MORE DREAMS
In four days time Wunpost had seen his interest dwindle from full
ownership to a mere sixth of the Willie Meena. First he had given Billy
half, then they had each given Rhodes a sixth; and now Judson Eells had
stepped in with his contract and trimmed their holdings by a half. In
another day or so, if the ratio kept up, Wunpost's sixth would be
reduced to a twelfth, a twenty-fourth, a forty-eighth, a
ninety-sixth--and he had discovered the mine himself! What philosophy or
sophistry can reconcile a man to such buffets from the hand of Fate?
Wunpost cursed and turned to raw whiskey. It was the infamy of it all;
the humiliation, the disgrace, the insult of being trimmed by a
lawyer--twice! Yes, twice in the same place, with the same contract, the
same system; and now this same Flip Flappum was busy as a hunting dog
trying to hire one of his partners to sell him out!
Wunpost towered above Old Whiskers, and so terrible was his presence
that the saloon-keeper never hinted at pay. He poured out drink after
drink of the vitriolic whiskey, which Whiskers made in the secrecy of
his back-room; and as Wunpost drank and shuddered the waspish Phillip F.
Lapham set about his complete undoing. First he went to Dusty Rhodes,
who still claimed a full half, and browbeat him until he fell back to a
third; and then, when Dusty priced his third at one million, he turned
to the disillusioned Billy. Her ideas were more moderate, as far as
values were concerned, but her loyalty to Wunpost was still unshaken and
she refused to even consider a sale. Back and forth went the lawyer like
a shuttle in its socket, from Dusty Rhodes to Wilhelmina and then back
once more to Rhodes; but Dusty would sign nothing, sell nothing, agree
to nothing, and Billy was almost as bad. She placed a cash value of
twenty thousand dollars on her interest in the Willie Meena Mine, but
the sale was contingent upon the consent of John C. Calhoun, who had
drowned his sorrows at last. So they waited until morning and Billy laid
the matter before him when her father brought the drunken man to their
tent.
Wunpost was more than drunk, he was drugged and robbed of reason by the
poison which Old Whiskers had brewed; but even with this handicap his
mind leapt straight to the point and he replied with an emphatic "No!"
"Twenty thousand!" he repeated, "twenty thousand devils--twenty thousand
little demons from hell! What do you want to sell me out for--didn't I
give you your interest? Well, listen, kid--you ever been to school? Then
how much is one-sixth and one-third--add 'em together! Makes
_three_-sixths, don't it--well, ain't that a half? I ain't
educated, that's all right; but I can _think_, kid, can't I? Flip
Flappum he wants to get control. Give him a half, under my contract, and
he can take possession--and then where do _I_ git off? I git off at
the same place I got off over at Wunpost; he's trying to freeze me out.
So if you want to do me dirt, kid, when I've always been your friend, go
to it and sell him your share. Take your paltry twenty thousand and let
old Wunpost rustle--serves him right, the poor, ignorant fool!"
He swayed about and Billy drew away from him, but her answer to Lapham
was final. She would not sell out, at any price, without the consent of
Wunpost. Lapham nodded and darted off--he was a man who dealt with facts
and not with the moonshine of sentiment--and this time he fairly flew at
Dusty Rhodes. He took him off to one side, where no one could listen in,
and at the end of half an hour Mr. Rhodes had signed a paper giving a
quit-claim to his interest in the mine. Old Whiskers was summoned from
his attendance on the bottles, the lawyer presented his case; and,
whatever the arguments, they prevailed also with the saloon-keeper, who
signed up and took his check. Presumably they had to do with threats of
expensive litigation and appeals to the higher courts, with a learned
exposition of the weakness of their case and the air-tight position of
Judson Eells; the point is, they prevailed, and Eells took possession of
the mine, placing Pisen-face Lynch in charge.
Old Whiskers folded his tent and returned to Blackwater, where many of
the stampeders had preceded him; and Dusty Rhodes, with a guilty grin,
folded his check and started for the railroad. Cole Campbell and his
daughter, when they heard the news and found themselves debarred from
the property, packed up and took the trail home, and when John C.
Calhoun came out of his coma he was left without a friend in the world.
The rush had passed on, across the Sink to Blackwater and to the gulches
in the mountains beyond; for the men from Nevada had not been slow to
comprehend that the Willie Meena held no promise for them.
It was a single rich blow-out in a country otherwise barren; and the
tales of the pocket miners, who held claims back of Blackwater, had led
to a second stampede. The Willie Meena was a prophecy of what might be
expected if a similar formation could be found, but it was no more than
the throat of an extinct volcano, filled up with gold-bearing quartz.
There was no fissure-vein, no great mother lode leading off through the
country for miles; only a hogback of black quartz and then worlds and
worlds of desert as barren as wash boulders could make it. So they rose
and went on, like birds in full flight after they have settled for a
moment on the plain, and when Wunpost rose up and rubbed his eyes his
great camp had passed away like a dream.
Two days later he walked wearily across the desert from Blackwater, with
a two gallon canteen under his arm, and at the entrance to Jail Canyon
he paused and looked in doubtfully before he shambled up to the house.
He was broke, and he knew it, and added to that shame was the greater
shame that comes from drink. Old Whiskers' poisonous whiskey had sapped
his self-respect, and yet he came on boldly. There was a fever in his
eye like that of the gambler who has lost all, yet still watches the
fall of the cards; and as Wilhelmina came out he winked at her
mysteriously and beckoned her away from the house.
"I've got something good," he told her confidentially; "can you get off
to go down to Blackwater?"
"Why, I might," she said. "Father's working up the canyon. Is it
something about the mine?"
"Yes, it is," he answered. "Say, what d'ye think of Dusty? He sold us
out for five thousand dollars! Five thousand--that's all--and Old
Whiskers took the same, giving Judson Eells full control. They cleaned
us, Billy, but we'll get our cut yet--do you know what they're trying to
do? Eells is going to organize a company and sell a few shares in order
to finance the mine; and if we want to, kid, we can turn in our third
interest and get the pro rata in stock. We might as well do it, because
they've got the control and otherwise we won't get anything. They've
barred us off the property and we'll never get a cent if it produces a
million dollars. But look, here's the idea--Judson Eells is badly bent
on account of what he lost at Wunpost, and he's crazy to organize a
company and market the treasury stock. We'll go in with him, see, and as
soon as we get our stock we'll peddle it for what we can get. That'll
net us a few thousand and you can take your share and help the old man
build his road."
The stubborn look on Billy's face suddenly gave place to one of doubt
and then to one of swift decision.
"I'll do it," she said. "We don't need to see Father--just tell them
that I've agreed. And when the time comes, send an Indian up to notify
me and I'll ride down and sign the papers."
"Good enough!" exclaimed Wunpost with a hint of his old smile. "I'll
come up and tell you myself. Have you heard the news from below? Well,
every house in Blackwater is plumb full of boomers--and them
pocket-miners are all selling out. The whole country's staked, clean
back to the peaks, and old Eells says he's going to start a bank.
There's three new saloons, a couple more restaurants, and she sure looks
like a good live camp--and me, the man that started it and made the
whole country, I can't even bum a drink!"
"I'm glad of it," returned Billy, and regarded him so intently that he
hastened to change the subject.
"But you wait!" he thundered. "I'll show 'em who's who! I ain't down, by
no manner of means. I've got a mine or two hid out that would make 'em
fairly scream if I'd show 'em a piece of the rock. All I need is a
little capital, just a few thousand dollars to get me a good outfit of
mules, and I'll come back into Blackwater with a pack-load of ore
that'll make 'em _all_ sit up and take notice."
He swung his fist into his hand with oratorical fervor and Mrs. Campbell
appeared suddenly at the door. Her first favorable impression of the
gallant young Southerner had been changed by the course of events and
she was now morally certain that the envious Dusty Rhodes had come
nearer the unvarnished truth. To be sure he had apologized, but Wunpost
himself had said that it was only to gain a share in the mine--and how
lamentably had Wunpost failed, after all his windy boasts, when it came
to a conflict with Judson Eells. He had weakened like a schoolboy, all
his arguments had been puerile; and even her husband, who was far from
censorious, had stated that the whole affair was badly handled. And now
here he was, after a secret conference with her daughter, suddenly
bursting into vehement protestations and hinting at still other hidden
mines. Well, his mines might be as rich as he declared them to be, but
Mrs. Campbell herself was dubious.
"Wilhelmina," she called, "don't stand out in the sun! Why don't you
invite Mr. Calhoun to the house?"
The hint was sufficient, Mr. Calhoun excused himself hastily and went
striding away down the canyon; and Wilhelmina, after a perfunctory
return to the house, slipped out and ran up to her lookout. Not a word
that he had said about the rush to Blackwater was in any way startling
to her; she had seen every dust-cloud, marked each automobile as it
rushed past, and even noted the stampede from the west. For the natural
way to Blackwater was not across Death Valley from the distant Nevada
camps, but from the railroad which lay only forty miles to the west and
was reached by an automobile stage. The road came down through
Sheep-herder Canyon, on the other side of the Sink, and every day as she
looked across its vastness she saw the long trailers of dust. She knew
that the autos were rushing in with men and the slow freighters were
hauling in supplies--all the real news for her was the number of saloons
and restaurants, and that Eells was starting a bank.
A bank! And in Blackwater! The only bank that Blackwater had ever had or
needed was the safe in Old Whiskers' saloon; and now this rich schemer,
this iron-handed robber, was going to start a bank! Billy lay inside the
portal of her gate of dreams and watched Wunpost as he plodded across
the plain, and she resolved to join with him and do her level best to
bring Eells' plans to naught. If he was counting on the sale of his
treasury stock to fill up the vaults of his bank he would find others in
the market with stock in both hands, peddling it out to the highest
bidder. And even if the mine was worth into the millions, she, for one,
would sell every share. It was best, after all, since Eells owned the
control, to sell out for what they could get; and if this was merely a
deep-laid scheme to buy in their stock for almost nothing they would at
least have a little ready cash.
The Campbells were poor; her father even lacked the money to buy powder
to blast out his road, and so he struggled on, grading up the easy
places and leaving Corkscrew Gorge untouched. That would call for heavy
blasting and crews of hardy men to climb up and shoot down the walls,
and even after that the jagged rock-bed must be covered and leveled to
the semblance of a road. Now nothing but a trail led up through the dark
passageway, where grinding boulders had polished the walls like glass;
and until that gateway was opened Cole Campbell's road was useless; it
might as well be all trail. But with five thousand dollars, or even
less--with whatever she received from her stock--the gateway could be
conquered, her father's dream would come true and all their life would
be changed.
There would be a road, right past their house, where great trucks would
lumber forth loaded down with ore from their mine, and return ladened
with machinery from the railroad. There would be miners going by and
stopping for a drink, and someone to talk to every day, and the
loneliness which oppressed her like a physical pain would give place to
gaiety and peace. Her father would be happy and stop working so hard,
and her mother would not have to worry--all if she, Wilhelmina, could
just sell her stock and salvage a pittance from the wreck.
She knew now what Wunpost had meant when he had described the outside
world and the men they would meet at the rush, yet for all his hard-won
knowledge he had gone down once more before Judson Eells and his gang.
But he had spoken true when he said they would resort to murder to gain
possession of their mine, and though he had yielded at last to the lure
of strong drink, in her heart she could not blame him too much. It was
not by wrongdoing that he had wrecked their high hopes, but by signing a
contract long years before without reading what he called the fine
print. He was just a boy, after all, in spite of his boasting and his
vaunted knowledge of the world; and now in his trouble he had come back
to her, to the one person he knew he could trust. She gazed a long time
at the dwindling form till it was lost in the immensity of the plain;
and then she gazed on, for dreams were all she had to comfort her lonely
heart