That talk with the son of the Western manager of the Mohave &
Southwestern Railroad did not set well on Lemuel’s mind. Even the
fact that the Geerusalem _Searchlight’s_ bulletin board, with chalky
eloquence, fairly bristling with superlatives, made bold to proclaim
him “California’s Bat Masterson,” carried little if any thrill for
him. Sangerly’s words sounded like trouble in disguise. Sangerly’s
keen deduction of what had happened to the paymaster’s money seemed
alarmingly correct. It seemed more, for on the heels of its apparent
certitude, came the distressing suspicion that Dot, having assisted
Billy Gee during his whole period at the ranch, must know something
about the disappearance of his saddlebags. Sangerly was right. No
man in the bandit’s condition would have lost precious moments
trying to hide his stealings, particularly in a trackless,
changeable sand waste such as lay to the south. It would have been
the height of folly, a useless piece of work, for he never could
have found his cache again. There was not the slightest doubt but
that that twenty thousand dollars was on the Huntington Ranch.
So thought Lemuel, and then he recalled that Sangerly had mentioned
the presence of two railroad detectives who were to aid him in the
search. What if they should dig up evidence involving Dot? Sheriff
Warburton had not so much as hinted about her having harbored the
bandit, from what Sangerly had said; yet Warburton must surely have
suspected it. Bob Warburton certainly was a good friend.
The longer Lemuel reviewed the situation, the more he became
convinced that he must get Dot out of the country before these
detectives began their investigations. He shuddered at the fearful
disgrace were her name mentioned, even in the remotest way, with the
whole ugly affair. He would pack her out of Soapweed Plains
immediately. Later on he would question her. He was fully convinced
that she would give him all the details on the subject without
hesitation when he asked her.
He had still a few minutes left before the time he must report back
to the stage office. These he devoted to hiring a man who would look
after the ranch during their absence. Afterward, he sought the quiet
and seclusion of a back street and wandered aimlessly about, his
mind busy with this new disturbing angle that threatened to sully
the clean name of Huntington. So preoccupied was he, that he
entirely overlooked his intention of paying Mrs. Liggs a visit to
inquire the reason for her cold treatment of him shortly before.
He found the rented machine ready and waiting for him. Clambering in
beside the driver, he was soon whirling out of camp toward home. A
strange sense of security came to him. Sangerly and his sleuths were
left behind, and it would be only a matter of a few short hours ere
he and Dot would be lost in the confusion and bustle of traveling
thousands. The proverbial needle in the haystack would be as easy to
find as they, he told himself.
When within a mile of the ranch he chanced to glance in the
direction of the low line of chromatic hills across which his
acreage extended. A man was trudging along through the greasewood
brush, steering diagonally for the road. He was less than a quarter
of a mile off, and Lemuel squinted at him curiously.
“Who’s that sun lizard? Kin you make him out?” he asked the driver.
The latter looked. “Sure. That’s old Tinnemaha Pete, a prospector.
You must know him. Hangs around Mrs. Liggs’ store a lot. She’s bin
grubstaking him for years, I hear. Some one was telling me he used
to be her husband’s partner.”
Lemuel nodded. “Come to think of it now, I did meet him there
wunst.”
“Poor old devil! If it weren’t for her he’d have starved to death
long ago,” said the driver. “The gold fever sure gets ’em, don’t it?
He’s been going it all his life and never found anything. Never
will, I reckon. One of these days, he’ll go out and the old
desert’ll pick his bones clean. That’s how most of these granddads
end up.”
The machine sped on, its dust cloud trailing across the flat,
enveloping the bent, shriveled form of Tinnemaha Pete, rocking
pathetically along on his unsteady legs, a canvas bag slung over his
shoulder, bound for Geerusalem. Like some misshapen wraith, born of
the grotesqueness and deformity of that wild, mystic desolation, he
fled on, his long gray beard whisking about in the hot breeze, his
baggy clothes bulging and shrinking in the wrench and flip of its
frolicking.
A few minutes later the automobile stopped before the Huntington
gate, and Lemuel sprang out and hurried up the walk toward the
house. Dot, attracted by the approach of the car, had come to the
front door. She greeted her father with an expression of blank
amazement.
“What in the world, daddy——” she began.
“Git ready to travel, hon!” he cried out excitedly, as he put an arm
around her and drew her into the house. “Looket! Looket! We got
money. What d’you think o’ that?” He fished out a handful of bills
and waved them before her face. He broke into a gleeful laugh, so
well assumed that it deceived her. “What’d I tell you, eh? Bob
Warburton come through like a leetle major. Loaned me two thousand
dollars on my note. Think o’ that! Ain’t that jest dandy? Come on,
now! Chuck some duds in a valise. We’re startin’ right out on a big
blow-out. We’re goin’ to see the world—me an’ you.” He romped around
the room with her, like an overjoyed schoolboy.
“But, daddy,” she protested in bewilderment, “how can I? Why, you
don’t give me time to——”
“You don’t need nothin’. I’m goin’ to tog you out complete with a
hull bran’-new outfit, soon’s we hit the city. Hurry up! We ain’t
got all day to talk about it, Dot. We’re strikin’ south to Mirage.
I’m on’y takin’ a shirt an’ a pair o’ socks, myself.” He headed for
his room.
“But who’s to look out after the place, the chickens and stock
and——”
“I got it all fixed for a man to come this afternoon—Billy Higgins,”
he called out. “He’ll ride over from camp every day an’ look around.
Come on, hon! Do’s I say, can’t you? That driver is chargin’ fifteen
dollars an hour.”
Dot capitulated. She hurried into her room and closed the door after
her. Hesitating an instant, she locked it cautiously; then she
dragged a suit case out of the closet and spread it open on the bed.
For some seconds, she stood motionless, undecided, in troubled
thought. In the middle drawer of her bureau lay a fortune in stolen
money. During her father’s absence in camp she had carefully counted
it over to satisfy her suspicions that it was stolen money, and she
had found that it reckoned up to the amount Lemuel had told her was
stolen by Billy Gee from the paymaster’s car of the Mohave &
Southwestern Railroad Company—twenty thousand dollars.
What must she do with it? Here she was the custodian of a great sum,
ill gotten, placed in her hands without her knowledge or consent,
without a word or hint as to what was expected of her. She had been
made an innocent accomplice. She knew that, in the circumstances,
were the house to be searched for this missing booty of Billy Gee,
she would have a desperate time, if the officers should discover
that drawerful of bills, to account for the presence of an amount of
money the same as that lost by the railroad company.
Until her father had burst in upon her, urging this uncalled-for
hurried departure that for some unexplained reason he had given her
not the slightest hint about, she had quite decided that the best
course for her to pursue was to go to Geerusalem and turn the booty
over to the constable or the postmaster, stating simply that she had
found it and wished it returned to its rightful owners. This she had
determined to do in person; for if there was one thing on which she
had firmly settled her mind, it was that Lemuel should be kept in
ignorance about the money. After his display of desperation last
night and the fearful threats he had made, she shrank from telling
him of her discovery, lest in a moment of recklessness he might be
tempted to force her to surrender the treasure to him, and
appropriate it to his own uses. She had grown sick at the terrifying
thought.
Another thing—one that had impressed her more deeply than she really
knew at the time—was the realization that Billy Gee had left her
this fortune out of appreciation for the little she had done for
him. The act bespoke the character of man he was at the core—plunder
though this fortune represented. It was about as big a gift as he
could have made to her. He had risked his life to get it—been shot
and bled white in the bargain. While she and her father had been
quarreling over him he had lain in the darkness of her room,
listening. He had learned that they were very poor, that the dream
of the Huntingtons had been to give their daughter an education,
that, notwithstanding their financial straits, that daughter was not
in favor of surrendering him—outlaw, though he was—to gain the
comforts that ten thousand dollars’ reward would bring. She also
knew that later, in the hayloft, he had purposely misled her as to
the contents of his saddlebags, in order to make his secret gift
certain of acceptance.
Just now she stood in her room and pondered over what she should do
with this unwelcome gift, since her father’s impetuousness had upset
her plans. She reasoned that it would be nothing short of folly to
leave the money hidden until their return, thus risking its loss by
fire or theft. There seemed no other way except to take it along
with her. They wouldn’t be gone but a few days, perhaps two weeks at
the longest. Once back home she could carry out her original
intention of putting it in the hands of the Geerusalem authorities
for transmission to the general offices of the Mohave & Southwestern
Railroad.
So thinking, she opened the bureau drawer and hurriedly wrapped up
the stacks of bills in her mother’s old silk shawl, tied the bundle
securely with string, and packed it into the suit case along with
some articles of clothing. Then she began dressing, in a growing
fury of joyful anticipation and excitement, for her long-wished-for
trip to a big city was at hand, her longing of years to be gratified
at last.
Half an hour after Lemuel arrived from camp he was locking the front
door of his home and placing the key under the mat for Sangerly. He
walked slowly down the gravel path to the gate and crossed the
garden toward the trim little grave under the drooping pepper tree.
Wistfully he gazed down at it, and the moisture crept into his eyes
when he saw Dot kneel and kiss the tips of her fingers and press
them gently on the mound.
“Little angel mother,” she breathed. “How I wish you were going with
us. How I wish you were here, darling.”
The chauffeur, sitting in the machine outside the gate, averted his
head and looked away into the gaunt desolation of the plain.
Shortly afterward, father and daughter were comfortably settled in
the rear seat and, like two children embarking on some glorious
adventure, began their journey down the hot sandy floor of Soapweed
Plains, bound for the dreary railroad station of Mirage. They
reached there around four o’clock, ate dinner in the combination
saloon-store-restaurant, and boarded the northbound train at dark.
It so happened that, owing to the joyous anticipation and breathless
conjecture with which the trip itself engrossed her, not until the
conductor came down the aisle to collect the tickets was Dot
suddenly reminded that she had not asked her father how long he
contemplated being gone. The uniformed person had passed on when she
broached the subject.
“Are we going to be away very long, daddy?” she asked.
“We sure are,” said Lemuel cheerfully. “We’re out for a big time.
What I mean—big. An’ we’re goin’ to see everything worth seein’, you
kin gamble on that, Dot. If there’s anything your little heart
desires, jest say so.”
“But how long—about a week or so?” she persisted. “There was
something I wanted to attend to when I get back.”
“Get back?” laughed Lemuel. “Now listen here, hon! Furst, me an’
you’s goin’ to have the fling of our young lives. Then——” He broke
off and, looking fixedly at her, grinned oddly. “You’ve seen the
last of Soapweed Plains, Dot, for anyway three years. I’m toggin’
you up like a queen, an’ you’re sailin’ into Longwell’s Seminary for
to be edjucated. That’s the main reason why I borried the money.”
Dot stared at him incredulously. Then, marking the strange set to
his jaws, the triumphant glint in his habitually mild eyes, cold
fear gripped her heart suddenly.
“Three years!” she choked. “Daddy, you’ve—you’ve deceived me. You’ve
lied to me——”
“I’ve done it for your own good, Dot. ’Tain’t wrong to lie when it’s
to help some one you love.” He paused. “You say you got somepn to
’tend to. Is that why you want to git back home?” he asked, his mind
on the missing paymaster’s money.
“Not altogether. But—but it’s one of the reasons.”
“An’ it’s important, ain’t it, honey?” As he spoke he bent his head
and gazed up into her face, his expression crafty, knowing.
“Not so important as caring for you, daddy,” she returned brokenly.
“Nothing in this world matters so much as that.”
He did not press the subject. He sat back in his seat and studied
his horny hands wistfully.
Shortly afterward, Dot began arguing against this decision of his to
send her to school. They talked for two straight hours, she
objecting on every ground she could think of, he countering
stubbornly, now besting her, again being himself bested. Spiritedly
she protested. She was too old to go to school; they needed the
money for other purposes; she wouldn’t leave him to live alone on
the ranch; she didn’t want an education. But all her vehemence and
tears and supplications were of no avail. There was no shaking the
determination of Lemuel Huntington.
So, in sheer exhaustion, she finally gave up and, lapsing into
silence, devoted herself to the solution of the momentous problem of
what she should do with the stolen treasure she was bringing along
with her, wrapped in her mother’s old silk shawl.
After long reflection she concluded she would turn it over to the
San Francisco authorities on her arrival, reasoning that it really
did not matter which civil authorities received it, since it would
be forwarded to the railroad company anyway. Having relieved her
mind thus, her thoughts drifted to Billy Gee, and she found herself
wondering lingeringly about him and if the wound in his head were
giving him much trouble, where he might be in that great, lonely
void of desert far to the south, if he were thinking of her.
Foolish, vagrant little thoughts, they were; but somehow, they
seemed to her to be very serious indeed, and so pleasing as to bring
a warmth to her cheeks, and so tragic as to cause the tears to form
in her eyes.
Lemuel sat and also reflected, but his thoughts were of another
sort, a legion of sleep-dispelling meditations that crowded his
brain, clamoring for review. He was so jubilant with himself and the
fulfillment of the big dream of his life. His mind in a riot of
joyous anticipation, he sat planning to make his brief stay in San
Francisco an epochal event.
He threw back his head against the high back of his plush seat and
chuckled silently at the clever manner in which he had enticed Dot
into leaving the ranch, how splendidly his lie about borrowing two
thousand dollars from Sheriff Warburton had worked out, how
successfully he had manipulated affairs so that Dot would possibly
never know that her father had played the sneak to effect the
capture of Billy Gee. Yes, and there was also considerable
satisfaction for him in the knowledge that he, Lemuel, had spirited
his Dot out of the country before Sangerly and his bloodhounds could
even see her, not to mention interview her.
He told himself that if for no other reason than to insure her
against annoyance he would likewise keep her whereabouts secret. No
one would know that she was attending the Longwell Seminary until
the search for the missing twenty thousand dollars had come to an
end. Meanwhile, he would contrive to question her and find out what
she knew about those saddlebags and their contents. Dot would tell
him, of that he felt quite sure; and some day perhaps, when the
whole thing was ancient history, and she had graduated with high
honors, he would tell her how her father had captured,
single-handed, the far-famed daring desperado, Billy Gee, and why he
had done it.
Morning found him still wide-eyed, staring unseeingly out of the car
window at the multiplying miles of rich San Joaquin Valley acreage
flashing by. Around seven o’clock the train stopped for a few
minutes at Tracy, a junction town, and passengers from the north
began piling in.
A newsboy came hurrying down the aisle, clamoring his wares
excitedly. Lemuel hailed the youngster and bought a paper. Dot still
slept and, seeing this, he settled himself comfortably in the seat
to read. The following instant he caught his breath in sudden alarm,
and sat bolt upright. His face paling through its tan, he glared
with bulging eyes at the three words printed in large display type
across the top of the first page.
DESPERATE BANDIT ESCAPES!
Billy Gee Attacks Sheriff, Plunges From Fast-moving Train Near
Burbank.
For a long moment, Lemuel continued to glare fearfully at those
headlines, then he sank limply back in his seat.
He felt Dot stir and, looking guiltily at her, saw that she was
waking. Whereupon, he stuffed the paper into his pocket and
presently rose and walked unsteadily out of the coach, heading for
the smoking car. From that instant forward, he carried day and night
in his mind a picture of Billy Gee standing in Sheriff Warburton’s
room in Geerusalem and he heard again the bandit’s ominous threat:
“Huntington, I’m goin’ to be free one of these days. When I am, I’m
huntin’ you up. An’ you’re goin’ to pay, Huntington. Remember that!
Damn you, you’ll pay like you never paid in yore life!”