WHEREIN MATTERS THICKEN
The stranger who had witnessed the trouble at Culver's office had come
there at the instance of McCoppet. It was, therefore, to McCoppet that
he carried the intelligence of what had taken place, so far as he had
seen.
The gambler was exceedingly pleased. That Culver would now be ready,
as never before, to receive a proposition whereby the owners of the
"Laughing Water" claim could be deprived of their ground, he was well
convinced.
For reasons best known to himself and skillfully concealed from all
acquaintances, McCoppet had remained practically in hiding since the
moment in which he had beheld that half-breed Piute Indian in the
saloon. He remained out of sight even now, dispatching a messenger to
Culver, in the afternoon, requesting his presence for a conference for
the total undoing of Van Buren.
Culver, who in ordinary circumstances might have refused this request
with haughty insolence, responded to the summons rather sooner than
McCoppet had expected. He was still red with anger, and meditating
personal violence to Van at the earliest possible meeting.
McCoppet, with his smokeless cigar in his mouth, and his great opal
sentient with fire, received his visitor in the little private den to
which Bostwick had been taken.
"How are you, Culver?" he said off-handedly.
"I wanted to have a little talk. I sent a man up to your shop a while
ago, and he told me you fired Van Buren out of the place on the run."
"That's nobody's business but mine," said Culver aggressively. "If
that is all you care to talk about----"
"Don't roil up," interrupted the gambler. "I don't even know what the
fight was about, and I don't care a tinker's whoop either. I got you
here to give you a chance to put Van Buren out of commission and make a
lifetime winning."
Culver looked at him sharply.
"It must be something crooked."
"Nothing's crooked that works out straight," said McCoppet. "What's
life anyhow but a sure-thing game? It's stacked for us all to lose out
in the end. What's the use of being finniky while we live--as long as
even the Almighty's dealing brace?"
Culver was impatient. "Well?"
"I won't beat around the chapparal," said McCoppet. "It ain't my way."
Nevertheless, with much finesse and art he contrived to put his
proposition in a manner to rob it of many of its ugly features.
However, he made the business plain.
"You see," he concluded, "the old reservation line might actually be
wrong--and all you'd have to do would be to put it right. That's what
we want--we want the line put right."
Culver was more angered than before. He understood the conspiracy
thoroughly. No detail of its cleverness escaped him.
"If you thought you could trade on my personal unpleasantness with an
owner of the 'Laughing Water' claim," he said hotly, "you have made the
mistake of your life. I wish you good-day."
He rose to go. McCoppet rose and stopped him.
"Don't get feverish," said he. "It don't pay. I ain't requesting this
service from you for just your feelings against a man. There's plenty
in this for us all."
"You mean bribe money, I suppose," said Culver no less aggressively
than before. "Is that what you mean?"
"Don't call it hard names," begged the gambler. "It's just a
retainer--say twenty thousand dollars."
Culver burned to the top of his ears. He looked at McCoppet intently
with an expression the gambler could not interpret.
"Just to change that line a thousand feet," urged the man of gambling
propensities. "I'll make it twenty-five."
Still Culver made no response. With all his other hateful attributes
of character he was tempered steel on incorruptibility. He was not
even momentarily tempted to avenge himself thus on Van Buren.
McCoppet thought he had him wavering. He attempted to push him over
the brink.
"Say," said he persuasively, lowering his voice to a tone of the
confidential, "I can strain a little more out of one of my partners and
make it thirty thousand dollars." He had no intention of employing a
cent of his own. Bostwick was to pay all these expenses. "Thirty
thousand dollars, cash," he repeated, "the minute you finish your
work--and make it look like a Government _correction_ of the line."
Culver broke forth on him with accumulated wrath.
"You damnable puppy!" he said in a futile effort to be adequate to the
situation. "You sneak! Of all the accursed
intrigues--insults--robberies that ever were hatched---- By God, sir,
if you offered me a million of money you shouldn't alter that
Government line by a hair! If you speak to me again--I'll knock you
down!"
He flung the door wide open, went out like a rocket, and bowled a man
half over in his blind haste to be quit the place.
McCoppet was left there staring where he had gone--staring and afraid
of what the results would probably be to all the game. He had no eyes
to behold a man who had suddenly discerned him from the crowds. A
moment later he started violently as a huge form stood in the door.
"Trimmer!" he said, "I'm busy!"
"You're goin' to be busier in about a minute, if I don't see you right
now," said the man addressed as Trimmer, a raw, bull-like lumberman
from the mountains. "Been waitin' to see you some time."
"Come in," said the gambler instantly regaining his composure. "Come
in and shut the door. How are you, anyway?" He held out his hand to
shake.
Trimmer closed the door. "Ain't ready to shake, jest yet," he said.
"I come here to see you on business."
"That's all right, Larry," answered McCoppet. "That's all right. Sit
down."
"I'm goin' to," announced his visitor. He took a chair, pulled out a
giant cigar, and lighting it up smoked like a pile of burning leaves.
"You seem to be pretty well fixed," he added, taking a huge black
pistol from his pocket and laying it before him on the table. "Looks
like money was easy."
"I ain't busted," admitted the gambler. "Have a drink?"
"Not till we finish." The lumberman settled in his chair. "That was
the way you got me before--and you ain't goin' to come it again."
McCoppet waited for his visitor to open. Trimmer was not in a hurry.
He eyed the man across the table calmly, his small, shifting optics
dully gleaming.
Presently he said; "Cayuse is here in camp."
Cayuse was the half-breed Piute Indian whose company McCoppet had
avoided. Partially educated, wholly reverted to his Indian ways and
tribal brethren, Cayuse was a singular mixture of the savage, plus
civilized outlooks and ethical standards that made him a dangerous
man--not only a law unto himself, as many Indians are, but also a
strange interpreter of the law, both civilized and aboriginal.
McCoppet had surmised what was coming.
"Yes--I noticed he was here."
"Know what he come fer?" asked the lumberman. "Onto his game?"
"You came here to tell me. Deal the cards."
Trimmer puffed great lungfuls of the reek from his weed and took his
revolver in hand.
"Opal," said he, enjoying his moment of vantage, "you done me up for a
clean one thousand bucks, a year ago--while I was drunk--and I've been
laying to git you ever since."
McCoppet was unmoved.
"Well, here I am."
"You bet! here you are--and here you're goin' to hang out till we fix
things _right_!" The lumberman banged his gun barrel on the table hard
enough to make a dent. "That's why Cayuse is here, too. Mrs. Cayuse
is dead."
The gambler nodded coldly, and Trimmer went on.
"She kicked the bucket havin' a kid which wasn't Cayuse's--too darn
white fer even him--and Cayuse is on the war trail fer that father."
McCoppet threw away his chewed cigar and replaced it with a fresh one.
He nodded as before.
"Cayuse is on that I know who the father was," resumed the visitor. "I
told him to come here to Goldite and I'd give up the name."
He began to consume his cigar once more by inches and watched the
effect of his words. There was no visible effect. McCoppet had never
been calmer in his life--outwardly. Inwardly he had never felt Dearer
to death, and his own kind of fright was upon him.
"Well," he said, "your aces look good to me. What do you want--how
much?"
"I ought to hand you over to Cayuse--good riddance to the whole
country," answered Trimmer, with rare perspicacity of judgment. "You
bet you're goin' to pay."
"If you want your thousand back, why don't you say so?" inquired the
gambler quietly. "I'll make it fifteen hundred. That's pretty good
interest, I reckon."
"Your reckoner's run down," Trimmer assured him. "I want ten thousand
dollars to steer Cayuse away."
McCoppet slowly shook his head. "You ain't a hog, Larry, you're a
Rockyfeller. Five thousand, cash on the nail, if you show me you can
steer Cayuse so far off the trail he'll never get on it again."
Five thousand dollars was a great deal of money to Trimmer. Ten
thousand was far in excess of his real expectations. But he saw that
his power was large. He was brutally frank.
"Nope, can't do it, Opal, not even fer a friend," and he grinned.
"I've got you in the door and I'm goin' to jamb you hard. Five
thousand ain't enough."
Things had been going against the gambler for nearly an hour. He had
been acutely alarmed by the presence of Cayuse in the camp. His mind,
like a ferret in a trap, was seeking wildly for a loophole of
advantage. Light came in upon him suddenly, with a thought of Culver,
by whom, subconsciously, he was worried.
"How do you mean to handle the half-breed?" he inquired by way of
preparing his ground. "You've promised to cough up a name."
Trimmer scratched his head with the end of his pistol.
"I guess I could tell him I was off--don't know the father after all."
"Sounds like a kid's excuse," commented McCoppet. "Like as not he'd
take it out of you."
The likelihood was so strong that Trimmer visibly paled.
"I've got to give him somebody's name," he agreed with alacrity. "Has
anyone died around here recent?"
"Yes," answered McCoppet with ready mendacity.
"Culver, who used to do surveying."
"Who?" asked Trimmer. "Don't know him."
McCoppet leaned across the table.
"Yes you do. He stopped you once from stealing--from picking up a lot
of timber land. Remember?"
Trimmer was interested. His vindictive attributes were aroused.
"Was that the cuss? I never seen him. Do you think Cayuse would know
who he was?--and believe it--the yarn?"
"Cayuse was once his chain-man." McCoppet was tremendously excited,
though apparently as cold as ice, as he swiftly thought out the
niceties of his own and fate's arrangements. "Cayuse's wife once
worked for Mrs. Culver, cooking and washing."
"Say, anybody'd swaller that," reflected the lumberman aloud. "But
five thousand dollars ain't enough."
"I'll make it seven thousand five hundred--that's an even split,"
agreed the gambler. He thought he foresaw a means whereby he could
save this amount from the funds that Bostwick would furnish. He rose
from his seat. "A thousand down, right now--the balance when Cayuse is
gone, leaving me safe forever. You to give him the name right now."
Trimmer stood up, quenched the light on the stub of his cigar, and
chewed up the butt with evident enjoyment.
"All right," he answered. "Shake."
Ten minutes later he had found Cayuse, delivered up the name agreed
upon, and was busy spending his money acquiring a load of fiery drink.