Tonopah as a mining town appealed strongly to Gary’s love of the
picturesque. Tonopah is a hilly little town, with a mine in its very
middle, and with narrow, crooked streets that slope steeply and take
sharp turnings. Houses perched on knobs of barren, red earth, or
clung precariously to steep hillsides. The courthouse, a modern,
cement building with broad steps flanked by pillars, stood with
aloof dignity upon a hill that made Gary puff a little in the
climbing.
On the courthouse steps he finished his cigarette before going
inside, and stood gazing at the town below him and at the barren
buttes beyond. As far as he could see, the world was a forbidding,
sterile world; unfriendly, inhospitable--a miserly world guarding
jealously the riches deep-hidden within its hills. When he tried to
visualize range cattle roaming over those hills, Gary’s lips twisted
contemptuously.
He turned and went in, his footsteps clumping down the empty,
echoing corridor to the office of the County Recorder. A
wholesome-looking girl with hair almost the color of Patricia’s rose
from before a typewriter and came forward to the counter. Her eyes
widened a bit when she looked at Gary, and the color deepened a
little in her cheeks. Perhaps she had seen Gary’s face on the screen
and remembered it pleasantly; certainly a man like Gary Marshall
walks but seldom into the Recorder’s office of any desert county
seat. Gary told her very briefly what he wanted, and the County
Recorder herself came forward to serve him.
Very obligingly she looked up all the records pertaining to
Johnnywater. Gary himself went in with her to lift the heavy record
books down from their places in the vault behind the office. The
County Recorder was thorough as well as obliging. Gary lifted
approximately a quarter of a ton of books, and came out of the vault
wiping perspiration from inside his collar and smoothing his plumage
generally after the exercise. It was a warm day in Tonopah.
Gary had not a doubt left to pin his hopes upon. The County Recorder
had looked up water rights to Johnnywater and adjacent springs, and
had made sure that Waddell had made no previous transfers to other
parties, a piece of treachery which Gary had vaguely hoped to
uncover. Patricia’s title appeared to be dishearteningly
unassailable. Gary would have been willing to spend his last dollar
in prosecuting Waddell for fraud; but apparently no such villainy
had brought Waddell within his clutches.
From the County Recorder, who had a warm, motherly personality and
was chronically homesick for Pasadena and eager to help any one who
knew the place as intimately as did Gary, he learned how great a
stranger Tonopah is to her county corners. Pat was right, he
discovered. Miles and miles of country lay all unsurveyed; a vast
area to be approached in the spirit of the pioneer who sets out to
explore a land unknown.
Roughly scaling the district on the county map which the Recorder
borrowed from the Clerk (and which Gary promptly bought when he
found that it was for sale) he decided that the water holes in the
Johnnywater district were approximately twenty to forty miles apart.
“Pat’s cows will have to pack canteens where village bossies wear
bells on their lavallieres,” Gary grinned to the County Recorder.
“Calves are probably taboo in the best bovine circles of
Nevada--unless they learn to ride to water on their mammas’ backs,
like baby toads.”
The Recorder smiled at him somewhat wistfully. “You remind me of my
son in Pasadena,” she said. “He always joked over the drawbacks. I
wish you were going to be within riding distance of here; I’ve an
extra room that I’d love to have you use sometimes. But--” she
sighed, “--you’ll probably never make the trip over here unless you
come the roundabout way on the train, to record something. And the
mail is much more convenient, of course. What few prospectors record
mining claims in that district nearly always send them by mail, I’ve
noticed. In all the time I’ve been in office, this Mr. Waddell is
the only man from that part of the county who came here personally.
He said he had other business here, I remember, and intended going
on East.”
“So Waddell went East, did he?” Gary looked up from the map. “He’s
already gone, I suppose.”
“I suppose so. I remember he said he was going to England to visit
his old home. His health was bad, I imagine; I noticed he looked
thin and worried, and his manner was very nervous.”
“It ought to be,” Gary mumbled over the map. “Isn’t there any road
at all, tapping that country from here?”
The Recorder didn’t know, but she thought the County Clerk might be
able to tell him. The County Clerk had been much longer in the
country and was in close touch with the work of the commissioners.
So Gary thanked her with his nicest manner, sent a vague smile
toward the girl with hair like Patricia’s, and went away to
interview the County Clerk.
When he left the court house Gary had a few facts firmly fixed in
his mind. He knew that Patricia’s fake cattle ranch was more
accessible to Las Vegas than to Tonopah. Furthermore, the men who
had signed the affidavits vouching for Waddell did not belong in
Tonopah, but could probably be traced from Las Vegas more easily.
And there seemed no question at all of the legality of the
transaction.
Gary next day retraced the miles halfway back to Los Angeles, waited
for long, lonesome hours in a tiny desert station for the train from
Barstow, boarded it and made a fresh start, on another railroad,
toward Patricia’s cattle ranch. So far he had no reason whatever for
optimism concerning the investment. The best he could muster was a
faint hope that some other trustful soul might be found with five
thousand dollars, no business sense whatever and a hunger for
story-book wilderness. Should such an improbable combination stray
into Gary’s presence before Patricia’s Walking X cattle all starved
to death, Gary promised himself grimly that he would stop at nothing
short of a blackjack in his efforts to sell Johnnywater. He felt
that Providence had prevailed upon Patricia to place that Power of
Attorney in his hands, and he meant to use it to the limit.
In Las Vegas, where Gary continued his inquiries, he tramped here
and there before he discovered any one who had ever heard of
Johnnywater. One man knew Waddell slightly, and another was of the
opinion that the two who had made affidavit for Waddell must live
somewhere in the desert. This man suggested that Gary should stick
around town until they came in for supplies or something. Gary
snorted at that advice and continued wandering here and there,
asking questions of garage men and street loiterers who had what he
called the earmarks of the desert. One of these interrupted himself
in the middle of a sentence, spat into the gutter and pointed.
“There’s one of ’em, now. That’s Monty Girard just turned the corner
by the hotel. When he lights som’eres, you can talk to ’im. Like as
not you can ride out with ’im to camp, if you got the nerve. Ain’t
many that has. I tried ridin’ with ’im once for a mile, down here to
the dairy, and I sure as hell feel the effects of it yet. Give me a
crick in the back I never _will_ git over. I’d ruther board a raw
bronk any day than get in that Ford uh his’n. You go speak to Monty,
mister. He can tell yuh more about what you want to know than any
man in Vegas, I reckon.”
Gary watched the man in the Ford go rattling past, pull up to the
sidewalk in the next block and stop. He sauntered toward the spot.
It was a day for sauntering and for seeking the shady side of the
street; Monty Girard was leaving the post-office with a canvas bag
in his hand when Gary met him. Gary was not in the mood for much
ceremony. He stopped Girard in the middle of the sidewalk.
“I believe you signed an affidavit for a man named Waddell, in
regard to the Johnnywater outfit. I’d like to have a few minutes’
talk with you.”
“Why, shore!” Monty Girard glanced down at the mail bag, stepped
past Gary and tossed the bag into the back of his car. “Your name’s
Connolly, I guess. Going out to Johnnywater?”
Gary had not thought of friendliness toward any man connected with
the Johnnywater transaction; yet friendliness was the keynote of
Monty Girard’s personality. The squinty wrinkles around his young
blue eyes were not all caused by facing wind and sun; laughter lines
were there, plenty of them. His voice, that suggested years spent in
the southwest where men speak in easy, drawling tones, caressing in
their softness, was friendliness itself; as was his quick smile,
disclosing teeth as white and even as Gary himself could boast. In
spite of himself, Gary’s hostility lost its edge.
“If you haven’t got your own car, you’re welcome to ride out with
me, Mr. Connolly. I’m going within fifteen miles of Johnnywater, and
I can take yuh-all over as well as not.”
Gary grinned relentingly.
“I came over to see how much of that outfit was faked,” he said.
“I’m not the buyer, but I have full authority to act for Pat
Connolly. The deal was made rather--er--impulsively, and it is
unfortunate that the buyer was unable to get over and see the place
before closing the deal. Waddell has gone East, I hear. But you
swore that things were as represented in the deal.”
Monty Girard gave him one searching look from under the brim of his
dusty, gray Stetson range hat. He looked down, absently reaching out
a booted foot to shake a front wheel of his Ford.
“What I swore to was straight goods, all right. I figured that if
Mr. Connolly was satisfied with the deal as it stood, it was no
put-in of mine. I don’t know of a thing that was misrepresented. Not
if a man knows this country and knows what to expect.”
“Now we’re coming to the point, I think.” Gary felt oddly that here
was a man who would understand his position and perhaps sympathize
with the task he had set himself to accomplish.
Monty Girard hesitated, looking at him inquiringly before he glanced
up and down the street.
“Say, mister----”
“Marshall. Pardon me. Gary Marshall’s my name.”
“Well, Mr. Marshall, it’s like this. I’m just in off a
hundred-and-forty-mile drive--and it shore is hot from here to
Indian. If you don’t mind helpin’ me hunt a cool spot, we’ll have a
near beer or something and talk this thing over.”
Over their near beer Gary found the man he had intended to lick even
more disarming. Monty Girard kept looking at him with covert
intentness.
“Gary Marshall, you said your name was? I reckon yuh-all must be the
fellow that done that whirlwind riding in a picture I saw, last time
I was in town. I forget the name of it--but I shore don’t forget the
way yuh-all handled your hawse. A range rider gets mighty particular
about the riding he sees in the movies. I’ll bet yuh-all never
learned in no riding school, Mr. Marshall; I’ll bet another glass uh
near beer you’ve rode the range some yourself.”
“I was born on the Pecos,” grinned Gary. “My old man had horses
mostly; some cattle, of course. I left when I was eighteen.”
“And that shore ain’t been so many years it’d take all day to count
’em. Well, I shore didn’t expect to meet that fellow I saw in the
picture, on my next trip in to town.”
Gary drank his beer slowly, studying Monty Girard. Somehow he got
the impression that Girard did not welcome the subject of
Johnnywater. Yet he had seemed sincere enough in declaring that he
had told the truth in the affidavit. Gary pushed the glass out of
his way and folded his arms on the table, leaning a little forward.
“Just where’s the joker in this Johnnywater deal?” he asked
abruptly. “There is one, isn’t there?”
“Wel-l--you’re going out there, ain’t yuh?” Monty Girard hesitated
oddly. “I don’t know as there’s any joker at all; not in the way
yuh-all mean. It’s a long ways off from the railroad, but Waddy
wrote that in his letter to Mr. Connolly. I know that for a fact,
because I read the letter. And uh course, cattle is down now--a man’s
scarcely got a livin’ chance runnin’ cattle, the way the market is
now. But Mr. Connolly must uh known all that. The price Waddy put on
the outfit could uh told ’im that, if nothin’ else. I dunno as Waddy
overcharged Connolly for the place. All depends on whether a man
wanted to buy. Connolly did--I reckon. Leastways, he bought.”
“Yes, I see your point. The deal was all right if a man wanted the
place. But you’re wondering what kind of a man would _want_ the
place. It’s a lemon of some kind. That’s about it--stop me if I’m
wrong.”
Monty Girard laughed dryly. “I’m mounted on a tired hawse, Mr.
Marshall. I couldn’t stop a run-down clock, and that’s a fact.”
“Well, I think I’ll go out with you if you don’t mind. I suppose
I’ll need blankets and a few supplies.”
“Well, I reckon Waddy left pretty much everything he had out there.
Soon as he got his money at the bank he fanned it for Merrie
England. He just barely had a suit case when I saw him last. I
reckon maybe yuh-all better take out a few things you’d hate to get
along without. Flour, bacon an’ beans you can pretty well count on.
And, unless yuh-all want to take blankets of your own, you needn’t
be afraid to use Waddy’s. Frank Waddell was shore a nice, clean
housekeeper, and a nice man all around, only--kinda nervous.”
Gary listened, taking it all in. His eyes, trained to the profession
of putting emotions, thoughts, even things meant to be hidden, into
the human face, so that all might see and read the meaning, watched
Monty’s face as he talked.
“Just what _is_ it that made Waddell sell the Johnnywater ranch and
clear out of the country?” he asked. “Just what makes you hate the
place?”
Monty sent him a startled look.
“I never said I hated it,” he parried. “It ain’t anything to me, one
way or the other.”
“You _do_ hate it. Why?”
“Wel-l--I dunno as I can hardly say. A man’s got feelin’s sometimes
he can’t hardly put into words. Lots of places in this country has
got histories, Mr. Marshall. I guess--Johnnywater’s all right. Waddy
was a kind of nervous cuss.”