BETWEEN FRIENDS
The madness of the Widow and Old Charley and Stiff Neck George was no
mystery to Wiley Holman--it was the same form of mania which he
encountered everywhere when he went to see men who owned mines. If he
offered them a million for a ten-foot hole they would refuse it and
demand ten million more, and if he offered them nothing they
immediately scented a conspiracy to starve them out and gain
possession of their mine. It was the illusion of hidden wealth, of
buried treasure, which keeps half the mines in the West closed down
and half of the rest in litigation; except that in Keno it seemed to
be associated with gun-plays and a marked tendency towards homicide.
So, upon his return from a short stay in the hospital he came up the
main street silently, then stepped on the throttle and went through
town a-smoking. But the Widow was out waiting for him in the middle of
the road and, rather than run her down, he threw on both brakes and
stopped.
"Well, what now?" he inquired, frowning at the odor of heated rubber.
"What's your particular grievance this trip?" He regarded her coldly,
then bowed to Virginia and waved a friendly hand at Charley. "Hello,
there, Death Valley," he called out jovially, as the Widow choked with a
rush of words, "what's the news from the Funeral Range?"
"Now, here!" exclaimed the Widow, advancing from the dust cloud, and
glancing into the machine. "I want you to bring back that gun!"
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Huff," he replied with finality, "but you'll have to
get along without it. I turned it over to the sheriff, along with three
buckshot and an affidavit regarding the shooting----"
"What, you great, big coward!" stormed the Widow in a fury. "Did you run
and complain to the sheriff?"
"No, I walked," said Wiley, "and on one leg at that. But I might as well
warn you that next time you make a gun-play you're likely to break into
jail."
"You're a coward!" she taunted. "You're standing in with Blount to beat
me out of my mine. First you sneak off with my gun, so I can't protect
my rights, and then Stiff Neck George comes up and jumps the Paymaster!"
"The hell!" burst out Wiley, rising up in his seat and looking across at
the mine.
"Yes, the hell," she returned, "and he's warned off all comers and is
holding the mine for Blount!"
"For Blount!" he echoed and, seeing him roused at last, the Widow became
subtly provocative.
"For Samuel J. Blount," she repeated impressively. "He--he's got all my
stock on a loan."
"Oh!" observed Wiley, and as she raved on with her story he rubbed his
chin in deep thought.
"Yes, I went down to see him and he wouldn't buy it, so I left it as
collateral on a loan. And then he came out here and looked over the mine
again and told Stiff Neck George to stand guard. They're fixing to pump
out the water."
"Oho!" exclaimed Wiley, and his eyes began to kindle as he realized what
Blount had done. Then reaching for the pistol that lay handy beside his
leg, he leapt out with waspish quickness, only to stop short as he hurt
his lame foot.
"Go on!" hissed the Widow, advancing to his shoulder and pointing the
way up the trail. "He stays right there by the dump. The mine is yours;
go put him off--I would, if I had my gun."
"Aw, pfooey!" he exclaimed, suddenly turning back and clamoring into his
seat. "I've got one game leg already. Let 'im have the doggoned mine."
"What? Are you going to back out? Well, you are a good one--and it
stands in your name, this minute!"
"Yes, and it isn't worth--that!" he said with conviction, and snapped
his finger in the air. "He can have it. You can tell Blount, the next
time you see him, he can buy in that tax title for the costs."
He paused and muttered angrily, gazing off towards the dump where
crooked-necked George stood guard, and then he hopped out to crank up.
"Want a ride?" he asked, as he saw Virginia watching him and she
hesitated and shook her head. "Come on," he smiled, casting aside his
black mood, "let's take a little spin--just down on the desert and back.
What's going on--getting ready to move?"
He gazed with alarm at a pile of packing boxes that the Widow had
marshaled on the gallery and then he looked back at Virginia. She was
attired in a gown that had been very chic in the fall of nineteen ten,
but, though it was scant for these bouffant days, she was the old
Virginia still--slim and strong and dainty, and highbred in every line,
with dark eyes that mirrored passing thoughts. She was the Virginia he
had played with when Keno was booming and his own sisters had been there
for company; and now after ten years he remembered the time when he had
asked her, in vain, for a kiss.
"I've got something to tell you," he said at last and Virginia stepped
into the racer.
"Virginia!" reminded the Widow, and then at a glance she turned round
and flung into the house. There were times and occasions when she had
found it safer not to press her maternal authority too far, and the look
that she received was first notice from Virginia that such an occasion
had arrived. The motor began to thunder, Wiley threw in the clutch, and
with a speed that was startling, they whipped a sudden circle and went
bubbling away down the road.
It stretched on endlessly, this road across the desert, as straight as a
surveyor's line, and as they cleared the rough gulches and glided down
into its immensity Virginia glanced at the desert and sighed.
"Pretty big," he suggested and as she nodded slowly he raised his eyes
to the hills. "I don't know," he went on, "whether you'll like Los
Angeles. You'll get lonely for this, sometimes."
"Yes, but not for that"--she jerked a thumb back at Keno--"that place is
pretty small. What's left, of course; but it seems to me sometimes
they're all of them lame, halt and blind. Always quarreling and
backbiting and jumping each other's claims--but--what do you think of
the Paymaster?"
She shot the question at him and it occurred suddenly to Wiley that
perhaps she had a programme, too.
"Well, I'll tell you," he began, deftly changing his ground, "I'm in
Dutch on that, all around. When I came home full of buckshot and the Old
Man heard about it I got my orders to come back and apologize. Well,
I'll do that--to you--and you can tell your mother I'm sure sorry I went
up on that dump."
He grinned and motioned to his injured foot, but Virginia was in no mood
for a joke.
"That's all right," she said, "and I accept your apology--though I don't
know exactly what it's for. But I asked your opinion of the Paymaster."
"Oh, yes," he replied and then he began to temporize. "You'd better tell
me what you want it for, first."
"What? Do you have one opinion for one set of people and another for
somebody else? I thought!"---- She paused and the hot blood leapt to her
cheeks as she saw where her temper had led her. "Well," she explained,
"I've got a few shares of stock."
She said it quietly and the suggestion of scolding gave way to a
chastened appeal. She remembered--and he sensed it--that winged shaft
which he had flung back when she had said he was honest, like his
father. He had told her then she was becoming like her mother, and
Virginia could never endure that.
"Ah, I see," he answered and went on hurriedly with a new note of
friendliness in his voice. "Well, I'll tell you, Virginia, if it will be
any accommodation to you I'll take over that stock myself. But--well, I
hate to advise you--because--how many shares have you got?"
"Oh, several thousand," she responded casually. "They were given to me
by father--and by different men that I've helped. Mr. Masters, you know,
that I took care of for a while, he gave me all he had when he died. But
I don't want to sell them--I know there's no market, because Blount
wouldn't give Mother anything--but if he should happen to strike
something----"
She glanced across at him swiftly but Wiley's face was grim.
"Yes, _him_ find anything!" he jeered. "That fat-headed old tub! He
knows about as much about mining as a hog does about the precession of
the equinox. No; miracles may happen but, short of that, he'll never get
back a cent!"
"No, but Wiley," she protested, "you know as well as I do that the
Paymaster isn't worked out. Now what's to prevent my stock becoming
valuable sometime when they open it up?"
"What's to prevent?" he repeated. "Well, I'll tell you what. If Blount
makes a strike he'll close that mine down and send the company through
bankruptcy. Then he'll buy the mine back on a judgment and you'll be
left without a cent."
"But what about you?" she suggested shrewdly. "Will you let him serve
_you_ like that?"
"Don't you think it!" he answered. "I know him too well--my money is
somewhere else."
"But if you should buy the mine?"
"Well----" he stirred uneasily and then shot his machine ahead--"I
haven't bought it yet."
"No, but you offered to, and I don't see why----"
"Do you want to sell your stock?" he asked abruptly and she flushed and
shook her head. "Well!" he said and without further comment he slowed
down and swung about.
"Oh, dear," she sighed, as they started back and he turned upon her
swiftly.
"Do you know why I wouldn't have that mine," he inquired, "if you'd hand
it to me as a gift? It's because of this everlasting fight. I own it,
right now, if anybody does, and I've never been down the shaft. Now
suppose I'd go over there and shoot it out with George and get
possession of my mine. First Blount would come up with some other hired
man-killer and I'd have a bout with him; and then your respected
mother----"
"Now you hush up!" she chided and he closed down his jaw like a
steel-trap. She watched him covertly, then her eyes began to blink and
she turned her head away. The desert rushed by them, worlds of waxy
green creosote bushes and white, gnarly clumps of salt bush; and
straight ahead, frowning down on the forgotten city, rose the black
cloud-shadow of Shadow Mountain.
"Oh, turn off here!" she cried, impulsively as they came to a fork in
the road and, plowing up the sand, he skidded around a curve and
struck off up the Death Valley road. They came together at the edge of
the town--the long, straight road to the south, and the road-trail
that led west into the silence. There were no tracks in it now but the
flat hoof-prints of burros and the wire-twined wheel-marks of desert
buckboards; even the road was half obliterated by the swoop of the
winds which had torn up the hard-packed dirt, yet the going was good
and as the racer purred on Virginia settled back in her seat.
"I can't believe it," she said at last, "that we're going to leave here,
forever. This is the road that Father took when he left home that last
time--have you ever been over into Death Valley? It's a great, big
sink, all white with salt and borax; and at the upper end, where he went
across, there are miles and miles of sand-hills. He's buried out there
somewhere, and the hills have covered him--but oh, it's so awful
lonesome!"
She turned away again and as her head went down Wiley stared straight
ahead and blinked. He had known the Colonel and loved him well, and his
father had loved him, too; but that rift had come between them and until
it was healed he could never be a friend of Virginia's. She distrusted
him in everything--in his silence and in his speech, his laughter and
his anger, in his evasions and when he talked straight--it was better to
say nothing now. He had intended to help her, to offer her money or any
assistance he could give; but her heart was turned against him and the
most he could hope for was to get back to Keno without a quarrel. The
divide was far ahead, where the road struck the pass and swung over and
down into the Great Valley; and, glancing up at the sun, he turned
around slowly and rumbled back into town. Shadow Mountain rose before
them; it towered above the valley like a brooding image of hate but as
he smiled farewell at the sad-eyed Virginia something moved him to take
her hand.
"Good-by," he said, "you'll be gone when I come back. But if you get
into trouble--let me know."
He gave her hand a squeeze and Virginia looked at him sharply, then she
let her dark lashes droop.
"I'm in trouble now," she said at last. "What good did it do to tell
you?"
He winced and shrugged his shoulders, then gazed at her again with a
challenge in his eyes.
"If you'd trust _me_ more," he said very slowly, "perhaps I'd trust
_you_ more. What is it you want me to do?"
"I want you to answer me--yes or no. Shall I keep my stock, or sell it?"
"You keep it," he answered, and avoided her eye until she climbed out
and entered the house.