[Illustration: Cover art]
ARIZONA ARGONAUTS
[Frontispiece: (gunman and horse)]
ARIZONA ARGONAUTS
BY
H. BEDFORD-JONES
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC.
1924
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. Two Palms
II. Shipwrecked Men
III. Bill Hobbs Arrives
IV. Sandy Invests Twice
V. Clairedelune
VI. Deadoak Feels Remorse
VII. Stung!
VIII. Doctor Scudder
IX. The News Story
X. Flight
XI. The Sun Strikes
XII. Scudder Comes
XIII. Untangled
ARIZONA ARGONAUTS
CHAPTER I
TWO PALMS
Piute Tompkins, sole owner and proprietor of what used to be the Oasis
Saloon but was now the Two Palms House, let the front feet of his chair
fall with a bang to the porch floor and deftly shot a stream of tobacco
juice at an unfortunate lizard basking in the sunny sand of Main Street.
"That there Chinee," he observed, with added profanity, "sure has got
this here town flabbergasted!"
"Even so," agreed Deadoak Stevens, who was wont to agree with everyone.
Deadoak was breaking the monotony of an aimless existence by roosting
on the hotel veranda. "I wisht," he added wistfully, "I wisht that I
could control myself as good as you, Piute! The way you pick off them
lizards is a caution."
Piute waved the grateful topic aside. "That there Chinee, now," he
reverted, stroking his grizzled mustache, "is a mystery. Ain't he? He
is. Him, and that girl, and what in time they're a-doing here."
"Even so," echoed Deadoak, as he rolled a listless cigarette. "Who
ever heard of a chink ownin' a autobile? Not me. Who ever heard of a
chink havin' a purty daughter? Not me. Who ever heard of a chink
goin' off into the sandy wastes like any other prospector? Not me.
I'm plumb beat, Piute!"
"Uh-huh," grunted Piute Tomkins. "Pretty near time for him to be
shovin' out as per usual, too. He was askin' about the way to Morongo
Valley at breakfast, so I reckon him an' the gorl is headin' north this
mornin'."
The two gentlemen fell silent, gazing hopefully at the listless waste
of Main Street as though waiting for some miracle to cause that desert
to blossom as the rose. At either side of the porch, rattled and
crackled in the morning breeze the brownish and unhappy-looking palms
which had given the city its present name. They were nearly ten feet
in height, those palms, and men came from miles around to gaze upon
them. It was those two palms that had started Piute Tomkins in the
orchard business, which now promised to waken the adjacent countryside
to blooming prosperity.
At present, however, Two Palms was undeniably paralyzed by the odd
happenings going on within its borders. Contributory to this state of
petrifaction was the location and environment of the desert metropolis
itself. Lying twenty miles off the railroad spur that ended at
Meteorite, and well up into the big bend of the Colorado, in earlier
days Two Palms had been a flourishing mining community. It was now out
of the world, surrounded by red sand and marble cañons and gravel
desert and painted buttes; Arizona had gone dry, and except for Piute
Tomkins and his orchard business, the future of Two Palms would have
been an arid prospect.
Piute Tomkins was the mayor of Two Palms and her most prominent
citizen, by virtue of owning the hotel and general store, also by
virtue of owning no mines. Everyone else in Two Palms owned
mines--chiefly prospect holes. All around the town for scores of miles
lay long abandoned mining country; the region had been thoroughly
prospected and worked over, but was still given a tryout by occasional
newcomers. The Gold Hill boom in particular had sent revivifying
tremors up through the district, several unfortunate pilgrims having
wandered in this direction for a space.
Inspired by the rustling quivers of the brownish palms outside his
hostelry, Piute Tomkins had passed on the inspiration to other
prominent citizens. They had clubbed together, and managed to get some
wells bored out in the desert--installing mail-order pumping machinery
to the indignation of Haywire Smithers, proprietor of the hardware
emporium across the street. They then set out pear and almond trees,
and sat down to get rich. Piute Tomkins had been sitting thusly for
five years, and after another five years he expected to have money in
the bank.
"I was wonderin' about them pears, when they come to bearin'," he
reflected to Deadoak. "What we goin' to do with 'em when we get 'em?
It's twenty miles south to Meteorite, and thirty mile west to Eldorado
on the river, an' fifty mile north to Rioville. How we goin' to get
them pears to market?"
"They come in an' buy 'em on the trees," said Deadoak encouragingly.
It paid Deadoak to be heartening in his advice. He was the only man
thereabouts who understood the workings of cement, and during the
orchard boom he had put in a hectic six months making irrigation pipe.
He also owned several mines up north.
"Speakin' o' that chink, now," he said, sitting up suddenly, "you say
he's headin' for Morongo Valley to-day? I bet he's heard about that
there mine o' mine--the one that stove in on Hassayamp Perkins an'
broke his neck. Sure he didn't mention it?"
"He ain't talked mines a mite," said Piute, casting about for a lizard.
"Nope, not a mite. Haywire was tryin' to interest him in them two
holes west o' the Dead Mountains, but he plumb wouldn't interest in
nothin'. It's my opinion, private, that he's aimin' to raise garden
truck. Most like, he's heard of the irrigation projects around
here--they was wrote up in the Meteorite paper last year--and he's come
down to find the right place for garden truck. Chinks are hell on
raisin' lettuce an' stuff."
"What in hallelujah would he do with it when he got it?" demanded
Deadoak witheringly. "Eat it? Not him. Now, the way I take it----"
He hushed suddenly. The hotel door had opened to give egress to a
large man--a tall, widely built man, clad in khaki--and a girl, also
clad in khaki. The man moved out into the white sunlight, looking
neither to right nor left, and vanished around the side of the
building. His features, one realized, were those of a Chinaman.
The girl, who flashed a bright "Good morning!" to the two men and then
followed, was slender and lithe, and carried over her shoulder a black
case and tripod slung in a strap.
"Camera again," observed Deadoak, as she too disappeared. "Why in time
do they go out workin' with that picture machine? It don't look
sensible to me. Didn't you ask him?"
"Him?" Scorn sat in Piute's tone. "Tom Lee? He don't never talk.
Don't know when I've seen a man that talked less than him. That is, in
company. Up in his own room I've heard him jabber away by the hour.
Him and the girl always speaks English----"
"Say!" exclaimed Deadoak, excited. "I bet I got you now! You remember
that guy come out three years ago an' boarded over to Stiff Enger's
place by Skull Mountain? Lunger, he was, and his folks sent money for
his carcass when he cashed in. Stiff said that he'd stalk around by
the hour talkin' queer talk to himself and wavin' his hands at the
scenery."
"He was an actor, wasn't he?"
"Certain. Well, that's what this chink is--that's why he's learnin'
his parts up in his room! Then he goes out in the desert somewheres
with the girl, and she puts him through his paces and takes pictures of
him! Piute, I bet a dollar he's a movin' picture actor and they're
makin' pictures of him--that's why they always go some different place!"
"Might be some sense to that notion," ruminated Piute Tomkins. "Still,
it don't look----"
From behind the hotel burst forth the roar of a flivver. The car
careened into sight, the big yellow man sitting in the rear, the girl
at the wheel. It skidded into the dusty street, righted, and darted
away. At the next corner--the only corner--it turned up past Stiff
Enger's blacksmith shop and disappeared.
"Uh-huh," commented Piute. "They're headin' for Morongo Valley, all
right, if they don't stop somewheres first. They're plumb liable to
stop, too. That ain't but a track these days; no travel atall that
way. I told the chink it was a bum road, but he just grinned and
allowed the car could make it."
"Well, there's scenery a-plenty up Morongo way," averred Deadoak.
"That's all there is, scenery an' rattlers. Wisht they'd take a notion
to dig into that mine o' mine, they might dig up ol' Hassayamp. He had
a bag o' dust on him when she caved in, but I reckon he's all o' twenty
feet inside the hill."
Why Tom Lee had come to Two Palms, no one knew. A most amazing
Chinaman who spoke very good English, who put up at the hotel and
seemed to have plenty of money, and whose business like himself was a
mystery. He would go for one day, or two or three into the desert, and
invariably come back empty-handed, so far as anyone could tell.
What was even more astonishing, his daughter always drove him. At
least, Tom Lee said she was his daughter, and she seemed quite
satisfied. Everyone in Two Palms fairly gasped at the bare thought,
however; for she was actually a pretty girl and looked as white as
anyone. More so than most, perhaps, for life in Two Palms was not
conducive to lily complexions, yet the desert sun had barely given her
features a healthy sun-glow.
A pilgrim, during some prospecting toward Eldorado, had come upon the
girl sitting in the car, one day, and had been struck dumb by sight of
her. Later, he had wandered morosely into the Two Palms, begging a
drink in charity, and murmuring something about having proposed
mattermony before the ol' man showed up and he had realized the dread
secret of her birth. Still murmuring, the pilgrim had wandered off
toward Meteorite and had been no more seen of men.
"Still an' all," observed Deadoak, whose mind had reverted to this
incident, "I dunno but what a man _might_ do worse. She's durn pretty,
I will say, and always has a right sweet word for folks. I dunno but
what she might be glad to take up----"
"Now, Deadoak, you look here!" Piute turned in his chair and
transfixed the other with a steely gaze. "I'm mayor o' this here town,
an' deputy sheriff, and it's my duty to uphold morality and--and such
things. Don't you go to shootin' off your mouth that-a-way, I warn
you, legal! Don't you take too much for granted. We need irrigation
pipe, and we're liable to need more, but that don't give you no license
to presume. You go to outragin' the moral feelin's of this here
community and somethin' will happen quick!"
"I was just thinkin'," Deadoak weakly defended himself. "And Mis'
Smithers allows that she's a right smart girl, considerin' what's
behind her----"
"Don't you think too hard," said Piute, getting up and shoving back his
chair, "or you'll have a accident! Mind me, now."
He stamped inside the hotel, calling to Mrs. Tomkins in the kitchen
that the guests had departed and she could tidy up the rooms a bit.