Something Dewing, owner of Cobre's Emporium of Chance, sat in his room in
the Admiral Dewey Hotel. It was a large and pleasant room, refitted and
over-furnished by Mr. Dewing at the expense of his fellow townsmen,
grateful or otherwise. It is well to mention here that, upon the tongues
of the scurrile, "Something," as a praise-name and over-name for Mr.
Dewing, suffered a sea change to "Surething"--Surething Dewing; just as
the Admiral Dewey Hotel was less favorably known as "Stagger Inn."
Mr. Dewing's eye rested dreamily upon the picture, much praised of
connoisseurs, framed by his window--the sharp encircling contours of
Cobre Mountain; the wedge of tawny desert beyond Farewell Gap. Rousing
himself from such contemplation, he broke a silence, sour and unduly
prolonged.
"Four o'clock, and all's ill! Johnson is not the man to be cheated out of
a fortune without putting up a fight. Young Mitchell himself is neither
fool nor weakling. He can shoot, too. We have had no news. Therefore--a
conclusion that will not have escaped your sagacity--something has gone
amiss with our little expeditionary force in the Gavilan. Johnson is
quite the Paladin; but he could hardly exterminate such a bunch as that.
It is my firm conviction that we are now, on this pleasant afternoon,
double-crossed in a good and workmanlike manner.
"The Johnson-Mitchell firm is now Johnson, Mitchell & Company, our late
friends, or the survivors, being the Company."
These remarks were addressed to the elder of Mr. Dewing's two table
mates. But it was Eric Anderson, tall and lean and lowering, who
made answer.
"You may set your uneasy mind at rest, Mr. Something. Suspectin'
treachery comes natural to you--being what you are."
"There--that's enough!"
This was the third man, Mayer Zurich. He sprang up, speaking sharply; a
tall, straight man, broad-shouldered, well proportioned, with a handsome,
sparkling, high-colored face. "Eric, you grow more insolent every day.
Cut it out!"
Mr. Dewing, evenly enough, shifted his thoughtful gaze upon tall Eric,
seemingly without resentment for the outburst.
"Well, wasn't he insultin' the boys then?" demanded Eric.
"I guess you're right, there," Mayer Zurich admitted. "I was not at all
in favor of taking so many of them in on this proposition; but I'm not
afraid of them doin' me dirt, now they're in. I don't see why the three
of us couldn't have kept this to ourselves--but Something had to blab it
out! Why he should do that, and then distrust the very men he chose for
so munificent a sharing of a confidence better withheld--that is quite
beyond my understanding. Dewing, you would never have clapped an eye on
that nugget if I had suspected in you so unswerving a loyalty to the
gang. I confess I was disappointed in you--and I count you my right-hand
man."
The speech of the educated man, in Mr. Zurich, was overlaid with
colloquialism and strange idiom, made a second tongue by long
familiarity.
"Your left-hand man!" Dewing made the correction with great composure.
"You come to me to help you, because, though you claim all the discredit
for your left-handed activities, I furnish a good half of the brains.
And I blabbed--as you so elegantly phrased it--because I am far too
intelligent to bite a bulldog for a bone. Our friends in the Gavilan
pride themselves on their nerve. They are fighting men, if you
please--very fearless and gallant. That suits me. I am no gentleman.
Quite the contrary. I am very intelligent, as afore-said. It was the part
of prudence--"
"That is a very good word--prudence." The interpolation came from tall
Eric.
"A very good word," assented the gambler, unmoved. "It was the part of
prudence to let our valiant friends and servants pull these chestnuts
from the fire, as aforetime. To become the corpse of a copper king is a
prospect that holds no attractions for me."
"But why--why on earth--did you insist on employing men you now distrust?
you bewilder me, Dewing," declared Zurich. "What's the idea--to swindle
yourself?"
"You will do me the justice to remember," observed Dewing with a
thin-lipped smile, "that I urged upon you, repeatedly and most strongly,
as a desirable preliminary to our operations, to remove Mr. Peter Johnson
from this unsatisfactory world without any formal declaration of war."
"I won't do it!" declared Zurich bluntly. "And--damn you--you shan't do
it! He's a dangerous old bow-legged person, and I wish he was farther. And
I must admit that I am myself most undesirous for any personal bickering
with him. To hear Jim Scarboro relate it, old Pete is one wiz with a
six-gun. All the same, I'll not let him be shot from ambush. He's too
good for that. I draw the line there. I'm not exactly afraid of the
little old wasp, either, when it comes down to cases; but I have great
respect for him. I'll never agree to meet him on a tight rope over
Niagara and make him turn back; and if I have any trouble with him he's
got to bring it to me. You have no monopoly of prudence."
"There it is, you see!" Something Dewing spread out his fine hands. "You
made no allowance for my loyalty and I made none for your scruples. As a
result, Mr. Johnson has established a stalemate, held a parley, and
bought off our warriors. They've been taken in on the copper find, on
some small sharing, while we, in quite another sense of the word, are
simply taken in. Such," observed Mr. Dewing philosophically, "is the
result of inopportune virtues."
"Bosh! I told you all along," said Anderson heavily, "that there's no
mineral in the Gavilan. I've been over every foot of it--and I'm a miner.
We get no news because no man makes haste to announce his folly. You'll
see!"
"Creede and Cripple Creek had been prospected over and over again before
they struck it there," objected Zurich.
"Silver and gold!" retorted Eric scornfully. "This is copper. Copper
advertises. No, sir! I'll tell you what's happened. There's been no
battle, and no treachery, and no mine found. We've been trapped. That
Gavilan location was a fake, stuck up to draw our fire. We've tipped our
hand. Mr. Johnson can now examine the plans of mice or men that your
combined sagacities have so obligingly placed face upward before him, and
decide his policies at his leisure. If I were in his shoes, this is what
I would be at: I'd tell my wondrous tale to big money. And then I would
employ very many stranger men accustomed to arms; and when I went after
that mine, I would place under guard any reasonable and obliging
travelers I met, and establish a graveyard for the headstrong. And that's
what Johnson will do. He'll go to the Coast for capital, at the same
time sendin' young Stanley back to his native East on the same errand."
"You may be right," said Zurich, somewhat staggered. "If you are, their
find must be a second Verde or Cananea, or they would never have taken a
precaution so extraordinary as a false location. What on earth can have
happened to rouse their suspicions to that extent?"
"Man, I wonder at you!" said tall Eric. "You put trust in your brains,
your money, and your standing to hold you unstained by all your
left-handed business. You expect no man to take heed of you, when the
reek of it smells to high heaven. Well, you deceive yourself the more.
These things get about; and they are none so unobserving a people, south
of the Gila, where 't is fair life or death to them to note betweenwhiles
all manner of small things--the set of a pack, the tongue of a buckle,
the cleat of a mine ladder. And your persecution of young Stanley, now.
Was you expectin' that to go unremarked? 'T is that has made Peter
Johnson shy of all bait. 'T was a sorry business from the first--hazing
that boy; I take shame to have hand in it. And for every thousand of that
dirty money we now stand to lose a million."
"'T was a piker's game," sneered Dewing. "Not worth the trouble and risk.
We had about three thousand from Zurich to split between us; little
enough. Of course Zurich kept his share, the lion's share."
"You got the middleman's chunk, at any rate," retorted Zurich.
"I did the middleman's work," said the gambler tranquilly. "Now,
gentlemen, we have not been agreeing very well of late. Eric, in
particular, has been far from flattering in his estimates of my social
and civic value. We are agreed on that? Very well. I may have mentioned
my intelligence? And that I rate it highly? Yes? Very well, then. I shall
now demonstrate that my self-appraisal was justified by admitting that my
judgment on this occasion was at fault. Eric's theories as to our delayed
news from our expedition are sound; they work out; they prove themselves.
The same is true of his very direct and lucid statement as to the nature
and cause of the difficulties which now beset us. I now make the direct
appeal to you, Eric: As a candid man or mouse, what would you do next?"
Tall Eric bent his brows darkly at the gambler.
"If you mean that I fear the man Johnson at all, why do you not use
tongue and lips to say that same? I am not greatly chafed by an open
enemy, but I am no great hand to sit down under a mock."
"It was your own word--the mice," said Dewing. "But this time you take me
wrongly. I meant no mockery. I ask you, in good faith, for your opinion.
What ought to be done to retrieve the false step?"
"Could we find this treasure-trove by a painstaking search of the hills?"
asked Zurich doubtfully. "It's a biggish country."
"Man," said Eric, "I've prospected out there for fifteen years and I've
scarce made a beginning. If we're to find Johnson's strike before Johnson
makes a path to it, we have a month, at most. Find it, says you? Sure, we
might find it. But if we do it will be by blind fool-hog luck and not by
painstakin' search. Do you search, if you like. My word would be to try
negotiations. Make a compromise with Johnson. And if your prudence does
not like the errand, I will even take it upon myself."
"What is there to compromise? We have nothing to contribute."
"We have safety to sell," said Eric. "Seek out the man and state the case
baldly: 'Sir, we have protection to sell, without which your knowledge is
worthless, or near it. Protection from ourselves and all others. Make
treaty with us; allot to us, jointly, some share, which you shall name
yourself, and we will deal justly by you. So shall you avoid delay. You
may avoid some risk. _Quién sabe?_ If you refuse we shall truly endeavor
to be interestin'; and you may get nothing.' That's what I would say."
"A share, to be named by Johnson and then be divided between ten? Well, I
guess not!" declared Zurich. "To begin with, we'll find a way to stop Kid
Mitchell from any Eastern trip. Capital is shy; I'm not much afraid of
what Johnson can do. But this boy has the inside track."
"With my usual astuteness," remarked Something Dewing, "I had divined as
much. And there is another string to our bow if we make a complete
failure of this mine business--as would seem to be promised by the
Gavilan fiasco. When such goodly sums are expended to procure the
downfall of Kid Mitchell--an event as yet unexpectedly delayed--there's
money in it somewhere. Big money! I know it. And I mean to touch some
of it. My unknown benefactor shall have my every assistance to attain his
hellish purpose--hellish purpose, I believe, is the phrase proper to the
complexion of this affair. Then, to use the words of the impulsive
Hotspur, slightly altered to suit the occasion, I'll creep upon him while
he lies asleep, and in his ear I'll whisper--Snooks!"
"You don't know where he lives," said Zurich.
"Ah, but you do! I beg your pardon, Zurich--perhaps in my thoughtlessness
I have wounded you. I used the wrong pronoun. I did not mean to say
'I'--much less 'you'--in reference to who should hollo 'Halves!' to our
sleeping benefactor. 'We' was the word I should have used."
Zurich regarded Mr. Dewing in darkling silence; and that gentleman, in no
way daunted, continued gayly:
"I see that the same idea has shadowed itself to you. You must consider
us--Eric and I--equals in that enterprise, friend Mayer. Three good
friends together. I begin to fear we have sadly underestimated Eric--you
and I. By our own admission--and his--he is a better fighting man than
either of us. You wouldn't want to displease him."
"I think you go about it in an ill way to remedy a mistake, Dewing," said
Zurich. "Don't let's be silly enough to fall out over one chance gone
wrong. We've got all we can attend to right now, without such a folly as
that. Don't mind him, Eric. Tell me, rather, what we are going to do
about this troublesome Johnson? Violence is out of the question: we need
him to show us where he found that copper. Besides, it isn't safe to kill
old Pete, and it never has been safe to kill old Pete. As for the Kid,
I'll do what I have been urged to do this long time by the personage who
takes so kindly an interest in his fortunes--I'll railroad him off to
jail, at least till we get that mine or until it is, beyond question,
lost to us. It isn't wise to let him go East; he might get hold of
unlimited money. If he did, forewarned as he is now, Johnson would fix it
so we shouldn't have a look-in. You turn this over and let me know your
ideas."
"And that reminds me," said Dewing with smooth insolence, equally
maddening to both hearers, "that Eric's ideas have been notably justified
of late; whereas your ideas--and mine--have been stupid blunders from
first to last. You see me at a stand, friend Mayer, doubtful if it were
not the part of wisdom to transfer my obedience to Eric hereafter."
"For every word of that, Johnson would pay you a gold piece, and have a
rare bargain of it." Zurich's voice was hard; his eye was hard. "Is this
a time for quarreling among ourselves? There may be millions at stake,
for all we know, and you would set us at loggerheads in a fit of spleen,
like a little peevish boy. I'm ashamed of you! Get your horse and ride
off the sulks. If you feel spiteful, take it out on Johnson. Get yourself
a pack outfit and go find his mine."
"I'm no prospector," said the gambler disdainfully.
"No. I will tell you what you are." Tall Eric rose and towered above
Dewing at the window; the sun streamed on his bright hair, "You are a
crack-brained fool to tempt my hands to your throat! You will do it once
too often yet. You a prospector? You never saw the day you had the
makin's of a prospector in you."
"Let other men do the work and take the risk while I take the gain, and
it's little I care for your opinion," rejoined Dewing. "And you would do
well to keep your hands from my throat when my hand is in my coat
pocket--as is the case at this present instant."
"This thing has gone far enough," said Zurich. "Anderson, come back and
sit down. Dewing, go and fork that horse of yours and ride the black
devil out of your heart."
"I have a thing to say, first," said Eric. "Dewing, you sought to begowk
me by setting me up against Zurich--or perhaps you really thought to use
me against him. Well, you won't! When we want the information about the
man that has been harryin' young Mitchell, Zurich will tell us. We know
too much about Zurich for him to deny us our askings. But, for your mock
at me, I want you both to know two things: The first is, I desire no
headship for myself; the second is this--I take Zurich's orders because
I think he has the best head, as a usual thing; and I follow those orders
exactly so far as I please, and no step more. I am mean and worthless
because I choose to be and not at all because Mayer Zurich led me astray.
Got that, now?"
"If you're quite through," said Dewing, "I'll take that ride."
The door closed behind him.
"Disappointed! Had his mouth fixed for a million or so, and didn't get
it; couldn't stand the gaff; made him ugly," said Zurich slowly. "And
when Dewing is ugly he is unbearable; absolutely the limit."
"Isn't he?" agreed Eric in disgust. "Enough to make a man turn honest."