come through town and attempted to bond the Paymaster he had feared no
one but Stiff Neck George. Stiff Neck George had been Blount's gunman
on the momentous occasion when they had tried to jump the Paymaster--and
the Widow Huff had put him to flight with one blast from her trusty
shotgun. But now that big interests were sending in their experts and
mining was picking up everywhere Stiff Neck George might forget that
humiliating defeat, so Death Valley Charley put on his six-shooter.
He was a little, stooping man, burned chocolate brown by the sun and
with eyes half blinded by the glare, and as the Widow gave up her
fruitless vigil, Death Valley Charley took her place. But he was not
alone, for through all the weary weeks Virginia had been watching her
mother. She had slipped in and out, now lingering on the gallery, now
listening through the doorway, expectant but at the same time afraid.
She knew Wiley Holman much better than her mother, and she knew that he
would come back. He was patient, that was all, more patient than an
Indian, and he had his eye on their mine. For ten years and more Colonel
Huff, and now the Widow, had held physical possession of the Paymaster.
Every great iron-bound door was locked and padlocked and the Huff family
held the keys, but in all those ten years Holman had never come near it
and Blount had merely seized it on a labor lien. The very title to the
mine was shrouded in mystery, for no one could locate the shares, and to
openly lay claim to it and produce a majority of the stock would be
equivalent to a confession of treachery. All that anyone knew surely was
that some one of the three original owners--or some unsuspected party
outside--had bought in and sequestered the almost valueless stock and
was patiently biding his time. Since the Huffs did not own the stock
themselves they knew for a certainty that it was held by either Holman
or Blount.
As Virginia sat on the gallery, listening subconsciously for the
drumming of Wiley's racing motor up the road, she ran over in her mind
the circumstances of his visit; and she could explain them all but one.
Why, after failing of his mission, and narrowly escaping her mother's
gun, had he waved his hand and smiled so gayly as he thundered away up
the street? Had he other schemes more subtle; or was he simply reckless,
regarding even this adventure as a joke? As a boy he had been both--a
crafty schemer and reckless doer--but now he was grown to a man. And if
the lines about his mouth were any criterion he would soon be coming
back to carry out by stealth what he failed to accomplish by assault. So
she, too, waited patiently, to foil his machinations and uphold the
honor of the Huffs.
In the good old days it had never been forgotten that the Huffs belonged
to the Virginia quality, while the Holmans came from Maine; hence the
Colonel's relations with Honest John Holman had at first been strictly
business. John Holman was a Northerner, with no social graces and
abstemious to a fault, but when his commercial honor upon a certain
occasion had saved the Colonel from bankruptcy he had cast the
traditions of the South to the winds and taken Honest John as his
friend. "My friend," he called him and neither his wife nor his enemies
could shake the Colonel's faith in his partner. Then, after years of
mutual trust, the panic had come on, and the crash in Paymaster stock;
and as their fortunes went tumbling and ugly rumors filled the air they
had broken their friendship completely. Yet so great was his love for
his old-time friend that he had never openly accused him; and Honest
John Holman, after months of somber silence, had moved away and started
a cow ranch. But it was a question of honesty between the two men and
their children had never forgotten. Ten years had passed since they had
been boy and girl together, but the moment they met the old quarrel
flashed up again and now the feud was on.
A boisterous blast of wind, whirling dust and papers down the street,
announced the beginning of another sandstorm; and Death Valley Charley,
who had been sitting outside the gate, came muttering up the steps.
Behind him trotted Heine, his worshipful little dog, and as Virginia's
pet cat suddenly arched its back, Death Valley took Heine in his arms.
"Can't you hear 'em?" he asked tiptoeing rapidly up to Virginia. "It's
them big guns, over in Europe. It's them forty-two centimeter howitzers
and the French seventy-fives in the trenches along the Somme."
"Do you think so?" murmured Virginia, smoothing down her cat's back, "it
sounds like blasting to me."
"No--big guns!" repeated Charley, regarding her intently through his
wavering, sun-blinded eyes, and then he burst into a laugh. "You can
hear 'em, can't you, Heine?" he cried to his dog, and Heine squirmed
ecstatically and sneezed. "Hah, that's my little dog--you're so
confectionate! Now get down on the floor, and don't you go near that
cat."
He put down the dog and advanced closer to Virginia.
"He's coming!" he whispered. "I can hear him, plain--jurrr, jurrr; hud,
hud, hud, hud, hud!"
"Who's coming?" demanded Virginia, looking swiftly up the road.
"Why--him! The man you're waiting for. Can't you hear him! Hrrrr--rud!
He's coming to grab you and take you away in his auto!"
"Oh, Charley!" exclaimed Virginia, not entirely displeased, "and where
will you go then?"
"I'll go to Death Valley," he answered mysteriously. "There's lots of
gold over there. I came back one time and they says to me: 'Charley,
where've you been for such a long time?' 'In Death Valley,' I says,
'in the Funeral Range. Working in the Coffin mine, on the graveyard
shift.' Hah, hah; they can't get nothing out of me. I know where
there's gold--in the Ube-Hebes; it's a place where nobody goes. I saw
your father there, the last time I went through, and he sent word to
you not to worry. 'But for Christ's sake,' he says, 'don't tell my
wife I'm here--I'm tired of her devilish chatter!'"
"Charley!" reproved Virginia, and as he subsided into mutterings, she
looked about with shocked eyes. "You talk too much," she said at last.
"Didn't I tell you not to say that again? Because if mother hears it
she'll drive you out of the house, and then what will Heine do?"
"Heine! Come here, sir!" commanded Charley abruptly, and slapped him
until he yelped. "Well, now," he warned as Heine slunk away, "you look
out or you lose your house."
"I guess you'd better go now," said Virginia discreetly, and continued
her vigil alone. Death Valley was harmless, but when he began hearing
things there was no telling where he would stop. The next minute he
would be seeing things, and then getting messages, and then looking
through mountains with radium. He was harmless, of course, but when
there was a sandstorm--well, some people thought he was crazy. And
there was a sandstorm coming up. It was blowing in from the north and
rushing clouds of dirt down the street; and along in the night, when it
had gained its full force, the sand and gravel would fly. She rose to go
in, but just at that moment she heard a low drumming up the street. It
increased to a bubbling, a drumming, a thunder, and like the spirit of
the rough north wind Wiley Holman went racing through the town. His hat
was off and as he drifted by his hair thrashed wildly in his eyes, yet
he glanced up in passing and it seemed to Virginia that he gave her a
roguish smile. Then in a series of explosions that brought the Widow
running he dashed on and whirled out across the desert.
"Oh, that devil!" she raged, brandishing her heavy shotgun at the
disappearing cloud of dust. "He's just making that hubbub to mock me!
He'll be coming back--I know it, the scoundrel--but you wait, he won't
fool me again!"
She stood on the gallery while the food scorched in the kitchen and
watched the boring arrow of dust, but it swept on and on across the
boundless desert until at last it was lost in the storm. "Oh, he'll be
back!" she screamed to the gathering neighbors. "I know him, he's after
my mine. But he'd better watch out! If he ever goes near it, I'll shoot
him, you mark my word!"
"No, he won't," said Virginia, but when they were all gone she came back
and gazed down the road.