DEXTRY MAKES A CALL
The water front had a strong attraction for Helen Chester, and rarely
did a fair day pass without finding her in some quiet spot from which
she could watch the shifting life along its edge, the ships at anchor,
and the varied incidents of the surf.
This morning she sat in a dory pulled high up on the beach, bathed in
the bright sunshine, and staring at the rollers, while lines of
concentration wrinkled her brow. The wind had blown for some days till
the ocean beat heavily across the shallow bar, and now, as it became
quieter, longshoremen were launching their craft, preparing to resume
their traffic.
Not until the previous day had the news of her friends’ misfortune come
to her, and although she had heard no hint of fraud, she began to
realize that they were involved in a serious tangle. To the questions
which she anxiously put to her uncle he had replied that their
difficulty arose from a technicality in the mining laws which another
man had been shrewd enough to profit by. It was a complicated question,
he said, and one requiring time to thrash out to an equitable
settlement. She had undertaken to remind him of the service these men
had done her, but, with a smile, he interrupted; he could not allow such
things to influence his judicial attitude, and she must not endeavor to
prejudice him in the discharge of his duty. Recognizing the justice of
this, she had desisted.
For many days the girl had caught scattered talk between the Judge and
McNamara, and between Struve and his associates, but it all seemed
foreign and dry, and beyond the fact that it bore on the litigation over
the Anvil Creek mines, she understood nothing and cared less,
particularly as a new interest had but recently come into her life, an
interest in the form of a man--McNamara.
He had begun with quiet, half-concealed admiration of her, which had
rapidly increased until his attentions had become of a singularly
positive and resistless character.
Judge Stillman was openly delighted, while the court of one like Alec
McNamara could but flatter any girl. In his presence, Helen felt herself
rebelling at his suit, yet as distance separated them she thought ever
more kindly of it. This state of mind contrasted oddly with her feelings
towards the other man she had met, for in this country there were but
two. When Glenister was with her she saw his love lying nakedly in his
eyes and it exercised some spell which drew her to him in spite of
herself, but when he had gone, back came the distrust, the terror of the
brute she felt was there behind it all. The one appealed to her while
present, the other pled strongest while away. Now she was attempting to
analyze her feelings and face the future squarely, for she realized that
her affairs neared a crisis, and this, too, not a month after meeting
the men. She wondered if she would come to love her uncle’s friend. She
did not know. Of the other she was sure--she never could.
Busied with these reflections, she noticed the familiar figure of Dextry
wandering aimlessly. He was not unkempt, and yet his air gave her the
impression of prolonged sleeplessness. Spying her, he approached and
seated himself in the sand against the boat, while at her greeting he
broke into talk as if he was needful only of her friendly presence to
stir his confidential chords into active vibration.
“We’re in turrible shape, miss,” he said. “Our claim’s jumped. Somebody
run in and talked the boy out of it while I was gone, and now we can’t
get ’em off. He’s been tryin’ this here new law game that you-all
brought in this summer. I’ve been drunk--that’s what makes me look so
ornery.”
He said the last, not in the spirit of apology, for rarely does your
frontiersman consider that his self-indulgences require palliation, but
rather after the manner of one purveying news of mild interest, as he
would inform you that his surcingle had broken or that he had witnessed
a lynching.
“What made them jump your claim?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know nothin’ about it, because, as I remarked
previous, I ’ain’t follered the totterin’ footsteps of the law none too
close. Nor do I intend to. I simply draws out of the game fer a spell,
and lets the youngster have his fling; then if he can’t make good, I’ll
take the cards and finish it for him.
“It’s like the time I was ranchin’ with an Englishman up in Montana.
This here party claimed the misfortune of bein’ a younger son, whatever
that is, and is grubstaked to a ranch by his people back home. Havin’
acquired an intimate knowledge of the West by readin’ Bret Harte, and
havin’ assim’lated the secrets of ranchin’ by correspondence school, he
is fitted, ample, to teach us natives a thing or two--and he does it. I
am workin’ his outfit as foreman, and it don’t take long to show me that
he’s a good-hearted feller, in spite of his ridin’-bloomers an’ pinochle
eye-glass. He ain’t never had no actual experience, but he’s got a Henry
Thompson Seton book that tells him all about everything from field-mice
to gorrillys.
“We’re troubled a heap with coyotes them days, and finally this party
sends home for some Rooshian wolf-hounds. I’m fer pizenin’ a sheep
carcass, but he says:
“‘No, no, me deah man; that’s not sportsman-like; we’ll hunt ’em. Ay,
hunt ’em! Only fawncy the sport we’ll have, ridin’ to hounds!’
“‘We will not,’ says I. ‘I ain’t goin’ to do no Simon Legree stunts. It
ain’t man’s size. Bein’ English, you don’t count, but I’m growed up.’
“Nothin’ would do him but those _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ dogs, however, and
he had ’em imported clean from Berkshire or Sibeery or thereabouts, four
of ’em, great, big, blue ones. They was as handsome and imposin’ as a
set of solid-gold teeth, but somehow they didn’t seem to savvy our play
none. One day the cook rolled a rain bar’l down-hill from the kitchen,
and when them blooded critters saw it comin’ they throwed down their
tails and tore out like rabbits. After that I couldn’t see no good in
’em with a spy-glass.
“‘They ’ain’t got no grit. What makes you think they can fight?’ I asked
one day.
“‘Fight?’ says H’Anglish. ‘My deah man, they’re full-blooded. Cost
seventy pun each. They’re dreadful creatures when they’re
roused--they’ll tear a wolf to pieces like a rag--kill bears--anything.
Oh! Rully, perfectly dreadful!’
“Well, it wasn’t a week later that he went over to the east line with me
to mend a barb wire. I had my pliers and a hatchet and some staples.
About a mile from the house we jumped up a little brown bear that
scampered off when he seen us, but bein’ agin’ a bluff where he couldn’t
get away, he climbed a cotton-wood. H’Anglish was simply frothin’ with
excitement.
“‘What a misfortune! Neyther gun nor hounds.’
“‘I’ll scratch his back and talk pretty to him,’ says I, ‘while you run
back and get a Winchester and them ferocious bull-dogs.’
“‘Wolf-hounds,’ says he, with dignity, ‘full-blooded, seventy pun each.
They’ll rend the poor beast limb from limb. I hate to do it, but it’ll
be good practice for them.’
“‘They may be good renders,’ says I, ‘but don’t forgit the gun.’
“Well, I throwed sticks at the critter when he tried to unclimb the
tree, till finally the boss got back with his dogs. They set up an awful
holler when they see the bear--first one they’d ever smelled, I
reckon--and the little feller crawled up in some forks and watched
things, cautious, while they leaped about, bayin’ most fierce and
blood-curdlin’.
“‘How you goin’ to get him down?’ says I.
“I’ll shoot him in the lower jaw,’ says the Britisher, ‘so he cawn’t
bite the dogs. It’ll give ’em cawnfidence.’
“He takes aim at Mr. Bear’s chin and misses it three times runnin’, he’s
that excited.
“‘Settle down, H’Anglish,’ says I. ‘He ’ain’t got no double chins. How
many shells left in your gun?’
“When he looks he finds there’s only one more, for he hadn’t stopped to
fill the magazine, so I cautions him.
“‘You’re shootin’ too low. Raise her.’
“He raised her all right, and caught Mr. Bruin in the snout. What
followed thereafter was most too quick to notice, for the poor bear let
out a bawl, dropped off his limb into the midst of them ragin’, tur’ble,
seventy-pun hounds, an’ hugged ’em to death, one after another, like he
was doin’ a system of health exercises. He took ’em to his boosum as if
he’d just got back off a long trip, then, droppin’ the last one, he made
at that younger son an’ put a gold fillin’ in his leg. Yes, sir; most
chewed it off. H’Anglish let out a Siberian-wolf holler hisself, an’ I
had to step in with the hatchet and kill the brute though I was most
dead from laughin’.”
“That’s how it is with me an’ Glenister,” the old man concluded. “When
he gets tired experimentin’ with this new law game of hisn, I’ll step in
an’ do business on a common-sense basis.”
“You talk as if you wouldn’t get fair play,” said Helen.
“We won’t,” said he, with conviction. “I look on all lawyers with
suspicion, even to old bald-face--your uncle, askin’ your pardon an’
gettin’ it, bein’ as I’m a friend an’ he ain’t no real relation of
yours, anyhow. No, sir; they’re all crooked.”
Dextry held the Western distrust of the legal profession--comprehensive,
unreasoning, deep.
“Is the old man all the kin you’ve got?” he questioned, when she refused
to discuss the matter.
“He is--in a way. I have a brother, or I hope I have, somewhere. He ran
away when we were both little tads and I haven’t seen him since. I
heard about him, indirectly, at Skagway--three years ago--during the big
rush to the Klondike, but he has never been home. When father died, I
went to live with Uncle Arthur--some day, perhaps, I’ll find my brother.
He’s cruel to hide from me this way, for there are only we two left and
I’ve loved him always.”
She spoke sadly and her mood blended well with the gloom of her
companion, so they stared silently out over the heaving green waters.
“It’s a good thing me an’ the kid had a little piece of money ahead,”
Dextry resumed later, reverting to the thought that lay uppermost in his
mind, “‘cause we’d be up against it right if we hadn’t. The boy couldn’t
have amused himself none with these court proceedings, because they come
high. I call ’em luxuries, like brandied peaches an’ silk undershirts.”
“I don’t trust these Jim Crow banks no more than I do lawyers, neither.
No, sirree! I bought a iron safe an’ hauled it out to the mine. She
weighs eighteen hundred, and we keep our money locked up there. We’ve
got a feller named Johnson watchin’ it now. Steal it? Well, hardly. They
can’t bust her open without a stick of ‘giant’ which would rouse
everybody in five miles, an’ they can’t lug her off bodily--she’s too
heavy. No; it’s safer there than any place I know of. There ain’t no
abscondin’ cashiers an’ all that. To-morrer I’m goin’ back to live on
the claim an’ watch this receiver man till the thing’s settled.”
When the girl arose to go, he accompanied her up through the deep sand
of the lane-like street to the main, muddy thoroughfare of the camp. As
yet, the planked and gravelled pavements, which later threaded the
town, were unknown, and the incessant traffic had worn the road into a
quagmire of chocolate-colored slush, almost axle-deep, with which the
store fronts, show-windows, and awnings were plentifully shot and
spattered from passing teams. Whenever a wagon approached, pedestrians
fled to the shelter of neighboring doorways, watching a chance to dodge
out again. When vehicles passed from the comparative solidity of the
main street out into the morasses that constituted the rest of the town,
they adventured perilously, their horses plunging, snorting, terrified,
amid an atmosphere of profanity. Discouraged animals were down
constantly, and no foot-passenger, even with rubber boots, ventured off
the planks that led from house to house.
To avoid a splashing team, Dextry pulled his companion close in against
the entrance to the Northern saloon, standing before her protectingly.
Although it was late in the afternoon the Bronco Kid had just arisen and
was now loafing preparatory to the active duties of his profession. He
was speaking with the proprietor when Dextry and the girl sought shelter
just without the open door, so he caught a fair though fleeting glimpse
of her as she flashed a curious look inside. She had never been so close
to a gambling-hall before, and would have liked to peer in more
carefully had she dared, but her companion moved forward. At the first
look the Bronco Kid had broken off in his speech and stared at her as
though at an apparition. When she had vanished, he spoke to Reilly:
“Who’s that?”
Reilly shrugged his shoulders, then without further question the Kid
turned back towards the empty theatre and out of the back door.
He moved nonchalantly till he was outside, then with the speed of a colt
ran down the narrow planking between the buildings, turned parallel to
the front street, leaped from board to board, splashed through puddles
of water till he reached the next alley. Stamping the mud from his shoes
and pulling down his sombrero, he sauntered out into the main
thoroughfare.
Dextry and his companion had crossed to the other side and were
approaching, so the gambler gained a fair view of them. He searched
every inch of the girl’s face and figure, then, as she made to turn her
eyes in his direction, he slouched away. He followed, however, at a
distance, till he saw the man leave her, then on up to the big hotel he
shadowed her. A half-hour later he was drinking in the Golden Gate
bar-room with an acquaintance who ministered to the mechanical details
behind the hotel counter.
“Who’s the girl I saw come in just now?” he inquired.
“I guess you mean the Judge’s niece.”
Both men spoke in the dead, restrained tones that go with their
callings.
“What’s her name?”
“Chester, I think. Why? Look good to you, Kid?”
Although the other neither spoke nor made sign, the bartender construed
his silence as acquiescence and continued, with a conscious glance at
his own reflection while he adjusted his diamond scarf-pin: “Well, she
can have _me_! I’ve got it fixed to meet her.”
“_Bah!_ I guess not,” said the Kid, suddenly, with an inflection that
startled the other from his preening. Then, as he went out, the man
mused:
“Gee! Bronco’s got the worst eye in the camp! Makes me creep when he
throws it on me with that muddy look. He acted like he was jealous.”
* * * * *
At noon the next day, as he prepared to go to the claim, Dextry’s
partner burst in upon him. Glenister was dishevelled, and his eyes shone
with intense excitement.
“What d’ you think they’ve done now?” he cried, as greeting.
“I dunno. What is it?”
“They’ve broken open the safe and taken our money.”
“What!”
The old man in turn was on his feet, the grudge which he had felt
against Glenister in the past few days forgotten in this common
misfortune.
“Yes, by Heaven, they’ve swiped our money--our tents, tools, teams,
books, hose, and all of our personal property--everything! They threw
Johnson off and took the whole works. I never heard of such a thing. I
went out to the claim and they wouldn’t let me go near the workings.
They’ve got every mine on Anvil Creek guarded the same way, and they
aren’t going to let us come around even when they clean up. They told me
so this morning.”
“But, look here,” demanded Dextry, sharply, “the money in that safe
belongs to us. That’s money we brought in from the States. The court
’ain’t got no right to it. What kind of a damn law is that?”
“Oh, as to law, they don’t pay any attention to it any more,” said
Glenister, bitterly. “I made a mistake in not killing the first man that
set foot on the claim. I was a sucker, and now we’re up against a stiff
game. The Swedes are in the same fix, too. This last order has left them
groggy.”
“I don’t understand it yet,” said Dextry.
“Why, it’s this way. The Judge has issued what he calls an order
enlarging the powers of the receiver, and it authorizes McNamara to take
possession of everything on the claims--tents, tools, stores, and
personal property of all kinds. It was issued last night without notice
to our side, so Wheaton says, and they served it this morning early. I
went out to see McNamara, and when I got there I found him in our
private tent with the safe broken open.”
“‘What does this mean?’ I said. And then he showed me the new order.
“‘I’m responsible to the court for every penny of this money,’ said he,
‘and for every tool on the claim. In view of that I can’t allow you to
go near the workings.’
“‘Not go near the workings?’ said I. ‘Do you mean you won’t let us see
the clean-ups from our own mine? How do we know we’re getting a square
deal if we don’t see the gold weighed?’
“‘I’m an officer of the court and under bond,’ said he, and the smiling
triumph in his eyes made me crazy.
“‘You’re a lying thief,’ I said, looking at him square. ‘And you’re
going too far. You played me for a fool once and made it stick, but it
won’t work twice.’
“He looked injured and aggrieved and called in Voorhees, the marshal. I
can’t grasp the thing at all; everybody seems to be against us, the
Judge, the marshal, the prosecuting attorney--everybody. Yet they’ve
done it all according to law, they claim, and have the soldiers to back
them up.”
“It’s just as Mexico Mullins said,” Dextry stormed; “there’s a deal on
of some kind. I’m goin’ up to the hotel an’ call on the Judge myself. I
’ain’t never seen him nor this McNamara, either. I allus want to look a
man straight in the eyes once, then I know what course to foller in my
dealings.”
“You’ll find them both,” said Glenister, “for McNamara rode into town
behind me.”
The old prospector proceeded to the Golden Gate Hotel and inquired for
Judge Stillman’s room. A boy attempted to take his name, but he seized
him by the scruff of the neck and sat him in his seat, proceeding
unannounced to the suite to which he had been directed. Hearing voices,
he knocked, and then, without awaiting a summons, walked in.
The room was fitted like an office, with desk, table, type-writer, and
law-books. Other rooms opened from it on both sides. Two men were
talking earnestly--one gray-haired, smooth-shaven, and clerical, the
other tall, picturesque, and masterful. With his first glance the miner
knew that before him were the two he had come to see, and that in
reality he had to deal with but one, the big man who shot at him the
level glances.
“We are engaged,” said the Judge, “very busily engaged, sir. Will you
call again in half an hour?”
Dextry looked him over carefully from head to foot, then turned his back
on him and regarded the other. Neither he nor McNamara spoke, but their
eyes were busy and each instinctively knew that here was a foe.
“What do you want?” McNamara inquired, finally.
“I just dropped in to get acquainted. My name is Dextry--Joe
Dextry--from everywhere west of the Missouri--an’ your name is McNamara,
ain’t it? This here, I reckon, is your little French poodle--eh?”
indicating Stillman.
“What do you mean?” said McNamara, while the Judge murmured indignantly.
“Just what I say. However, that ain’t what I want to talk about. I don’t
take no stock in such truck as judges an’ lawyers an’ orders of court.
They ain’t intended to be took serious. They’re all right for children
an’ Easterners an’ non compos mentis people, I s’pose, but I’ve always
been my own judge, jury, an’ hangman, an’ I aim to continue workin’ my
legislatif, executif, an’ judicial duties to the end of the string. You
look out! My pardner is young an’ seems to like the idee of lettin’
somebody else run his business, so I’m goin’ to give him rein and let
him amuse himself for a while with your dinky little writs an’
receiverships. But don’t go too far--you can rob the Swedes, ’cause
Swedes ain’t entitled to have no money, an’ some other crook would get
it if you didn’t, but don’t play me an’ Glenister fer Scandinavians.
It’s a mistake. We’re white men, an’ I’m apt to come romancin’ up here
with one of these an’ bust you so you won’t hold together durin’ the
ceremonies.”
With his last words he made the slightest shifting movement, only a
lifting shrug of the shoulder, yet in his palm lay a six-shooter. He had
slipped it from his trousers band with the ease of long practice and
absolute surety. Judge Stillman gasped and backed against the desk, but
McNamara idly swung his leg as he sat sidewise on the table. His only
sign of interest was a quickening of the eyes, a fact of which Dextry
made mental note.
“Yes,” said the miner, disregarding the alarm of the lawyer, “you can
wear this court in your vest-pocket like a Waterbury, if you want to,
but if you don’t let me alone, I’ll uncoil its main-spring. That’s all.”
He replaced his weapon and, turning, walked out the door.