LUCY PLANS A COUNTER-ATTACK
One who has never lived in a frontier camp such as Ragtown may find it
difficult to analyze the characters of Lucy Dalles and Albert Drummond.
Less than a year before Ragtown had sprung up overnight, both had been
ordinarily respectable American citizens. Lucy's crowning fault had
been the lust for wealth. Added to this now was the fierce
determination to realize her ambition, coupled with the complete
breakdown of the moral fabric of her soul. She had been flirtatious
and pleasure-loving in San Francisco, but perhaps not really bad at
heart.
Drummond had been as decent as millions of other young men who pass for
that in good society. A bit wild, but a man who dealt squarely with
others sportsmanlike, and perhaps considered perfectly honest by
himself and all who knew him.
But all this the frontier town had changed. That little semidormant
spark of wickedness and criminality which is perhaps in every mother's
son and daughter of us had been fanned to a flame by the lawlessness of
Ragtown. The feverish night life, the chink of gold on gambling tables
that were seldom unoccupied, the continual drinking of intoxicants, the
doping and robbing of stiffs, which was practiced with studied,
businesslike regularity, the brawls and shooting scrapes--all these had
worked their insidious spell upon mentalities not forfeited by careful
early training and bed-rock character.
Drummond and Lucy Dalles were dangerous conspirators now, and took a
certain pride in the knowledge of it. They not only schemed for great
rewards, but for the love of it. Lust for wealth and for revenge, the
thrill of the dangerous and underhanded game they played, contempt for
those whose moral fabric was too strongly woven to break under the
strain of Ragtown, a certain vague satisfaction in their newly
discovered rascality--all these spurred them on to make the most of
their opportunities. One step in the direction they had taken leads so
easily to another, that now they had reached a point in their moral
lapse where they would stop at nothing--not even the taking of life--to
win that on which they had set their hearts.
From a night spent at poker, Al Drummond, weary and half dead for
sleep, reeled from the Dugout early on the morning when Hiram Hooker
set out to find the crazy prospector, Basil Filer. As he slouched
along the street in the cold he heard the jingling of bells and the
rumbling of heavy wagons; and presently the freight outfit of Jerkline
Jo rolled past, the girl and her skinners, bundled to the ears and
slapping their hands against their ribs for warmth.
Drummond gave them a contemptuous glance for their honest and difficult
endeavor, then took note that his old enemy, the man from Wild-cat
Hill, was missing. He wondered about this, but gave it little thought
until it dawned upon him that Jo's beautiful black saddle mare, which
usually followed behind the wagon train with doglike loyalty, was
absent too. He stopped short then and found that he was thinking of
the old prospector, whom he had seen for the second time the day before.
He was worried. Could it be possible that Jo and Hiram had got wind of
the mystery? For all he knew, they might have met the old man
somewhere on the desert and learned his secret. It was such a usual
thing to see Hiram behind his ten black freighters on every trip in or
out that the conspirator could not down suspicion.
All that day he worried over it, but did not mention it to Lucy.
Coming from another night of poker the following morning, having seen
nothing of Hiram Hooker in the meantime, he decided to look into the
matter as best he could.
He would get his car and drive up the line a way, toward the camp where
he had seen Filer two days before. He could readily learn at
intervening camps whether or not Hiram had ridden that way on Jo's
black mare.
He had no appetite for breakfast, so he got out his touring car and
drove away toward the north while Ragtown slept.
Men were at work in the third camp that he reached, and here a little
inquiry brought forth the information that Hooker had gone the way
Drummond had feared. Now he drove fast along the road that followed
the right of way, passing rapidly through camp after camp, until he was
far from Ragtown.
It was not yet eight o'clock when, far ahead, he saw a black horse
galloping toward him. He had just run the car out upon the smooth,
dark surface of one of the desert's famous dry lakes, where almost
nothing grew. The ground was level and hard as a dance floor, so he
turned from the road and drove at right angles to it across the crusted
soil. He drove fast, and by the time the rider reached the point in
the road where Drummond first had seen him Drummond was so far away
that Hiram could not recognize him or his car.
Drummond circled now and regained the road, continuing on into the
north in search of what he dreaded to discover. But not many miles had
been covered before he was gritting his teeth and swearing over the
knowledge of his scheme's defeat. He saw rolling toward him, swinging
their packs from side to side as gently as a mother rocks a cradle, six
shaggy, long-eared "desert canaries" with an old desert-colored man
behind them who limped along with the aid of a cane.
Drummond drove no farther in that direction. There was no need for it.
The sight of the old man drifting toward Ragtown and Hiram galloping on
ahead of him showed him plainly that the cat was out of the bag, that
the two had held a conference on the desert during the night just past.
Bitter with rage, Drummond turned about and drove fiercely back in
Hiram's wake. He slowed down when he began to draw near to the horse
and rider, and for an hour kept his distance while he waited for Hiram
to reach another dry lake that was nearer to Ragtown than the first.
When the rider ahead had reached it and was galloping across if,
Drummond speeded up, reached the lake in turn, and at last was able to
make a wide half circle over land where no greasewood grew to impede
the course of the car.
The lake was a large one, and by driving at close to sixty miles an
hour and skirting its edge, he reached the road again a mile ahead of
Hiram, and sped on toward home to break the news of defeat to Lucy
Dalles.
At ten o'clock he reached Ragtown, having driven recklessly.
"Somebody's spilled the beans!" was his stormy beginning. "We're
gypped. Got any jackass? Gi'me the bottle. I'm a wreck!"
He dropped wearily into a chair and told of what he had discovered.
"How on earth did they get wind of it?" she asked.
Drummond threw out his hands in a gesture proclaiming ignorance and
despair.
"There's one thing sure," she said thoughtfully. "He saw the paper
only yesterday or last night for the first time. Else why did he ride
way up there to see Filer? Jerkline Jo, then, has not yet seen it.
They've heard about it, though, and Hooker was sent out to hunt for
Filer. So the first thing the big rube will do when he reaches Ragtown
will be to travel over toward Julia to overtake Jo and report. He'll
get another horse, maybe, or hire a machine. Tweet would be in on it,
no doubt, and would take him in his car. So what we've got to do, my
dear boy, is to see that Hooker doesn't get to Jo with what he's
learned."
"What can we do? He probably made a copy of what's written on Filer's
paper, so, even if we were to hold him up and get it away from him, old
Filer still would have the dope."
"Of course. That means that we've got to fix that old dub, too."
"What d'ye mean fix him?"
The girl shrugged. "Stop the leak some way," she replied. "If we can
destroy Filer's paper and the copy Hooker's got, then we'll be the only
ones who know the dope. We'll have the only copy in existence, in
other words; and even if we fail to get at Jerkline Jo and learn the
rest of it, we can hold her to our terms. She won't be able to do a
thing without knowing what her father wrote on the paper that Filer
has."
"Lucy, it's a crazy business," said Drummond. "Sometimes I think it's
all a pipedream of that nutty old prospector. They're all
bughouse--these old desert rats."
"It's not a pipedream," Lucy stoutly maintained. "I tell you I saw the
blue tattoo marks on that woman's scalp when I was beautifying her up
for the ball that night. I wondered what they were. Of course, with
her heavy hair covering them--growing right out of them, in fact--I
couldn't make out anything but blue dots."
"And you didn't ask her about 'em?"
"Why, of course not, Al! Do you suppose a hair dresser would last very
long in the business if she showed curiosity about a thing like that?
You don't know much about women. If I'd found a knob on her nut as big
as a baseball she'd never have been told that I'd seen it."
"But how in thunder has she reached her present age without knowing
it's there?"
"She inadvertantly explained that; and so, when later in the day, old
Filer spilled what he knew I was sure Jo had never dreamed of what she
is carrying about under her hair.
"You see, she was raised like an Indian. She told me that, even when
she was a little kid, she'd always been made to wash her own hair. She
naïvely confided to me that when she came into my place it was her
first time in any sort of a beauty parlor. A woman can't very well see
the back of her head, can she? And she'd never be able to see the
tattoo marks, even with two mirrors, with all that beautiful hair she's
got. Do you know what your scalp looks like, at the back of your head,
just above your ears? I guess not! You bet it's straight! And here
you sit arguing about a trifle, when a rich gold claim is slipping from
our fingers. Can't you--put your brain to work?"
"Well, what's to be done?"
"If that big boog starts to overtake Jerkline Jo, he's got to be
stopped, and the copy taken away from him. While this is going on,
Filer must be held up and the original taken from him and destroyed.
"Then when we get the copy away from Hooker and destroy Filer's
original, we can throw our cards on the table and laugh at 'em. Come
right out and say, 'Yes, we schemed to beat you, and we've done it.
What're you going to do about it? You've got the tattooed part, we've
got the only copy of the other part. Make us an offer! Otherwise,
throw us in jail, if you think you've got it on us; but before we go
the paper will go up in smoke!' That'll hold 'em; and we'll demand
that we are not to be prosecuted, and we'll shake down half of the haul.
"But listen, Al--we'll do that only if they beat us out up to a point
where negotiations become necessary. If only we can destroy the
original and Hooker's copy, we can hold Hooker a prisoner till we get
at Jerkline Jo and find out what's on her head. Then we can hog it all
and beat it."
"Well--well, how'll we begin? You got me beat, Lucy. You're a better
schemer than I am. What's to be done first?"
"Beat it in your car to the mountains and get Tehachapi and the other
roughnecks. Send Tehachapi Hank up the line to waylay Filer between
camps somewhere, with instructions to get the original from him by hook
or crook. Leave it to Hank.
"Meantime, Hooker gets in here and starts after Jerkline Jo. It's
doubtful if the thickhead will think to memorize what's on his copy, as
I have done. Even if he does think to, he won't have time to do it
before you nab him. He's dense--he wouldn't learn it in a week, I'll
say!"
"You and Hank's friend will waylay him, then, and get his copy, destroy
it, and take Hooker into the mountains as a prisoner, with Hank's
friend to guard him. Then it will be up to you and me to get Jerkline
Jo as she's coming back through the mountains. Yes, I'll go along! It
seems the rest of you can do nothing. Leave that Jane to me! I'll get
her by a method unknown to you men!
"We'll dope her, cut off her hair, shave her scalp, and get the part of
the directions for finding the gold that we lack. Then, Al, why can't
you and I get the stuff, beat it, and give Hank and the other jasper
the ha-ha?"
"Lucy, you're getting to be a regular little devil!"
Lucy shrugged and seemed rather pleased than otherwise.
"And your ideas about that gold are of the vaguest," he continued.
"You seem to think it's lying about in chunks, begging to be picked up
and heaped in bushel baskets! All we can do, perhaps, is make claim
filings, and get to Los Angeles and record them. Then, to realize
anything, we've got to take mining engineers out there to make tests.
Then the companies they represent will make us an offer--and probably
skin us alive. In the meantime we'll be having all kinds of trouble
with Jerkline Jo and her bunch of roustabouts."
"Well, then, we'll settle all that later," Lucy retorted. "Your first
move is to go for Hank and get a toehold, as Tweet says. Don't borrow
trouble! It's time to figure out our future steps when we know we hold
all the trumps. And the sooner you start the better. Thank Heaven
you've not gambled away your last automobile, Al! Their horses beat
you before, but your last little old boat will win out now. Get after
'em, boy! It's a great game if you don't weaken!"
Five minutes later Drummond was driving rapidly toward the mouth of the
mountain pass. By three o'clock he was back and following the line of
camps again, with Tehachapi Hank huddled on the floor of the tonneau
and covered with robes. Drummond had the good fortune to pass through
Demarest, Spruce & Tillou's Camp Number Two when Hiram had stopped
there for a late "hand-out," furnished by the obliging cooks. Drummond
saw the black mare standing near the cook tent door, and hurried on
through, elated over the knowledge that Hiram had not seen him. He at
last dumped his passenger on the desert between camps, having estimated
that the slow-moving burro train could not be many miles ahead.
Promising to return for Hank as soon as possible, Drummond raced back
toward Ragtown, passed Hiram again--at close quarters this time--and
reached the tent village ahead of him early in the evening.
Now he and Lucy settled down to wait for Hiram's coming and to watch
his future movements.