The world was palpably a triangle, baseless to southward; walled out by
iron, radiant ramparts--a black range, gateless, on the east; a gray
range on the west, broken, spiked, and bristling. At the northern limit
of vision the two ranges closed together to what seemed relatively the
sharp apex of the triangle, the mere intersection of two lines. This
point, this seemingly dimensionless dot, was in reality two score weary
miles of sandhills, shapeless, vague, and low; waterless, colorless,
and forlorn. Southward the central desert was uninhabitable; opinions
differed about the edges.
Still in Arizona, the eye wearied; miles and leagues slid together to
indistinguishable inches. Then came a low line of scattered hills that
roughly marked the Mexican border.
The mirage played whimsical pranks with these outpost hills. They became,
in turn, cones, pyramids, boxes, benches, chimney stacks, hourglasses.
Sometimes they soared high in air, like the kites of a baby god; and,
beneath, the unbroken desert stretched afar, wavering, misty, and dim.
Again, on clear, still days, these hills showed crystalline, thin, icy,
cameo-sharp; beyond, between, faint golden splotches of broad Sonoran
plain faded away to nothingness; and, far beyond that nothingness, hazy
Sonoran peaks of dimmest blue rose from illimitable immensities, like
topmasts of a very large ship on a very small globe; and the earth was
really round, as alleged.
It was fitting and proper that the desert, as a whole, had no name: the
spinning earth itself has none. Inconsiderable nooks and corners were
named, indeed--Crow Flat, the Temporal, Moonshine, the Rincoñada. It
should rather be said, perhaps, that the desert had no accepted name.
Alma Mater, Lungs called it. But no one minded Lungs.
Mr. Stanley Mitchell woke early in the Blue Bedroom to see the morning
made. He threw back the tarpaulin and sat up, yawning; with every line of
his face crinkled up, ready to laugh for gladness.
The morning was shaping up well. Glints of red snapped and sparkled in
the east; a few late stars loitered along the broad, clean skies. A jerky
clatter of iron on rock echoed from the cliffs. That was the four hobbled
horses, browsing on the hillside: they snuffed and snorted cheerfully,
rejoicing in the freshness of dawn. From a limestone bluff, ten feet
behind the bed, came a silver tinkle of falling water from a spring,
dripping into its tiny pool.
Stan drew in a great breath and snuffed, exactly as the horses snuffed
and from the same reason--to express delight; just as a hungry man smacks
his lips over a titbit. Pungent, aromatic, the odor of wood smoke alloyed
the taintless air of dawn. The wholesome smell of clean, brown earth, the
spicy tang of crushed herb and shrub, of cedar and juniper, mingled with
a delectable and savory fragrance of steaming coffee and sizzling,
spluttering venison.
Pete Johnson sat cross-legged before the fire. This mess of venison was
no hit-or-miss affair; he was preparing a certain number of venison
steaks, giving to each separate steak the consideration of an artist.
Stanley Mitchell kicked the blankets flying. "Whoo-hoo-oo! This is the
life!" he proclaimed. Orisons more pious have held less gratitude.
He tugged on one boot, reached for the other--and then leaped to his feet
like a jack-in-the-box. With the boot in his hand he pointed to the
south. High on the next shadowy range, thirty miles away, a dozen
scattered campfires glowed across the dawn.
"What the Billy-hell?" he said, startled.
"Stan-ley!"
"I will say wallop! I won't be a lady if I can't say wallop!" quoth Stan
rebelliously. "What's doing over at the Gavilan? There's never been three
men at once in those fiend-forsaken pinnacles before. Hey! S'pose they've
struck it rich, like we did?"
"I'm afraid not," sighed Pete. "You toddle along and wash um's paddies.
She's most ripe."
With a green-wood poker he lifted the lid from the bake-oven. The biscuit
were not browned to his taste; he dumped the blackening coals from the
lid and slid it into the glowing heart of the fire; he raked out a new
bed of coals and lifted the little three-legged bake-oven over them; with
his poker he skillfully flirted fresh coals on the rimmed lid and put it
back on the oven. He placed the skillet of venison on a flat rock at his
elbow and poured coffee into two battered tin cups. Breakfast was now
ready, and Pete raised his voice in the traditional dinner call of the
ranges:
"Come and get it or I'll throw it out!"
Stanley came back from a brisk toilet at Ironspring. He took a
preliminary sip of coffee, speared a juicy steak, and eyed his companion
darkly. Mr. Johnson plied knife and fork assiduously, with eyes downcast
and demure.
Stanley Mitchell's smooth young face lined with suspicion.
"When you've been up to some deviltry I can always tell it on you--you
look so incredibly meek and meechin', like a cat eatin' the canary," he
remarked severely. "Thank you for a biscuit. And the sugar! Now what
warlockry is this?" He jerked a thumb at the far-off fires. "What's the
merry prank?"
Mr. Johnson sighed again.
"Deception. Treachery. Mine." He looked out across the desert to the
Gavilan Hills with a complacent eye. "And breach of trust. Mine, again."
"Who you been betrayin' now?"
"Just you. You and your pardner; the last bein' myself. You know them
location papers of ours I was to get recorded at Tucson?"
Stanley nodded.
"Well, now," said Pete, "I didn't file them papers. Something real
curious happened on the way in--and I reckon I'm the most superstitious
man you ever see. So I tried a little experiment. Instead, I wrote out a
notice for that little old ledge we found over on the Gavilan a month
back. I filed that, just to see if any one was keeping cases on us--and I
filed it the very last thing before I left Tucson: You see what's
happened." He waved his empty coffee-cup at the campfires. "I come
right back and we rode straight to Ironspring. But there's been people
ridin' faster than us--ridin' day and night. Son, if our copper claims
had really been in the Gavilan, instead of a-hundred-and-then-some long
miles in another-guess direction--then what?"
"We'd have found our claim jumped and a bunch to swear they'd been
working there before the date of our notices; that they didn't find the
scratch of a pick on the claim, no papers and no monument--that's what
we'd have found."
"Correct! Pass the meat."
"But we haven't told a soul," protested Stanley. "How could any one know?
We all but died of thirst getting back across the desert--the wind rubbed
out our tracks; we laid up at Soledad Springs a week before any one saw
us; when we finally went in to Cobre no one knew where we had been, that
we had found anything, or even that we'd been looking for anything. How
could any one know?"
"This breakfast is getting cold," said Pete Johnson. "Good grub hurts no
one. Let's eat it. Then I'll let a little ray of intelligence filter into
your darkened mind."
Breakfast finished, Stan piled the tin dishes with a clatter. "Now then,
old Greedy! Break the news to me."
Pete considered young Stan through half-closed lids--a tanned,
smooth-faced, laughing, curly-headed, broad-shouldered young giant.
"You got any enemies, pardner?"
"Not one in the world that I know of," declared Stan cheerfully.
"Back in New York, maybe?"
"Not a one. No reason to have one."
Pete shook his head reflectively.
"You're dreadful dumb, you know. Think again. Think hard. Take some one's
girl away from him, maybe?"
"Not a girl. Never had but one Annie," said Stanley. "I'm her Joe."
"Ya-as. Back in New York. I've posted letters to her: Abingdon P.O. Name
of Selden."
Stanley went brick red.
"That's her. I'm her Joe. And when we get this little old bonanza of ours
to grinding she won't be in New York any more. Come again, old-timer.
What's all this piffle got to do with our mine?"
"If you only had a little brains," sighed Johnson disconsolately, "I'd
soon find out who had it in for you, and why. It's dreadful inconvenient
to have a pardner like that. Why, you poor, credulous baa-lamb of a
trustful idiot, when you let me go off to file them papers, don't you see
you give me the chance to rob you of a mine worth, just as she stands,
'most any amount of money you chance to mention? Not you! You let me ride
off without a misgivin'."
"Pish!" remarked Stan scornfully. "Twaddle! Tommyrot! Pickles!"
Pete wagged a solemn forefinger.
"If you wasn't plumb simple-minded and trustin' you would 'a' tumbled
long ago that somebody was putting a hoodoo on every play you make. I
caught on before you'd been here six months. I thought, of course, you'd
been doin' dirt to some one--till I come to know you."
"I thank you for those kind words," grinned Mitchell; "also, for the
friendly explanation with which you cover up some bad luck and more
greenhorn's incompetence."
"No greenhorn could be so thumbhandsided as all that," rejoined Pete
earnestly. "Your irrigation ditches break and wash out; cattle get into
your crops whenever you go to town; but your fences never break when
you're round the ranch. Notice that?"
"I did observe something of that nature," confessed Mitchell. "I laid it
to sheer bad luck."
The older man snorted.
"Bad luck! You've been hoodooed! After that, you went off by your
lonesome and tried cattle. Your windmills broke down; your cattle was
stole plumb opprobrious--Mexicans blamed, of course. And the very first
winter the sheep drifted in on you--where no sheep had never blatted
before--and eat you out of house and home."
"I sold out in the spring," reflected Stanley. "I ran two hundred head
of stock up to one hundred and twelve in six months. Go on! Your story
interests me, strangely. I begin to think I was not as big a fool as
I thought I was, and that it was foolish of me to ever think my folly
was--"
Johnson interrupted him.
"Then you bought a bunch of sheep. Son, you can't realize how
great-minded it is of me to overlook that slip of yours! You was out of
the way of every man in the world; you was on your own range, watering at
your own wells--the only case like that on record. And the second dark
night some petulant and highly anonymous cowboys run off your herder and
stampeded your woollies over a bluff."
"Sheep outrages have happened before," observed Stan, rather dryly.
"Sheep outrages are perpetrated by cowmen on cow ranges," rejoined Pete
hotly. "I guess I ought to know. Sheepmen aren't ever killed on their own
ranges; it isn't respectable. Sheepmen are all right in their place--and
hell's the place."
"Peter!" said Stan. "Such langwidge!"
"Wallop! Wallop!" barked Peter, defiant and indignant. "I will say
wallop! Now you shut up whilst I go on with your sad history. Son, you
was afflicted some with five-card insomnia--and right off, when you first
came, you had it fair shoved on you by people usually most disobligin'.
It wasn't just for your money; there was plenty could stack 'em higher
than you could, and them fairly achin' to be fleeced, at that. If your
head hadn't been attached to your shoulders good and strong, if you
hadn't figured to be about square, or maybe rectangular, you had a
chance to be a poker fiend or a booze hoist."
"You're spoofing me, old dear. Wake up; it's morning."
"Don't fool yourself, son. There was a steady organized effort to get you
in bad. And it took money to get all these people after your goat. Some
one round here was managin' the game, for pay. But't wasn't no Arizona
head that did the plannin'. Any Rocky Mountain roughneck mean enough for
that would 'a' just killed you once and been done with it. No, sir; this
party was plumb civilized--this guy that wanted your goat. He wanted to
spoil your rep; he probably had conscientious scruples about bloodshed.
Early trainin'," said Mr. Johnson admiringly, "is a wonderful thing! And,
after they found you wouldn't fall for the husks and things, they went
out to put a crimp in your bank roll. Now, who is to gain by putting you
on the blink, huh?"
"No one at all," said Stan. "You're seein' things at night! What happened
on the Cobre Trail to stir up your superstitions?"
"Two gay young lads--punchers of Zurich's--tried to catch me with my gun
unloaded. That's what! And if herdin' with them blasted baa-sheep hadn't
just about ruined your intellect, you'd know why, without asking," said
Pete. "Look now! I was so sure that you was bein' systematically
hornswoggled that, when two rank strangers made that sort of a ranikiboo
play at me, I talked it out with myself, like this--not out loud--just
me and Pete colloguing:
"'These gentlemen are pickin' on you, Pete. What's that for?' 'Why,'
says Pete, 'that's because you're Stan's pardner, of course. These two
laddie-bucks are some small part of the gang, bunch, or congregation
that's been preyin' on Stan.' 'What they tryin' to put over on Stan now?'
I asks, curiosity getting the better of my good manners. 'Not to pry into
private matters any,' says I, 'but this thing is getting personal. I can
feel malicious animal magnetism coursin' through every vein and leapin'
from crag to crag,' says I. 'A joke's a joke, and I can take a joke as
well as any man; but when I'm sick in my bed, and the undertaker comes to
my house and looks into my window and says, "Darlin'! I am waitin' for
thee!"--that's no joke. And if Stanley Mitchell's facetious friends begin
any hilarity with me I'll transact negotiations with 'em--sure! So I put
it up to you, Petey--square and aboveboard--what are they tryin' to work
on Stan now?'
"'To get his mine, you idjit!' says Pete. 'Now be reasonable,' says I.
'How'd they know we got any mine?' 'Didn't you tote a sample out of that
blisterin' old desert?' says Pete. 'We did,' I admits, 'just one little
chunk the size of a red apple--and it weighed near a couple of ton whilst
we was perishin' for water. But we stuck to it closer than a rich
brother-in-law,' says I. 'You been had!' jeers Pete. 'What kind of talk
is this? You caught that off o' Thorpe, over on the Malibu--you been
had! Talk United States! Do you mean I've been bunked?' I spoke up sharp;
but I was feelin' pretty sick, for I just remembered that we didn't
register that sample when we mailed it to the assayer.
"'Your nugget's been seen, and sawed, and smeltered. Got that? As part of
the skulduggery they been slippin' to young Stan, your package has been
opened,' says Petey, leerin' at me. 'Great Scott! Then they know we got
just about the richest mine in Arizona!' I says, with my teeth chatterin'
so that I stammers. 'Gosh, no! Else the coyotes would be pickin' your
bones,' says Pete. 'They know you've got some rich ore, but they figure
it to be some narrow, pinchin', piddlin' little vein somewheres. How can
they guess you found a solid mountain of the stuff?'
"'Sufferin' cats!' says I. 'Then is every play I make--henceforth and
forever, amen--to be gaumed up by a mess of hirelin' bandogs? Persecutin'
Stan was all very well--but if they take to molesting me any, it's
going to make my blood fairly boil! Is some one going to draw down wages
for makin' me mizzable all the rest of my whole life?' 'No such luck,'
says Petey. 'Your little ore package was taken from the mail as part of
the system of pesterin' Stanley--but, once the big boss-devil glued his
bug-eyes on that freeworkin' copper stuff, he throwed up his employer
and his per diem, and is now operating roundabout on his own. They take
it you might have papers about you showing where your claim is--location
papers, likely. That's all! These ducks, here, want to go through you.
Nobody wants to kill you--not now. Not yet--any more than usual. But, if
you ask me,' said Petey, 'if they ever come to know as much about that
copper claim as you know, they'll do you up. Yes, sir! From ambush,
likely. So long as they are dependin' on you to lead them to it, you're
safe from that much, maybe. After they find out where it is--_cuidado!_'
"'But who took that package out of the mail, Petey? It might have been
any one of several or more--old Zurich, here at Cobre; or the postmaster
at Silverbell; or the postal clerks on the railroad; or the post-office
people at El Paso.'
"'You're an old pig-headed fool,' says Pete to me; 'and you lie like a
thief. You know who it was, same as I do--old C. Mayer Zurich, grand
champion lightweight collar-and-elbow grafter and liar, cowman,
grubstaker, general storekeeper, postmaster, and all-round crook, right
here in Cobre--right here where young Stanley's been gettin' 'em dealt
from the bottom for three years. Them other post-office fellows never had
no truck with Stanley--never so much as heard of him. Zurich's here.
He had the disposition, the motive, the opportunity, and the habit.
Besides, he sold you a shoddy coat once. Forgotten that?'"
Pete paused to glower over that coat; and young Mitchell, big-eyed and
gasping, seized the chance to put in a word:
"You're an ingenious old nightmare, pardner--you almost make it
convincing. But Great Scott, man! Can't you see that your fine, plausible
theory is all built on surmise and wild conjecture? You haven't got a leg
to stand on--not one single fact!"
"Whilst I was first a-constructing this ingenious theory your objection
might have carried force; for I didn't have a fact to stand on, as you
observe. I conjectured round pretty spry, too. Reckon it took me all of
half a second--while them two warriors was giving me the evil eye. I'll
tell you how it was." He related the story of the shooting match and the
lost bet. "And to this unprovoked design against an inoffensive stranger
I fitted the only possible meaning and shape that would make a lick of
sense, dovetailin' in with the real honest-to-goodness facts I already
knew."
"But don't you see, old thing, you're still up in the air? Your theory
doesn't touch ground anywhere."
"Stanley--my poor deluded boy!--when I got to the railroad I wired that
assayer right off. Our samples never reached El Paso. So I wrote out my
fake location and filed it. See what followed that filing--over yonder? I
come this way on purpose, expecting to see those fires, Stanley. If they
hadn't been there we'd have gone on to our mine. Now we'll go anywhere
else."
"Well, I'll just be teetotally damned!" Stanley remarked with great
fervor.
"Trickling into your thick skull, is it? Son, get a piece of charcoal.
Now you make black marks on that white rock as I tell you, to hold
down my statements so they don't flutter away with the wind. Ready?
Number One: Our copper samples didn't reach the assayer--make a long
black mark ... Therefore--make a short black mark ... Number Two:
Either Old Pete's crazy theory is correct in every particular--a long
black mark ... Or--now a short black mark ... Number Three: The assayer
has thrown us down--a long black mark ... Number Four: Which would
be just as bad--make a long black mark."