precaution you suggest if the clerk hadn't told me that your father had
gone up to the Gloria district. I took it for granted that you had gone
with him."
The lazy smile came again in the brown eyes, and it irritated him.
"I am going to believe that you wouldn't have tried to hide from me,"
she said slowly. "You'll give my conceit that much to live on, won't
you?"
"You mean that I ought to have been willing to trust you? Perhaps I was.
But I could hardly think of you as apart from your father. I knew very
well what he would do."
"I was intending to go on up to the mines with him," she said evenly.
"But last evening, while I was waiting for him to finish his talk with
some mining men, I was standing in the mezzanine, looking down into the
lobby. I saw you go to the desk and leave your key; I was sure I
couldn't be mistaken; so I told father that I had changed my mind about
going out to the mines and he seemed greatly relieved. He had been
trying to persuade me that I would be much more comfortable if I should
wait for him here."
It was no stirring of belated sentiment that made Smith say: "You--you
cared enough to wish to see me?"
"Naturally," she replied. "Some people forget easily: others don't. I
suppose I am one of the others."
Smith remembered the proverb about a woman scorned and saw a menace more
to be feared than all the terrors of the law lurking in the even-toned
rejoinder. It was with some foolish idea of thrusting the menace aside
at any cost that he said: "You have only to send a ten-word telegram to
Sheriff Macauley, you know. I'm not sure that it isn't your duty to do
so."
"Why should I telegraph Barton Macauley?" she asked placidly. "I'm not
one of his deputies."
"But you believe me guilty, don't you?"
The handsome shoulders twitched in the barest hint of indifference. "As
I have said, I am not in Bart Macauley's employ--nor in Mr. Watrous
Dunham's. Neither am I the judge and jury to put you in the prisoner's
box and try you. I suppose you knew what you were doing, and why you did
it. But I do think you might have written me a line, Montague. That
would have been the least you could have done."
The serving of the salad course broke in just here, and for some time
afterward the talk was not resumed. Miss Richlander was apparently
enjoying her dinner. Smith was not enjoying his, but he ate as a
troubled man often will; mechanically and as a matter of routine. It was
not until the dessert had been served that the young woman took up the
thread of the conversation precisely as if it had never been dropped.
"I think you know that you have no reason to be afraid of me, Montague;
but I can't say as much for father. He will be back in a few days, and
when he comes it will be prudent for you to vanish. That is a future,
however."
Smith's laugh was brittle.
"We'll leave it a future, if you like. 'Sufficient unto the day is the
evil thereof.'"
"Oh; so you class me as an evil, do you?"
"No; you know I didn't mean that; I merely mean that it's no use
crossing the bridges before we come to them. I've been living from day
to day so long now, that I am becoming hardened to it."
Again there was a pause, and again it was Miss Richlander who broke it.
"You don't want to go back to Lawrenceville?" she suggested.
"Hardly--in the circumstances."
"What will you do?--go away from Brewster and stay until father has
finished buying his mine?"
"No; I can't very well go away--for business reasons."
The slow smile was dimpling again at the corners of the perfect mouth.
"You are going to need a little help, Montague--my help--aren't you? It
occurs to me that you can well afford to show me some little friendly
attention while I am Robinson-Crusoed here waiting for father to come
back."
"Let me understand," he broke in, frowning across the table at her. "You
are willing to ignore what has happened--to that extent? You are not
forgetting that in the eyes of the law I am a criminal?"
She made a faint little gesture of impatience.
"Why do you persist in dragging that in? I am not supposed to know
anything about your business affairs, with Watrous Dunham or anybody
else. Besides, no one knows me here, and no one cares. Besides, again, I
am a stranger in a strange city and we are--or we used to be--old
friends."
Her half-cynical tone made him frown again, thoughtfully, this time.
"Women are curious creatures," he commented. "I used to think I knew a
little something about them, but I guess it was a mistake. What do you
want me to do?"
"Oh, anything you like; anything that will keep me from being bored to
death."
Smith laid his napkin aside and glanced at his watch.
"There is a play of some kind on at the opera-house, I believe," he
said, rising and going around to draw her chair aside. "If you'd care to
go, I'll see if I can't hold somebody up for a couple of seats."
"That is more like it. I used to be afraid that you hadn't a drop of
sporting blood in you, Montague, and I am glad to learn, even at this
late day, that I was mistaken. Take me up-stairs, and we'll go to the
play."
They left the dining-room together, and there was more than one pair of
eyes to follow them in frank admiration. "What a strikingly handsome
couple," said a bejewelled lady who sat at the table nearest the door;
and her companion, a gentleman with restless eyes and thin lips and a
rather wicked jaw, said: "Yes; I don't know the woman, but the man is
Colonel Baldwin's new financier; the fellow who calls himself 'John
Smith.'"
The bediamonded lady smiled dryly. "You say that as if you had a mortal
quarrel with his name, Crawford. If I were the girl, _I_ shouldn't find
fault with the name. You say you don't know her?"
Stanton had pushed his chair back and was rising. "Take your time with
the ice-cream, and I'll join you later up-stairs. I'm going to find out
who the girl is, since you want to know."
On the progress through the lobby to the elevators there were others to
make remarks upon the handsome pair; among them the ex-cowboy mine owner
whose name was still "Billy" Starbuck to everybody in the Timanyoni
region.
"Say! wouldn't that jar you, now?" he muttered to himself. And again:
"This John Smith fellow sure does need a guardian--and for just this
one time I reckon I might as well butt in and be it. If he's fixing to
shake that little Corona girl he's sure going to earn what's coming to
him. That's my ante."
XVI
Broken Threads
Mr. Crawford Stanton's attempt to find out who Smith's dinner companion
was began with a casual question shot at the hotel clerk; with that, and
a glance at the register. From the clerk he learned Miss Richlander's
name and the circumstances under which she had become a waiting
transient in the hotel. From the register he got nothing but the
magnate's name and the misleading address, "Chicago."
"Is Mr. Richlander a Chicago man?" he asked of the clerk.
"No. He merely registered from his last stop--as a good many people do.
His home town is Lawrenceville."
"Which Lawrenceville is that?" Stanton inquired; but the clerk shook his
head.
"You may search me, Mr. Stanton. I didn't ask. It's in Indiana, isn't
it? You might find out from Miss Richlander."
Stanton became thoughtful for a moment and then crossed the lobby to his
business office, which had an entrance from the hotel ground floor.
Behind the closed door, which he took the precaution to lock, he turned
on the light and opened a large atlas. A glance at the town listings
revealed some half-dozen Lawrencevilles, in as many different States,
one State offering two, for good measure. That ended the search for the
moment, and a little later he went up-stairs to rejoin the resplendent
lady, who was taking her after-dinner ease in the most comfortable
lounging-chair the mezzanine parlors afforded.
"No good," he reported. "The girl's name is Richlander, and she--or her
father--comes from one of half a dozen 'Lawrencevilles'--you can take
your choice among 'em."
"Money?" queried the comfortable one.
"Buying mines in the Topaz," said the husband mechanically. He was not
thinking specially of Mr. Josiah Richlander's possible or probable
rating with the commercial agencies; he was wondering how well Miss
Richlander knew John Smith, and in what manner she could be persuaded to
tell what she might know. While he was turning it over in his mind the
two in question, Smith and the young woman, passed through the lobby on
their way to the theatre. Stanton, watching them narrowly from the
vantage-point afforded by the galleried mezzanine, drew his own
conclusions. By all the little signs they were not merely chance
acquaintances or even casual friends. Their relations were closer--and
of longer standing.
Stanton puzzled over his problem a long time, long after Mrs. Stanton
had forsaken the easy chair and had disappeared from the scene. His
Eastern employers were growing irascibly impatient, and the letters and
telegrams were beginning to have an abrasive quality disagreeably
irritating to a hard-working field captain. Who was this fellow Smith,
and what was his backing? they were beginning to ask; and with the
asking there were intimations that if Mr. Crawford Stanton were finding
his task too difficult, there was always an alternative.
As a business man Stanton was usually able to keep irritating
personalities at a proper distance. But the Timanyoni-Escalante war was
beginning to get on his nerves. At first, it had presented itself as the
simplest of business campaigns. A great land grab had been carried
through, and there was an ample water-supply to transform the arid
desert into ranch acres with enormous increases in values. A farmers'
ditch company, loosely organized and administered, was the sole
obstacle in the way, and upon his arrival in Brewster, Stanton had set
blithely about removing it.
Just when all was going well, when the farmers were almost in sight of
their finish, and the actual stock absorption had fairly begun, the new
factor had broken in; a young man capable and daring to a degree that
was amazing, even in the direct and courageous West. Where and how Smith
would strike, Stanton never knew until after the blow had been sent
home. Secrecy, the most difficult requirement in any business campaign,
had been so strictly maintained that up to the present evening of
cogitations in the Hophra House mezzanine, Stanton was still unable to
tell his New York and Washington employers positively whether Smith had
money--Eastern money--behind him, or was engineering the big coup alone.
Kinzie was steadfastly refusing to talk, and the sole significant fact,
thus far, was that practically all of the new High Line stock had been
taken up by local purchasers.
Stanton was still wrestling with his problem when the "handsome couple"
returned from the play. The trust field captain saw them as they crossed
the lobby to the elevator and again marked the little evidences of
familiarity. "That settles it," he mused, with an outthrust of the
pugnacious jaw. "She knows more about Smith than anybody else in this
neck of woods--_and she's got it to tell_!"
Stanton began his inquisition for better information the following day,
with the bejewelled lady for his ally. Miss Richlander was alone and
unfriended in the hotel--and also a little bored. Hence she was easy of
approach; so easy that by luncheon time the sham promoter's wife was
able to introduce her husband. Stanton lost no moment investigative. For
the inquiring purpose, Smith was made to figure as a business
acquaintance, and Stanton was generous in his praises of the young man's
astounding financial ability.
"He's simply a wonder, Miss Richlander!" he confided over the
luncheon-table. "Coming here a few weeks ago, absolutely unknown, he has
already become a prominent man of affairs in Brewster. And so discreetly
reticent! To this good day nobody knows where he comes from, or anything
about him."
"No?" said Miss Verda. "How singular!" But she did not volunteer to
supply any of the missing biographical facts.
"Absolutely nothing," Stanton went on smoothly. "And, of course, his
silence about himself has been grossly misinterpreted. I have even heard
it said that he is an escaped convict."
"How perfectly absurd!" was the smiling comment.
"Isn't it? But you know how people will talk. They are saying now that
his name isn't Smith; that he has merely taken the commonest name in the
category as an _alias_."
"I can contradict that, anyway," Miss Richlander offered. "His name is
really and truly John Smith."
"You have known him a long time, haven't you?" inquired the lady with
the headlight diamonds.
"Oh, yes; for quite a long time, indeed."
"That was back in New York State?" Stanton slipped in.
"In the East, yes. He comes of an excellent family. His father's people
were well-to-do farmers, and one of his great-uncles on his mother's
side was on the supreme bench in our State; he was chief justice during
the later years of his life."
"What State did you say?" queried Stanton craftily. But Miss Verda was
far too wide-awake to let him surprise her.
"Our home State, of course. I don't believe any member of Mr. Smith's
immediate family on either side has ever moved out of it."
Stanton gave it up for the time being, and was convinced upon two
points. Miss Richlander's reticence could have but one meaning: for some
good reason, Smith would not, or dare not, give any home references.
That was one point, and the second was that Miss Richlander knew, and
knew that others wanted to know--and refused to tell. Stanton weighed
the probabilities thoughtfully in the privacy of his office. There were
two hypotheses: Smith might have business reasons for the secrecy--he
might have backers who wished to remain completely unknown in their
fight against the big land trust; but if he had no backers the other
hypothesis clinched itself instantly--he was in hiding; he had done
something from which he had run away.
It was not until after office hours that Stanton was able to reduce his
equation to its simplest terms, and it was Shaw, dropping in to make his
report after his first day's work as clerk and stenographer in the High
Line headquarters, who cleared the air of at least one fog bank of
doubts.
"I've been through the records and the stock-books," said the spy, when,
in obedience to orders, he had locked the office door. "Smith is playing
a lone hand. He flimflammed Kinzie for his first chunk of money, and
after that it was easy. Every dollar invested in High Line has been dug
up right here in the Timanyoni. Here's the list of stockholders."
Stanton ran his eye down the string of names and swore when he saw
Maxwell's subscription of $25,000. "Damn it!" he rasped; "and he's
Fairbairn's own son-in-law!"
"So is Starbuck, for that matter; and he's in for twenty thousand," said
Shaw. "And, by the way, Billy is a man who will bear watching. He's
hand-in-glove with Smith, and he's onto all of our little crooks and
turns. I heard him telling Smith to-day that he owed it to the company
to carry a gun."
Stanton's smile showed his teeth.
"I wish he would; carry one and kill somebody with it. Then we'd know
what to do with him."
The spy was rolling a cigarette and his half-closed eyes had a murderous
glint in them.
"Me, for instance?" he inquired cynically.
"Anybody," said Stanton absently. He was going over the list of
stockholders again and had scarcely heard what Shaw had said.
"That brings us down to business, Mr. Stanton," said the ex-railroad
clerk slowly. "I'm not getting money enough out of this to cover the
risk--my risk."
The man at the desk looked up quickly.
"What's that you say? By heavens, Shaw, have I got to send you over the
road before you'll come to your senses? I've spoken once, and I'll do it
just this one time more: you sing small if you want to keep out of
jail!"
Shaw had lighted his cigarette and was edging toward the door.
"Not this trip, Mr. Stanton," he said coolly. "If you've got me, I've
got you. I can find two men who will go into court and swear that you
paid Pete Simms money to have Smith sandbagged, that day out at Simms's
place at the dam! I may have to go to jail, as you say; but I'll bet you
five to one that you'll beat me to it!" And with that he snapped the
catch on the locked door and went away.
Some three hours after this rather hostile clash with the least
trustworthy, but by far the most able, of his henchmen, Crawford Stanton
left his wife chatting comfortably with Miss Richlander in the hotel
parlors and went reluctantly to keep an appointment which he had been
dreading ever since the early afternoon hour when a wire had come from
Copah directing him to meet the "Nevada Flyer" upon its arrival at
Brewster. The public knew the name signed to the telegram as that of a
millionaire statesman; but Stanton knew it best as the name of a hard
and not over-scrupulous master.
The train was whistling for the station when Stanton descended from his
cab and hurried down the long platform. He assumed that the great
personage would be travelling in a private car which would be coupled to
the rear end of the "Flyer," and his guess was confirmed. A
white-jacketed porter was waiting to admit him to the presence when the
train came to a stand, and as he climbed into the vestibule of the
luxurious private car, Stanton got what comfort he could out of the
thought that the interview would necessarily be limited by the ten
minutes' engine-changing stop of the fast train.
The presence chamber was the open compartment of the palace on wheels,
and it held a single occupant when Stanton entered; a big-bodied man
with bibulous eyes and a massive square-angled head and face, a face in
which the cartoonists emphasized the heavy drooping mustache and the
ever-present black cigar growing out of it.
"Hello, Crawford," the great man grunted, making no move to lift his
huge body out of the padded lounging-chair. "You got my wire?"
"Yes," returned the promoter, limiting himself to the one word.
"What's the matter with you here on this land deal? Why don't you get
action?"
Stanton tried to explain as fully as might be, holding in view the
necessity for haste. The big man in the easy chair was frowning heavily
when the explanation was finished.
"And you say this one man has blocked the game? Why the devil don't you
get rid of him--buy him, or run him off, or something?"
"I don't believe he can be bought."
"Well, then, chase him out. We can't afford to be hung up this way
indefinitely by every little amateur that happens to come along and sit
in the game. Get action and do something. From what you say, this fellow
is probably some piker who has left his country for his country's good.
Get the detectives after him and run him down."
"That will take time, and time is what we haven't got."
The big man pulled himself up in his chair and glared savagely at the
protester.
"Stanton, you make me tired--very tired! You know what we have at stake
in this deal, and thus far you're the only man in it who hasn't made
good. You've had all the help you've asked for, and all the money you
wanted to spend. If you've lost your grip, say so plainly, and get down
and out. We don't want any 'has-been' on this job. If you are at the end
of your resources----"
The conductor's shout of "All aboard!" dominated the clamor of the
station noises, and the air-brakes were singing as the engineer of the
changed locomotives tested the connections. Stanton saw his chance to
duck and took it.
"I have been trying to stop short of anything that might make talk," he
said. "This town might easily be made too hot to hold us, and----"
"You're speaking for yourself, now," rapped out the tyrant. "What the
devil do we care for the temperature of Brewster? I've only one word for
you, Crawford: _you get busy and give us results_. Skip out, now, or
you'll get carried by. And, say; let me have a wire at Los Angeles, not
later than Thursday. Get that?"
Stanton got it: also, he escaped, making a flying leap from the moving
train. At the cab rank he found the motor-cab which he had hired for the
drive down from the hotel. Climbing in, he gave a brittle order to the
chauffeur. Simultaneously a man wearing the softest of Stetsons lounged
away from his post of observation under a near-by electric pole and ran
across the railroad plaza to unhitch and mount a wiry little cow-pony.
Once in the saddle, however, the mounted man did not hurry his horse.
Having overheard Stanton's order-giving, there was no need to keep the
motor-cab in sight as it sputtered through the streets and out upon the
backgrounding mesa, its ill-smelling course ending at a lonely
road-house in the mesa hills on the Topaz trail.
When the hired vehicle came to a stand in front of the lighted bar-room
of the road-house, Stanton gave a waiting order to the driver and went
in. Of the dog-faced barkeeper he asked an abrupt question, and at the
man's jerk of a thumb toward the rear, the promoter passed on and
entered the private room at the back.
The private room had but one occupant--the man Lanterby, who was sitting
behind a round card-table and vainly endeavoring to make one of the pair
of empty whiskey-glasses spin in a complete circuit about a black
bottle standing on the table.
Stanton pulled up a chair and sat down, and Lanterby poured libations
for two from the black bottle. The promoter, ordinarily as abstemious as
a Trappist, drained his portion at a gulp.
"Well?" he snapped, pushing the bottle aside. "What did you find out?"
"I reckon it can be done, if it has to be," was the low-toned reply.
"Done and well covered up?"
"Yep. It'll be charged up to the high water--maybe."
"Is the river still rising?"
"A little bit higher every night now. That's the way it comes up. The
snow on the mountain melts in the day and the run-off comes in the
night."
"You can handle it by yourself, can't you?"
"Me and Boogerfield can."
"All right. Get everything ready and wait for the word from me. You
didn't let Pegleg in on it, did you?"
"I had to. We'd have to work from his joint."
"That was a bad move. Simms would sell you out if anybody wanted to buy.
He'd sell his best friend," frowned Stanton.
Lanterby showed the whites of his eyes and a set of broken teeth in a
wolfish grin.
"Pete can't run fast enough to sell me out," he boasted. "I'll have
somethin' in my clothes that'll run faster than he can, with that wooden
leg o' his."
Stanton nodded and poured himself another drink--a larger one than the
first; and then thought better of it and spilled the liquor on the
floor.
"That will do for the dynamite part of it. It's a last resort, of
course. We don't want to have to rebuild the dam, and I have one more
string that I want to pull first. This man Smith: I've got a pointer on
him, at last. Is Boogerfield still feeling sore about the man-handling
Smith gave him?"
"You bet your life he is."
"Good. Keep him stirred up along that line." Stanton got up and looked
thirstily at the bottle, but let it alone. "That's all for to-night.
Stay out of sight as much as you can, and go easy on the whiskey. I may
not come here again. If I don't, I'll send you one of two words.
'Williams' will mean that you're to strike for the dam. 'Jake' will mean
that you are to get Boogerfield fighting drunk and send him after Smith.
Whichever way it comes out, you'll find the money where I've said it
will be, and you and Boogerfield had better fade away--and take Pegleg
with you, if you can."
The hired car was still waiting when Stanton went out through the
bar-room and gave the driver his return orders. And, because the night
was dark, neither of the two at the car saw the man in the soft Stetson
straighten himself up from his crouching place under the back-room
window and vanish silently in the gloom.
XVII
A Night of Fiascos
Smith had seen nothing of Miss Richlander during the day of the Stanton
plottings, partly because there was a forenoon meeting of the High Line
stockholders called for the purpose of electing him secretary and
treasurer in fact of the company, and partly because the major portion
of the afternoon was spent in conference with Williams at the dam.