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[Illustration: He packed an emergency camp outfit on Wise One, and
set out quite happily, walking beside Doris.
FRONTISPIECE. _See page 103._]
The
Parowan Bonanza
BY
B. M. BOWER
AUTHOR OF
CHIP OF THE FLYING U,
THE TRAIL OF THE WHITE MULE,
STARR OF THE DESERT, Etc.
FRONTISPIECE BY
FRANK TENNEY JOHNSON
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
_Copyright, 1923_,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
_All rights reserved_
Published August, 1923
Reprinted November, 1923
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Hopeful Bill Dale 3
II Music Hath Charms 16
III Luella Announces 29
IV Good, Lively Prospect 41
V Strangers in Camp 50
VI Bill Grows Sentimental 65
VII What Drives Prospectors Crazy 74
VIII "Monte Cristo Would Enjoy This!" 86
IX A "Hint" from Doris 96
X "We're Rich, Bill, Dear" 108
XI Mr. Rayfield Gives Advice 119
XII A Man Shouldn't Mix Business with Love 130
XIII Bill Learns About Women from 'er 146
XIV Baker Cole 159
XV "Mary's Going to Have a Home!" 171
XVI So Bill Goes Back 180
XVII Bill Gives the Public Mind a Lift 191
XVIII The Yarn Al Freeman Told 205
XIX "There'll Be More to Come of It" 219
XX Luella Entertains 229
XXI Bill and the Tame Bandits 240
XXII Bill Buys Parowan 255
XXIII Bill is Back Where He Started 269
XXIV The Town That Was 282
XXV Hopeless Bill Dale 291
XXVI Bill Acquires a Cook 295
THE
PAROWAN BONANZA
CHAPTER ONE
HOPEFUL BILL DALE
To those who do not know the desert, the word usually conjures a
picture of hot, waterless wastes of sand made desolate by sparse,
withered gray sage more depressing than no growth at all; blighted by
rattlesnakes and scorpions and the bleached bones of men from which
lean coyotes go skulking away in the brazen heat that comes with the
dawn; a place where men go mad with thirst and die horribly, babbling
the while of mountain brooks and the cool blur of lakes shining blue
in the distance, painted treacherously there by the desert mirage.
Sometimes the desert is like that in certain places and at certain
seasons of the year, but the men who know it best forgive the desert
its trespasses, and love it for its magnificent distances, always
beautiful, always changing their panorama of lights and shadows on
uptilted mesas and deep, gray-green valleys. Such men yield to the
thrall of desert sorcery that paints wonderful, translucent tints of
blue, violet and purple on all the mountains there against the sky.
They love the desert nights when the stars come down in friendly
fashion to gaze tranquilly upon them as they sit beside their camp
fires and smoke and dream, and see rapturous visions of great wealth
born of that mental mirage which is but another bit of desert
enchantment.
Bill Dale was such a man. Hopeful Bill, men called him, with the
corners of their mouths tipped down. Bill loved the desert, loved to
wander over it with his two burros waddling under full packs of grub
and mining tools and dynamite. He loved to pry and peck into some
mineral outcropping in a far canyon where no prospector had been
before him. And though he sometimes cursed the heat and the wind and
brackish water, where he expected a clear, cold spring, he loved the
desert, nevertheless, and called it home.
Men jibed at his unquenchable optimism and mistook the man behind his
twinkling eyes for a rainbow chaser, mirage-mad in a mild way. For
even in Nevada, where the hills have made many a man a millionaire,
they laugh at the seeker and call failure after him until he has found
what he seeks. Then they want his friendship and a share in his good
fortune; and this merely because Nevada is peopled--very thinly--with
human beings and not by gods or saints.
Occasionally, when Bill Dale came to town for fresh supplies and mail,
some one would wonder why a great, strapping fellow like Hopeful
didn't go to work. Perhaps that was because Hopeful carried a safety
razor in his pack, and had the knack of looking well-groomed on a pint
of water, a clean shirt, an aluminum comb and six inches of mirror.
Your orthodox prospector (at least in fiction) promises himself a bath
and a clean shave when he strikes it rich, and frequently is made to
forego the luxury for years.
Men liked Hopeful Bill, but they thought he was a shiftless cuss who
would never amount to anything, since he had taken to the burro trail.
A few remembered that Hopeful's father had been unlucky in a boom when
Hopeful was just a kid. They thought it was a bad thing to have the
legend of a gold mine in the family. Personally they called him a good
scout,--and that was because they could borrow money from him, if he
had any, and need not fear the embarrassment of being asked to repay
it. They could tell their private troubles to Bill and be sure that he
would never betray the confidence. But it never occurred to any man
that knew him that Hopeful Bill Dale might now and then need money,
or sympathy, or some one besides his menagerie to tell his troubles
to.
It was the menagerie that belittled Hopeful Bill Dale in the eyes of
his fellows. Commonplace souls they were, their brains dust-dry in
that cranny where imagination should flourish. They could not see why
any grown man should carry a green parrot and a great, gray, desert
turtle around with him wherever he went. They were willing to concede
the harmlessness of the fuzzy-faced Airedale, since any man is
entitled to own a dog if he wants one. But they could not understand a
man who would call a dog Hezekiah; which was not a dog's name at all.
The mournful, hairy-chopped Hezekiah was therefore a walking proof of
Hopeful Bill Dale's eccentricity. And as all the world knows, a man
must be rich before he dare be different from his fellows.
Of course, they argued in Goldfield, any grown man that would keep a
turtle on a string--tied firmly through a hole bored in the tail of
its shell--might be expected to call it Sister Mitchell and claim that
it had a good Methodist face. Who ever heard of a turtle having a
face? And there was the parrot, that cooed lovingly against Bill's
cheek and made little kissing sounds with its beak,--the same beak
that had taken a chunk out of a stranger's hand, swearing volubly at
her victim afterward. Even if Goldfield could overlook the parrot,
there was its name to damn Hopeful Bill Dale finally and completely.
Couldn't call it Polly, which is the natural, normal name for a
parrot! No, he had to name the thing Luella. Add to that Bill's
burros, that answered gravely to the names Wise One and Angelface.
Could any man know these things and still take Bill Dale seriously?
Goldfield shook its head--behind Bill's back--and said he was a nice,
likable fellow, but--a little bit "off" in some ways.
So there you have him, according to the estimate of his acquaintances:
A great, good-natured, fine-looking man in his early thirties; a man
always ready to listen to a tale of woe or to put his hand in his
pocket and give of what he had, nor question the worthiness of the
cause; but a man who seemed content to wander through the hills
prospecting, when he might have made a success of some business more
certain of yielding a good living--and mediocrity; a man with a queer
kink somewhere in his make-up that prevented his taking life
seriously.
Prospectors were usually men who, having failed, through age or other
cause, to make good at anything else, took to burrowing in the hills
and pecking at rocks and dreaming. If the habit fixed itself upon them
they became plain desert rats, crack-brained and useless for any other
vocation. Hopeful Bill Dale was too young, too vigorous to have the
name "desert rat" laid upon him,--yet. But it was tacitly agreed that
he was in a fair way to become a desert rat, if he did not pull up
short and turn his mind to something else. The purposeless life he was
leading would "get" him in a few more years, they prophesied sagely.
One day in spring Bill Dale walked behind his burros into Goldfield
and outfitted for a long trip. Had any one examined closely Bill's
pack loads, he would have guessed that Hopeful Bill had a camp
established somewhere in the wilderness and was in for all the grub
his two burros and a borrowed one could carry.
The storekeeper knew, as he weighed out sugar, rice, beans, dried
fruit (prunes, raisins and apricots mostly), that Bill was buying with
a careful regard for the maximum nourishment coupled with the minimum
weight. For instance, Bill bought five pounds of black tea, though he
loved coffee with true American fervor. Rolled oats he also bought,--a
twenty-five pound sack. There was a great deal of nourishment in
rolled oats, properly cooked. And when Bill called for two large cans
of beef extract, the storekeeper looked at him knowingly.
"Goin' to develop something you've struck, hey?" he guessed with
unconscious presumption.
"Going to stay till the grub's low, anyway," Bill drawled
imperturbably. "Hazing burros over the trail is going to be hot work,
from now on until fall. It's cooler in the hills. I'm taking out a
rented burro that will come back alone. I figure this grubstake ought
to run me until cool weather."
"Got a pretty good claim?" Storekeepers in mining towns are likely to
be inquisitive.
"Can't say as I have," Bill grinned. "Open for engagements with old
Dame Fortune, though. Kinda hoping, too, that she don't send her
daughter, instead, to make a date with me."
"Her daughter?" The storekeeper was one of those who had desert dust
in the folds of his brain. "Who's she?"
Bill looked at him soberly, rolling a smoke with fingers smoother and
better kept than prospectors usually could show.
"Mean to tell me you never met Miss Fortune yet?" His lips were
serious; as for his eyes, one never could tell. His eyes always had a
twinkle. "She can sure keep a man guessing," he added. "I like her
mother better, myself."
"Oh. Er--he-he! Pretty good," testified the storekeeper dubiously.
Something queer about a fellow that springs things you never heard of
before, he was thinking. The storekeeper liked best the familiar jokes
he had heard all his life. He didn't have to think out their meaning.
"Hey! Cut that out! Bill! Take a look at that!" A voice outside called
imperiously, and Bill swung toward the door.
"What is it, Luella?"
"Take a look at that! Git a move on!"
In the doorway Bill stopped. Luella was walking pigeon-toed up and
down the back of Wise One, where she usually perched while Bill
traveled the desert. Three half-grown boys were crowding close, trying
to reach the string of Sister Mitchell, who had crawled under the
store steps. The string was fastened to the crotch of Wise One's pack
saddle, and Wise One was circling slowly, keeping his heels toward the
enemy. Luella's tail was spread fanwise, showing the red which even
Nature seems to recognize as a danger signal. Her eyes were yellow
flames, her neck feathers were ruffled. By all these signs Luella was
not to be trifled with.
"Cut that out! Hez! Here, Hez! Where the hell is that dog? Hezekiah!
Bill! Come alive, come alive!" Up and down, up and down, one foot
lifted over the other, her eyes on the giggling boys, Luella
expostulated and swore.
Bill stepped outside, throwing away the burnt stub of a match. The
three boys looked at him and fled, though Bill was not half so
dangerous as Luella or Wise One, either of which would have sent them
yelping in another minute.
"Hez! Here, Hez! Where the hell's that dog?" Luella called again
impatiently and wheeled, stepping up relievedly upon Bill's
outstretched finger. "Lord, what a world!" she muttered pensively, and
subsided under Bill's caressing hand.
Bill dragged Sister Mitchell from under the steps and swung her, head
down, to the porch. He sat down beside her, his knees drawn up, Luella
perched upon one of them.
"Add two cartons of Durham, will you?" Bill called over his shoulder
to the storekeeper and turned back to his perturbed pets.
Sister Mitchell thrust forth a cautious head and craned a skinny neck,
looking for fresh alarms. Luella tilted her head and eyed the turtle
speculatively. "Cut that out!" she commanded harshly, and Sister
Mitchell drew in her head timorously before she realized that it was
only parrot talk and not to be taken seriously.
The storekeeper asked Bill a question which necessitated Bill's
personal examination of two brands of bacon; wherefore, he placed
Luella on the porch beside Sister Mitchell and went inside to finish
making up his load of supplies. When he emerged with a sack of flour
on his shoulder and three sides of bacon under one arm, Luella was
riding up the platform on Sister Mitchell's back and telling her to
"git a move on." At the other end of the porch a small audience stood
laughing at the performance.
"What'll you take for that parrot, Hopeful?" a man asked, grinning.
"Same price you ask for your oldest kid," Bill retorted, and returned
for another load from the store.
"Make that strike yet?" another called, as Bill came out with his arms
full.
"You bet! Solid ledge of gold, Jim. Knock it off in chunks with a
single-jack and gadget. Bring you a hunk next trip in--if I can think
of it."
"Hate to hang by the heels till you do," Jim retorted.
"Hate to have you," Bill agreed placidly, stepping over Luella and her
mount that he might deposit his load on the edge of the porch.
"What yuh got out there, anyway?" Jim persisted curiously. "You aren't
packing all that grub out in the desert just to eat in the shade of a
Joshuway tree. What yuh got?"
"Hopes." Bill bent and slid a sack from his shoulder to the pile of
supplies. "Outcropping of lively looking rock, Jim. Good indications.
I'm hoping it'll turn out something, maybe, when I get into it a
ways."
"Get an assay on it?" Jim's curiosity was fading perceptibly. The same
old story: lively looking rock, indications; desert rats all came in
with that elusive encouragement.
"Trace of silver, two dollars in gold," Hopeful Bill replied. "I'm
hoping it'll run into higher values when I hit the contact."
"What contact you got?" Jim's tone was plainly disparaging. "You can't
bank too strong on values at contact, Bill."
"Well, this looks pretty fair," Bill argued mildly. "A showing of
quartzite,--if it's in place; which I'm digging to find out. Nothing
lost but a little sweat and powder, if I don't hit it. I can eat as
cheaply in the hills as I can here. Cheaper." From under his dusty hat
brim he sent a glance toward the restaurant across the street. "And I
know it's clean. I like to have eat a fly, this noon."
"Why didn't you try the Waffle Parlor? They've got screens."
"My own cooking suits me just fine," Bill returned amiably.
"All right, if you like that kinda life," Jim carped. "I should think
you'd want to get _into_ something, Bill. You aren't any has-been----"
"Nope, I'm a never-was," Bill retorted shamelessly. "And a
going-to-be," he added with naïve assurance. "You mark that down in
your book, Jim. Some day you're going to brag about knowing Bill Dale.
Some day your tone's going to be hearty and your hand'll be out when
you see me coming. You guys will all of you be saying you knew me
_when_."
The group bent backward to let the laughs out full and free. Into the
midst of their mirth Luella came scrabbling with her pigeon-toed walk,
her tail spread wide and her throat ruffled.
"You cut that out!" she shrieked angrily. "Hez! Here, Hez! Where the
hell's that dog? Git outa here! Git a move on."
Bill grabbed her before she succeeded in shedding blood.
"Luella doesn't like the tone of that applause," he observed, holding
her close to his chest while he smoothed her ruffled feathers.
"Luella's a sensitive bird, and she stands up for her folks."
With three loaded burros nipping along before him, the whiskered
Hezekiah slouching at his heels, and Luella and Sister Mitchell
riding serenely the pack of Wise One, Bill left the town and struck
off up the hill by a trail he knew that would cut off a great elbow of
the highway, which was dusty and rutted with the passing of great,
heavy ore wagons and automobiles loaded with fortune-hunters and camp
equipment. At the crest of the long slope the burros stopped to
breathe, and Bill turned and stood gazing back at the camp whose first
fever was already cooling a bit, leaving the restless ones a bit bored
and eager for some new strike in a fresh district, with the whooping
boom times that must inevitably follow.
"Laugh, darn you!" Bill figuratively addressed Jim and his companions
down there in the town. "You're bone from your necks up, or you'd see
plumb through my talk--and be on my trail like ants after a leaky
syrup can. Go ahead and laugh, and call me a fool behind my back! You
won't take the notion to follow me, anyway."
"Lord, what a world!" chuckled Luella, scrambling for fresh foothold
on the canvas pack as Wise One started on with a lurch.
"You're dead right, old girl," Bill agreed; and went on, grinning at
something hidden in his thoughts.
CHAPTER TWO
MUSIC HATH CHARMS
Just before sundown, while Bill and his burros and Hezekiah were
plodding down the highway toward the sporadic camp called Cuprite, a
big touring car came roaring up behind and passed Hopeful Bill in a
smothering cloud of yellow dust. Bill observed that it was loaded with
luggage and stared after it with that aimless interest which the empty
desert breeds in men. A coyote on a hilltop, a strange track in the
trail, human beings traveling that way,--it matters little what
trivial thing breaks the monotony of plodding through desert country.
Bill could remember when this same road was peopled with men rushing
here and there after elusive fortune. Good men and bad, honest men and
thieves, the dust never settled to lie long upon the yellow trail.
That last two years had made a difference. The tide was fast ebbing,
and men were rushing elsewhere in search of the millions they coveted.
"Get a move on!" Bill called to Wise One, at the head of the pack
train, with the strange burro tied behind at a sufficient length of
rope to protect him from Wise One's heels, which were likely to lift
unexpectedly. Luella repeated the command three times without
stopping, and the burros shuffled a bit faster in the lowering dust
cloud kicked up by the speeding car.
Farther on, Wise One stopped short, backing up from an object in the
trail. Bill went forward to investigate, and lifted from the ground a
black leather case such as musicians use to hold band instruments.
Bill undid the catches and looked in upon a shining, silver object
with a gold-lined, bell-shaped mouth and many flat discs all up and
down its length. He gazed up the road, already veiled with the
purplish haze that comes to the desert before dusk, when the sun has
dipped behind a mountain. The car was gone, hidden completely from
sight by a low ridge.
"They'll be back," Bill observed tranquilly, and tied the case
securely upon the pack of Angelface. "They're bound to miss a thing
like that. Anyway, I'll probably run across 'em somewhere."
"Hate to hang till yuh do," remarked Luella, who had evidently been
adding to her repertoire in Goldfield while no one thought she was
taking heed; which is the way of parrots the world over.
"I don't know about that, now," Bill grinned. "Anyway, if it was mine,
I know I'd miss it. I always did want to play a horn."
"Aw, cut it out!" Luella advised him shrewishly. "Git a move on!"
Which pertinent retort may possibly explain why Hopeful Bill Dale
looked upon the parrot as a real companion. He swore that the bird
understood what he said and conversed intelligently, so far as her
vocabulary permitted. And her vocabulary, while simple, seemed
sufficient for her needs.
Instead of turning aside to a certain spring and camping there for the
night, Bill camped near the road where he could not miss seeing and
being seen, if any came that way. It was quite a tramp to the spring,
so he took a couple of desert water bags and mounted Wise One, leaving
the other two burros to follow, and trusting his supplies to the care
of Hezekiah and the parrot.
He was not approached that night, nor the next day. Cars passed him,
it is true, hurrying through dust clouds from either direction; but
never the automobile that had lost the horn. So Bill arrived, in the
course of time, at his camp, richer--or poorer, according to
viewpoint--by one band instrument of doubtful name and unknown
possibilities.
In spring the desert is beautiful. Bill loved the desert flowers,
vivid pinks and blues and yellows, dainty of form, sweet as honeycomb.
He loved the desert lights, as delicately vivid as were the flowers
growing out of the sandy soil, shyly snuggled against some stiff,
scraggy bush. Cottontails romped through the sage in the afterglow
that lingers long in that high altitude, and Bill let them go
unmolested, and gave Hezekiah a lecture. He did not believe in killing
just because one can, and there was meat in camp already. From the
juniper bushes above the spring the quail were calling.
"Shut-that-door! Shut-that-door!"--or so Bill and Luella interpreted
the call. Farther up on the hillside, doves were crying mournfully.
And Bill knew that higher, on the very top of the butte, mountain
sheep, deer and antelope were hiding their bandy-legged young away
from the prowling coyotes and "link cats" that were less conscientious
than Bill when the chance came for a killing.
Yet this was the desert, against which men rail. There was no
mistaking. Out there stood a barrel cactus, almost within reach of a
gaunt yucca whose awkward, spiny limbs were rigidly upheld like
bloated arms,--colloquially called Joshua trees because they seemed
always to be imploring the sun. Down in the valley a dry lake lay
baked yellow, hard as cement, with dust devils whirling dizzily down
its bald length when Bill looked that way. On the map you will see
that valley. It is officially known as the Amargosa Desert. And over
the ridge which wore a mystic veil of blended violet and amethyst,
Death Valley lay crouched low amongst the hills. The maps call that
amethyst and violet pile the Funeral Mountains; and away to the east,
Bill could see the faint blue line of Skull Mountains and the Specter
Range standing bold behind the Skeleton Hills; proof enough that this
was the desert, since it bore the sinister names given it by those who
knew too little and dared too much.
It could be cruel,--but not crueller than the cities. It could be
lonely, though not so lonely as a multitude. The air was clean and
sweet and of that heady quality that only altitude can give. Bill
squatted on his heels by his camp fire, just about four thousand feet
above sea level,--higher than that above the floor of Death Valley,
whose rim he could see, whose poison springs he knew, whose terrible
breath he had drawn into his nostrils.
From now on the geography will remain closed and you must take my word
for it. And when I tell you that the great, blunt-topped butte behind
him was Parowan Peak, don't look for it on the map; you'll never find
it. It's a great, wild country, a beautiful, savage country, and if
you don't love it you will fear it greatly. And fear it is that rouses
the sleeping devil of the desert and sets the bones of men bleaching
under the arid sky.
Hopeful Bill Dale knew the desert, and loved it, and made friends with
it. He plucked a bright red "Indian paintbrush" from beside a rock and
held it up to Luella, watching him cock-eyed from her crude perch of
juniper laid across two forked sticks driven into the sand. Luella
took the flower in one claw, looked it over and dropped it
disdainfully.
"Aw, cut it out! Let's eat," she suggested.
"You're on," Bill replied amiably, turning fried potatoes out of the
frying pan. "Come and get it, old girl."
Luella was not a flying bird, except under stress of great emotion.
Now she leaned head downward, her beak closing upon a knob where a
small branch had been lopped off the stick. Turning like an acrobat,
she went down with the aid of beak and claws, and pigeon-toed over to
Bill's crude table, crawled upon a convenient rock and waited solemnly
for her first helping of fried potato, which she ate daintily, holding
it in one claw.
"I've got a surprise for you, old girl," Bill began, when the edge of
their hunger had dulled a bit. "That horn we picked up in the
road,--it's mine now, by right of discovery. You saw how I stuck to
the Goldfield road and made an extra day's journey of the trip, just
in case that car came back, hunting for the horn. Lord knows where
they are, by now. So I figure the thing belongs to me. After supper,
I'm going to open her up and give you some music."
"Hate to hang till yuh do," Luella observed pessimistically. "Let's
eat."
Bill dipped a piece of bread in his coffee and gave it to her, unmoved
by her pessimism. "One thing a fellow needs out here alone is
distraction," he went on. "You're getting so you know more than I
do--leave you to tell it--and you're more human than lots of folks.
You've reached the point where I can't seem to teach you anything
more, Luella. You could almost hold down a claim alone, except for the
cooking and maybe swinging a single-jack. So I figure a little
diversion will come in about right."
"You're on," said Luella. "Git a move on."
So that is how Hopeful Bill Dale conceived the idea of becoming a
musician, thus making use of the opportunity which Providence--or
something not so kind--had thrown in his way. It may seem a trivial
thing, but trivial things have a fashion of tripping one's feet in the
race for happiness, or perchance proving to be the one factor that
makes success certain. Bill washed his dishes and tidied his camp, and
then he opened the instrument case and for the first time removed the
shining thing within. Luella, once more back on her perch, watched him
distrustfully.
"Luck's own baby boy!" he ejaculated under his breath. "Here's a book
goes with it. 'Progressive Method for the Saxophone.' Saxophone, hunh?
I always did want to learn one, Luella; believe it or not. Well, let's
go."
"Aw, cut it out!" Luella advised him gloomily, but Bill was absorbed
in putting together the instrument and in reading certain directions
on the first page of the book.
Followed a muttered monologue, accompanied by certain unusual grimaces
and gestures.
"'Upper and lower lips slightly over the teeth--chin must be
down--lips drawn back as when laughing.' I got that, all right. 'Put
the mouthpiece into the mouth a little less than halfway.'" Goggling
down at the page, Bill obeyed,--or tried to. When he recovered from
that experiment, he read in silence and looked up at Luella puzzled.
"Now if you were human, you could maybe explain to me how a fellow is
going to breathe steadily without making use of his nose, mouth, ears
or eyes," he hazarded. "Your mouth is full of saxophone to your
palate and past it, and you mustn't breathe through your nose, because
that looks bad, and your eyes must follow the notes and it's against
the rule to puff out your cheeks, which is unbecoming. I figure,
Luella, a man's got to curl up his toes and _die_ till he's through
playing. Hunh?"
"Git a move on! Come alive, come alive!"
"Oh, well,--" said Bill, and began again.
Nothing happened, save imminent death from strangulation. Bill looked
foolishly at the instrument. Once more he placed certain fingers
carefully upon certain keys, flattened his lips to a fixed, painful
grin, swallowed as much mouthpiece as was possible without choking
himself to death, and blew until his eyes popped. Sister Mitchell came
slowly forward and stood with her skinny gray neck stretched toward
Bill, her melancholy eyes regarding curiously the long silver thing in
Bill's tense embrace. Hezekiah came up and squatted on his stump of a
tail, his ugly, hairy face tilted sidewise while he stared. Bill's
family were always keenly interested in everything that concerned
Bill, if it were only a new label on a can of tomatoes.
"Didn't get a rise out of it yet," Bill apologized embarrassedly, "but
I will. I've heard fellows warble on these brutes till your heart
fair melts in your chest. What they can do, I can do. A little music,
evenings, is what this camp needs."
In the dimming light he read the confusing instructions all over
again, engulfed the ebony mouthpiece within his carefully grinning
mouth, took a deep breath,--and something slipped. A terrific, deep
bass note rumbled forth quite unexpectedly, before Bill had fairly
begun to blow.
Bill jumped. Sister Mitchell disappeared precipitately into her shell,
Luella let out an oath which Bill only used under sudden overwhelming
emotion, and Hezekiah gave a howl and streaked it into the desert.
Bill recovered first, and on the whole he was pleased with himself. He
had gotten the hang of it by sheer accident, and he sat and made
terrible sounds while Luella paced up and down her perch with her tail
spread, cursing and imploring by turns.
She wronged Bill if she thought that Bill enjoyed his spasmodic
blattings and squeakings. He did not. He winced at every squawk, even
while he persisted doggedly in the uproar. Through discord only might
he hope to become a master of the melody he craved, wherefore he
endured the discord, thankful that no human being was near. It took
him all the next day to round up the burros, however, and Sister
Mitchell went into retirement in her shell and remained there
stubbornly.
Thereafter, the stars looked down upon a pathetic little desert comedy
enacted every night: The pathetic comedy of Bill Dale tying up his
burros and his dog and anchoring a gray desert turtle to a rock before
he sat down, with a dull-green instruction book before him on the
ground, its corners weighted with small rocks, and practiced dolefully
and indefatigably upon a silver-plated saxophone. As long as he could
see he would sit cross-legged, humped over his notes,--of which he
possessed a rudimentary knowledge learned in school. When darkness
blurred the staff, Bill would tootle up and down the scale to the
accompaniment of vituperous remarks from Luella and an occasional howl
from Hez.
Down deep in his heart there was a reason, which he would not divulge
to any one, much less Luella. Twenty miles away, in a vine-covered
ranch house that looked out upon the desert from under the branches of
cool, green cottonwoods, a certain Doris Hunter sang sweet old songs
sometimes in the twilight, and played a sketchy, pleasant little
accompaniment upon the piano. Bill knew no ecstasy sweeter than
sitting in the gloaming, staring dreamily up through the cottonwood
branches at the evening star, while Doris sang "Love's Old Sweet
Song."
The pathetic note in the little comedy, the note which his outraged
menagerie missed altogether, was the fact that Bill would sit for
hours, there under the stars, and try to play "Love's Old Sweet Song."
And while he tried patiently to make the notes come true, his heart
was away over the ridge and down in that little, vine-covered ranch
house, worshiping Doris Hunter while she sang.
A dream came to him every night while he played and watched the stars.
He dreamed of some day going down to the Hunter ranch, with some
perfectly convincing excuse for a visit. He would have the saxophone
tied on Wise One, who was more dependable in his habits than
Angelface, who was a devil. He would wait until after supper, when
Doris would finally settle down on the piano stool. Then he would
remember his saxophone and suggest nonchalantly that they try a few
little things together. Doris would round her eyes at him, and the
dimple would show in her left cheek when she begged him to bring it
in.
Then,--Bill's lips would smile in spite of the correct position of the
mouth, when he reached that point in his dream--then, after a little
talk, and the whole family gathering around to exclaim over the
beautiful instrument (which really was beautiful, in cold reality),
why, then Bill would suggest something, and Doris would strike a
preliminary chord or two, and Bill would follow her voice softly with
his music while she sang:
/P
"Just a song at twi-light,
When the lights ar-re low,
A-and the flick'ring sha-adows,
Sof-ftly come and go-o--"
P/
Bill's lips would soften, his eyes would grow luminous and very, very
tender. He would forget to play and would stare up into the gemmed
purple, and wonder, and dream, and hope.
After a long while, when Luella had tucked her head under her wing,
Bill would lay the saxophone carefully in its velvet nest and begin
absently to unlace his boots. Doris Hunter--the gold mine he meant to
find--had indeed almost found--"Love's Old Sweet Song"--the skill to
play while Doris sang; these things mingled indissolubly in his soul
while he slept and dreamed, shuttled through his waking mind while he
worked.
So this was the real Bill Dale, whom men called Hopeful Bill with
their mouths tipped down.
CHAPTER THREE
LUELLA ANNOUNCES
In the beginning of mining booms, accident and freaks of chance are
popularly supposed to play the leading rôle. A mule, for instance,
played fairy godmother when it let fly its heels and kicked a nub off
a ledge of fabulous richness in gold. A man threw a rock at a jack
rabbit, and then realized that the rock was heavier than it should be;
sought its mates and found a mine. Or a man takes an inadvertent slide
down a ledge and lands upon a bonanza.
These things do happen occasionally; and, being ready-made romance,
they are seized upon avidly by the teller of tales. So the public
comes to believe that chance, and chance alone, discovers the precious
minerals and leads men like blind children to the spot; a sort of
"Shut-your-eyes-and-open-your-mouth" game played by Fate.
In reality, more mines are found by careful prospecting than are ever
given to the world by sheer accident. More and more is science turning
prospector, and men go carefully, reading geologic formations,
following volcanic breaks and mineral outcroppings. Your desert
prospector may eat with his knife and forget to take off his hat in
the house, but he can talk you blind on intrusions and sedimentary
deposits and the dips, angles and faults of certain mineral formations
he knows. Chlorides, "bromides," sulphides,--these things are the shop
talk of desert and mountains. Men speak of one another with praise or
disparagement, as "knowing rock" or as not knowing rock. And the man
who does not know rock is the man who goes about praying for a mule to
kick the dirt off a gold outcropping for him.
Bill Dale knew rock. He had spent two years, more or less, prospecting
on the southern slope of Parowan, because there was a "break" running
across, and because, in the lower end of a wash that had many feeders
wrinkled into the mountainside, he had picked up a few pieces of
"float" carrying free gold in such quantity that it would mean a real
bonanza if he found it "in place," which means in a continuous vein
leading to the main body that produced it.
As a bystander he had observed the boom at Goldfield, Tonopah, and at
other lesser points. His father had been rich in a boom town for a few
weeks. Then he had been a broken, old pauper until he died.
Wherefore, Bill Dale did not want a premature boom, nor any boom at
all. He wanted to find the ledge or vein that had produced that float,
so that he would have something tangible to offer Doris Hunter,--in
case he ever found courage enough to offer her anything. He knew that
he was liked by the Hunters; but he also knew that as a prospective
husband for Doris he was never for one moment seriously considered.
Don Hunter, her father, was a stockman. He did not believe much in
mines, and he looked askance, from a business viewpoint, at any man
who spent good, working days in prospecting the desert. It was the
most insidious, the most hopeless form of gambling, according to Don
Hunter. He would rather see a man sit down to poker and play for a
living than to see him wallowing around like a badger, digging holes
in a sidehill looking for wealth.
Bill had done a great deal of pecking and prying, up this wash and
that. He believed he knew where the float had come from, but there
seemed to be an overburden of soil, probably the result of some
beating storm and consequent slide, which had covered the ledge that
had at one time been an outcropping. It was slow, tedious work, but
Bill was a patient man. Prospectors have to learn patience, or quit
the game.
Flaunting desert lilies, dainty blue bells, the deep magenta bloom of
the cacti gave way to the tiny pink and pale lavender blossoms that
cling close to the arid soil. The sky was brazen with heat, or it
turned deep shades of slate as the thunderheads poked over Parowan and
rumbled warningly at the desert. Bill worked on through the hot days
and practised scales and simple melodies in the evening, and quarreled
with Luella and confided to her many things which he would not want
repeated.
One sultry evening he brought into camp several pieces of rock and
held them where Luella could gaze upon certain telltale, yellow
specks. Bill's perspiring face glowed. His eyes were dancing with
something akin to mirth.
"We've struck it, old girl! What I've been looking for all this while.
Biggest thing yet, from the looks. We're _rich_, I tell you! Doggone,
thundering rich! You watch Parowan go on the map. Biggest thing in the
country. If I showed that rock in Goldfield, they'd be down here like
flies." He laid the rock down and broke a dry stick across his knee,
meaning to start a fire. But he was excited and kept on talking,--now
definitely to Luella, now to himself.
"It's the kind of thing I've been hunting. I knew it should be here
somewhere. This district is entitled to a big mine. It's got all the
earmarks. I've got her traced, now. That rock is in place, or I'm a
Chinaman. I tell you, old girl, we're rich! I've got a nugget in my
shirt pocket that I didn't show you, for fear you might swallow it."
"Aw, cut it out!" Luella snapped at him. She was a pessimistic bird,
as a rule.
Bill burrowed deeper and found more gold. Rock so rich that he could
break it up by hand and pan it in the spring, and glean gold enough
for another grubstake, more equipment. He was in no great hurry to
proclaim his fortune to the world, and he did not mean to show himself
in town until his grub was gone. Then he would make a trip, buy more
supplies, perhaps hire a man if he could find one whom he could trust.
He did not want the harpies to know about Parowan,--yet.
He relieved his inner excitement by talking to Luella, and by tootling
on the saxophone and dreaming of Doris Hunter, who did not seem quite
so unattainable, now that he had found the mine he had wanted to find
and was proving it richer than his most lavish expectations.
With the first discovery he had put up his location notices on three
claims, calling them simply Parowan Number One, Parowan Number Two and
Parowan Number Three. And in compliment to the girl of his dreams he
had located another, called it the Evening Star and signed Doris
Hunter's name as the locator. Which is a chivalrous custom observed
quite commonly among prospectors.
He did the location work on all four claims, put up the corner and
side-line monuments required by law, and then, having eaten most of
his supplies, he cached the remainder and started for Goldfield, his
mind at ease, his heart singing and his lips wearing an unconscious
half-smile all the way.
It was in Goldfield, while Bill was in the recorder's office, that the
news leaked out where it shouldn't. Luella, like others of her sex,
began talking, inspired by an audience of four men, one of whom was
Jim Lambert, who had betrayed some curiosity over Bill Dale's affairs
when Bill was last in town.
"Bill Dale's outfit. Hello, Luella," Jim greeted.
Luella looked down at him, seemed to recall having seen him before,
and began her pigeon-toed march up and down Wise One's spinal column.
"Boy, we've struck it rich!" she began, chuckling in vivid imitation
of Hopeful Bill's tone when he was particularly pleased. "Got her
traced now. Richest thing in Nevada. Goldfield can't show stuff like
this. Tell you, old girl, we're rich! Doggone, thunderin' rich! Can't
tell anybody. Don't want a boom. Git a move on! They'd be down here
like flies. Hez! Hez'll have a gold collar. Gold perch for you. Luck's
turned; luck's patting us on the back." Luella laughed, then, just as
Bill laughed.
Jim and his three companions had stood perfectly still, listening. Jim
turned his head and looked at the others, who stared back at him
inquiringly.
"Inside dope, boy, believe me." Jim plucked the nearest man by the
sleeve. "Bill Dale's parrot has give us the real dope on Bill, if you
want my opinion. Come on. We'll lay low, and I'll feel Bill out. He's
inside--recording claims, I'll bet. Anyway, I've got a claim to
record, come to think of it. I'll git all I can outa the recorder.
Bill Dale's parrot has tipped Bill's hand. I'll see the recorder."
They went away. Five minutes later, Bill came down the steps to his
burros and discovered Luella toeing it up and down, up and down,
practising new sets of words.
"Bill Dale's parrot has tipped Bill's hand. I'll see the recor'," she
muttered, over and over.
"You damned huzzy," Bill reproved her, when he had got the full
significance of her speech. He picked up Wise One's lead rope and went
thoughtfully down to the store.
"We'll lay low," Luella continued, bobbing her head as Wise One's
empty pack swayed and lurched under her feet. "Come on. We'll lay low.
I'll feel Bill out. Bill Dale's parrot has tipped Bill's hand. I'll
see the recor-r'----" She worried over the final syllable that
defeated her powers of enunciation.
Bill looked back at her speculatively. At the store, the first thing
he asked for was a large, pasteboard carton. Having found one which he
thought would do, he plucked Luella unceremoniously off her perch and
shut her up, with the box lid tied firmly in place with much heavy
twine.
"Fellow tried to steal her, last time I was in," he explained
good-humoredly. "She's a pet I'd hate to lose. I'll give you a dollar
if you'll let me put her away somewhere till I'm ready to leave town."
"Sure! Keep the dollar, though. It ain't any trouble--if you feed her
yourself." Bill was a good customer. He bought largely when he did
buy, and he never hinted at credit; which was more than could be said
of most prospectors.
"Wait! I'll just put the turtle in with her. Then she'll be more at
home, and won't try to break out." Bill went out and returned,
swinging a headless, footless, tailless mass of gray turtle
insouciantly by the string. "Bunch of boys was after Sister Mitchell
too, last time," he observed. "I hate to have trouble, and I can't
always keep an eye on things in town. Got quite a lot of running
around to do."
He carried the turtle to the back of the store, opened the box and
slid her in with little ceremony.
"What the hell!" Luella ejaculated, but Bill slipped on the cover and
left her in darkness, so that Luella subsided into throaty mutterings.
She never talked in the dark, as Bill knew very well.
"How's prospecting?" the storekeeper asked when Bill returned. "Found
anything?"
"Well, I've got a dandy prospect," Bill confided, lowering his voice
and glancing sidelong toward the door. "I want to do some more
digging, though, before I throw up my hat. Just recorded three claims,
as I came past the courthouse. I've got to go in on a lead, and I want
the work to count as location work. In fact," he further elucidated,
"I've recorded what work I've done as location. No use digging for
nothing, and even if they don't pan out rich enough to pay now, so
far from transportation, there's enough showing of mineral to pay for
hanging on awhile."
"Um-hmm." The storekeeper nodded. "Pity all prospectors don't take the
pains to make sure uh what they got. They come in here blattin' about
their strikes--and want more grub on credit. I used to fall for it.
What's your claims? Gold?"
"Showing of gold," Bill told him unhesitatingly. "The formation
entitles me to gold, too, so that's what I'm looking for. Here's a
piece of rock. Take a look at it."
The storekeeper tilted the specimen to the light and squinted. Bill
obligingly lent him a miner's glass, and with his finger pointed to a
certain spot on the sample. "Right there--at the edge of that iron
stain; there's a speck of color."
"Mh-hmm--yeah--I see it. Well, it's good, live-lookin' rock, Bill. I
think you're wise to dig into it." He returned the sample, weighing it
in his mind as he held it out.
"I'm keeping quiet about it--to outsiders," Bill said, dropping the
rock into his pocket again. "Don't want any stampede. But I do want a
couple more burros, and a hundred pounds of powder, and four boxes of
Six-X caps, and five hundred feet of fuse. If you can get me all the
stuff I need, and get the two extra burros packed and headed down the
trail with orders for the fellow to camp and wait till I show up, I'll
make it right with you. This town's got big ears and big eyes.
And--you can maybe remember why I hate boom stampedes that don't pan
out. I'll give you ten per cent. on every dollar's worth of stuff and
the cost of the burros you get to--say to Hick's Hot Spring for me,
and twenty-five dollars for a good, trusty man that can swing a
single-jack and throw a mess of sour-dough bread together."
The storekeeper ruminated.
"Why, I'll do it for nothing, Bill. You're a good customer, and if you
do make a strike I guess I won't lose your trade by treating you
white. Trade's slidin' into the credit class more'n what I like to
see. You're hard cash when you buy. Just give me your order, and I'll
fill it. And what's more, I'll keep my damn mouth shut. And glad to
accommodate yuh, Bill."
"Say, you're a white man!" Bill looked full at him and grinned
appreciation. But he did not confide further in the storekeeper,
nevertheless. "Don't let anybody hang around my pets, and don't say
who's to own the burros. You buy 'em, and I'll buy 'em from you, same
as I do bacon. And be careful, pickin' that man, will yuh? I want one
that can swing something besides his tongue."
"I getcha, Bill. How about booze?"
"All right--if he can do without for a month or two at a stretch. I
don't pack any jugs into the desert, as you maybe know."
"That's why I asked. Town's full of good men, but they are mostly
booze-punishers. Well--how long you expect to be in town?"
"Just until I'm hooked up with what I need."
"Well--I can get yuh out to-morrow, maybe."
"Just in case you happen to run shy,----" Bill wrote a check on a Reno
bank and handed it over. "Any balance, either way, we'll straighten up
before I leave."
He purloined a handful of withered lettuce leaves and dropped them
into the box for Sister Mitchell and Luella, and went out to idle here
and there through town and discover, if he could, just how much damage
Luella had done to his plans.
CHAPTER FOUR
GOOD, LIVELY PROSPECT
Jim Lambert had known Bill Dale since the beginning of the boom that
had broken Bill's father,--broken him mentally and financially. Jim
was a broker in Goldfield and sold real estate and underwrote fire
insurance as a side line. Lately, the side line had become the chief
industry, since mines had begun to close down and adventurers were
drifting on to later excitements.
Bill did not care much for Jim Lambert. Although he never troubled to
explain to himself his indifference that edged close to dislike, he
had no definite distrust of the man. Yet Jim Lambert had been active
in his father's Myrtle Mine boom and had professed to suffer when the
bubble burst. Bill's father had complained vaguely that Jim Lambert
was largely responsible for the bursting of the bubble, but Bill had
not paid much attention to that talk. He knew his dad too well. His
dad always blamed some one for his misfortunes,--some one other than
himself. Bill's nature was built of stiffer material. When his plans
went wrong, Bill set all his energies to work planning the next move
and wasted little thought upon the reason for his last failure;
unless, to be sure, in that reason lay his safety in the future. Thus,
Bill flatly refused to help his father play the game of
find-the-guilty-party. He went to work and earned and saved all he
could out of it, and when he had enough to keep him going for five
years, he set out deliberately to spend that five years in finding a
mine.