"An' they don't b'lieve in killin'. They say that's crewd an'
danger'us."
"They'll pay you more," Bill snapped, "if they're afraid of your
tongue. You're a cheap skate, Al--an awful cheap skate. If you'll take
my advice, you'll get out of town--to-night. The world's full of
places besides Parowan. Take him out, Tommy; and dump him somewhere
outside the city limits. And if you want to bring any more like him
into camp, give them a good scrubbing first. I'll have to clean house
after him. Get!"
This last command was to Al, who overturned the box in his haste to
get off it. Tommy herded him out with the ivory-handled gun, looking a
bit crestfallen and a good deal puzzled. Tommy's thought processes
were too simple to follow Bill's logic, or to understand his attitude.
It seemed to him that Bill was almost criminally indifferent to his
own interests, and that his leniency with Al Freeman fell but little
short of approval. It had been labor wasted, bringing Al there to tell
Bill his story, and he regretted now that he had not been content to
kick Al out of the saloon and let it go at that.
But after he was gone, Bill sat dejectedly beside the stove, his arms
folded across his lifted knees, feet in the oven, and brooded over the
amazing story. It seemed incredible that Al could be telling the
truth,--and yet, there were some things that Al could not possibly
have imagined. If there were thin spots in his story, there were also
details that carried conviction.
Luella, having retired under the bunk during the interview, came
stalking out and climbed, beak and claws, up Bill's back and perched
upon his shoulder, leaning forward and making kissing sounds against
his cheek, which was her way of coaxing his attention. Bill reached up
a hand and stroked her back absently.
"Speak up now," Luella admonished, having liked the sound of that
phrase. "That's a hell of a note, ain't it?"
Bill pulled her down and held her on her back between his hands,
rolling her gently from side to side.
"It is," he answered gravely. "You've stated the case exactly." He set
the parrot on his knee, where she immediately began to preen her
ruffled feathers.
That was the convincing part of Al's story,--repeating the things
Luella had said before the courthouse. Al claimed to have been there,
and to have heard her talk. He had chanced to pass by the steps just
as Jim Lambert, Rayfield and Emmett were coming up to the courthouse
from town. He claimed to have been in the offices of Jim Lambert
later, when the plot was hatched. If that were a lie, how could Al
repeat what the parrot must have said? How could he know that the
burros, and the parrot with them, had waited before the courthouse
steps alone or otherwise? Al had named the very day and the very hour
of Bill's visit to the recorder's office. The date and hour were
written upon his location filing, together with book and page of the
record. Had Bill chanced to forget, that record would serve to remind
him; but Bill did not forget. Al had never seen those papers. He could
not possibly have told about Luella unless he had both seen and heard
her there.
The incredible feature of the yarn was the fact that Rayfield and
Emmett--John and Walter, he had come to call them in his mind--had
been the chief instigators of the plot. And there again Bill
floundered in vain speculation. What _was_ the plot? Not the mere
creation of jobs for themselves, surely? Al had professed ignorance of
their governmental position. They may have been research men, as they
claimed. He didn't know, and he had never heard that talked about,
except as a plausible reason for their showing up at Bill's claims. He
was sure that they had lied about working out from Las Vegas west,
however; having been in Goldfield, they could not have been
prospecting Forty Mile Canyon at that particular time.
What had they gained? A block of stock for each of them, to be sure.
Bill had been generous; had given them each fifty thousand shares of
the promotion stock. He could scarcely credit any plot to get it,
however. Still, that meant fifty thousand dollars immediately after
the company was organized. Bill had known of many a murder committed
for a fraction of that amount.
One discrepancy in the story eluded him for some time, though he
groped for it vaguely. Then Al's retort came to him with force--"Not
if they was gittin' five dollars where you was gittin' one"--and set
him scowling, vacant-eyed, at the tent wall.
_Were_ they getting five dollars to his one? How? They had full
control, to be sure. But their control seemed to be of the
conservative, constructive kind that favored dividends. And there was
the thing that seemed incredible. Would crooks, of the bold type that
would follow a prospector and lay cunning plans to grab what he had
found, play a straight game afterwards? It did not seem to Bill that
it could be possible. A crook is a crook. Once in control, they could
have raided and wrecked the company a dozen times in his absence.
Instead, they had worried over one passed dividend.
Bill lay that night staring up at the whitish blur of his tent roof
with a cloudy moon above it, and thought circles around the thing.
Walter and John _couldn't_ be the thieves Al Freeman had called them.
A thief cannot keep his fingers off other men's money. Walter and John
had made money for many a man. But that painfully exact report of
seeing and hearing Luella in Goldfield was true. It had to be true.
That was something which no man could build convincingly out of his
imagination; not to Bill, where Luella was concerned. She had a
certain fixed idea in her talk, always. She seemed able to
discriminate between subjects, and to stick to one for minutes at a
time before drifting into other sentences that conveyed an entirely
different impression of what might be going on back of those
observant, yellow eyes. To one who did not know Luella, it would be
impossible to simulate her uncanny imitation of intelligence,--which
Bill more than half believed to be genuine reasoning power. Perhaps
the bird was especially quick to read faces and to connect certain
expressions on the countenance with certain groups of words. It could
not be accident, in Bill's opinion. Accidents do not happen with
consistent regularity, and Luella's remarks were usually pithy and to
the point. It was therefore a fixed basis of reasoning, in Bill's
mind, to grant the authenticity of Al Freeman's contention that Luella
was at the bottom of the plot.
Beyond that point, however, Bill continued to flounder in doubts. He
hated himself for even speculating upon the dishonesty of Walter and
John, although he had found them a bit touchy, a shade jealous of
their authority and their judgment. Walter had assumed executive
control; John, as treasurer, had the responsibility of keeping the
accounts impeccable. Bill had attended the annual stockholders'
meeting, on the last afternoon of the year, and he had been almost
awed by the meticulousness of John Emmett's financial report. It had
sounded like some carefully compiled government statistics, and Bill
had been compelled to sit and listen to a careful reading.
The reëlection of the Board of Directors had been a mere form. Bill,
Walter and John were the directors,--Nevada demanding only three. They
were as inevitably reëlected to the same offices. There had not been
many stockholders present, the day being almost a holiday. Those who
were present voted perfunctorily and with complete unanimity; indeed,
so harmonious had been the meeting that every one may as well have
stayed at home, save the secretary, Bill thought.
Therefore, in their pardonable desire to be left alone to run the
machinery, since they had started it in the first place, Bill saw the
full approval of the resident stockholders. And if the stockholders
whose very business life depended upon the success of Parowan
Consolidated and the integrity of her officers were satisfied, surely
there was no reason why the president should meddle. The business men
of Parowan would be the first to know if anything went wrong, Bill
told himself over and over.
Yet the story Al Freeman had told would not erase itself from his
mind, nor could he call it a venomous bit of spite and so discount it.
There had been bothersome details which a lawyer would call
corroborative evidence. There was the ineffectual campsetting, the
night of their arrival; rather, the late afternoon. Tommy had declared
then that Al Freeman had been bluffing, that he had not tried to get
their tent up and pegged down securely before the storm broke. Al
confirmed Tommy's assertion. The plan, he declared, had been to manage
to pass the night with Bill. They had decided that when they first
glimpsed his tent.
Then the invasion of the tent while Doris was there alone he had
explained. Emmett had seen the sample sack half full of ore, but had
not dared to investigate the contents at the time. He had ordered Al
to go back and see what was in that sack. It it were the rich ore they
suspected, he was to abstract what he could, load the burros and hurry
back to Goldfield, leaving Rayfield and Emmett nothing but their
blankets. He said they knew that Bill had plenty of grub.
These details fitted in with what had occurred within Bill's
knowledge. If Al were lying, he was assuredly making a fine, artistic
job of it all. The inconceivable part was the personality of the two
men he accused, and the part they had played and were still playing in
Parowan Consolidated and in the town. They had promoted their campaign
cleverly and efficiently, mostly by the power of suggestion.
"If it's true," said Bill harassedly at breakfast next morning,
"they're the tamest bandits I ever saw in my life. I can't believe
it."
"Seems like a dream," Luella assented promptly, pausing in her
nibbling of coffee-soaked crust. "Ain't that a hell of a note! I can't
believe it." Then, blinking rapidly as memory revived another speech,
she added softly, "Kiss me, Doris. Say you love me."
Bill's face paled. He looked at the bird, swept out an impulsive arm
and pushed her off the table, soaked crust and all. He bit his lip,
fighting the spasm of loneliness, or heartsick longing for the life he
had dreamed of living with Doris.
Of a sudden his head went down upon a curved arm, his shoulders
twitching a bit as he still fought. Luella, crawling up to forgive and
be forgiven, made her clicking, kissing sounds in vain against his
cheek.
"Hell of a note!" she complained at last, when Bill gave no sign of
response. "I can't believe it. Seems like a dream. You don't say!"
Then, spying the butter unguarded, she stepped down upon the table and
pigeon-toed in that direction. "Help yourself," she invited gravely.
"Plenty more where that came from. Help yourself."
And Bill, his soul flayed with bitter memories, with dreams slowly
strangled and returning wraithlike to mock his loneliness, did not
even hear.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"THERE'LL BE MORE TO COME OF IT"
Walter Rayfield reached out his hand with deliberate firmness and laid
his forefinger upon the push button on his desk. In the distance could
be heard a faint buzzing. Almost immediately thereafter, John Emmett
opened a door and walked in, a yellow invoice in his hand and a look
of inquiry on his face.
Rayfield waved a plump hand toward a chair.
"Sit down, John, and listen to the story that Bill has brought us this
morning. The most outrageous thing I ever heard in my life. Go on,
Bill--but go back to the beginning, if you don't mind. I want John to
hear what you have just told me."
Impassively Bill obeyed. When he had finished--and he spared no
details in the recital--he sat back and folded his arms, waiting to
see how they would take it; watching, too, for some sign that should
guide his judgment of the matter. He was still ashamed to doubt them,
still ready to believe that Al, having overheard the parrot, and
suspecting the significance of her remarks, had yet concocted the
rest of the story from some dark purpose of his own; revenge, perhaps,
but more likely in the hope of profiting by the tale. But Bill had not
spoken of his own belief in the two. He had told them what Al said,
making no comment of any kind, keeping his voice and his face
carefully neutral.
Rayfield and Emmett looked at each other. Emmett smiled slightly,
shrugged his shoulders and glanced down at the yellow invoice.
"Interesting bit of libel," he said contemptuously. "If there was any
truth in it, I wouldn't be getting a hump in my shoulders and ruining
my eyes over the Company books. Did you O K the order for these engine
parts, Walter? This invoice is not correct. The total is wrong, and
moreover the name of purchaser is not here. I wish you'd call up the
shop and ask about it. Tell them I can't accept it as it stands. Make
it plain that they must furnish a correct invoice, or take back the
merchandise." He dropped the invoice before Rayfield. "And once more
let me say that I absolutely refuse to accept anything that is not
signed by the purchaser. Who did this buying? The engineer at the
plant?"
"Now, now, never mind the invoice for a minute, John! I want to ask
Bill just one question. It may not be beneath your dignity, either,
to join me in wanting to know why Bill did not bring this Al Freeman
to us with that story. That hurts me, Bill. I can't understand why you
heard him out and did not give us the chance to face him with it. I--I
dislike to think that you gave the story any credence; but since----"
Emmett turned and came back to the desk. His hard brown eyes fixed
themselves upon Bill's face.
"If Bill took enough stock in the yarn to listen to it, there's just
one thing for me to do. I'm responsible for the Company's funds. I
think I shall demand that you bring an auditor to examine the books."
"An auditor has gone over the books, hasn't he? You showed his
certificate at the annual meeting. And Al didn't say you had juggled
the accounts, John."
"No, he could hardly say that," Rayfield put in. "At this late
day--hoping, I suppose, that we could not prosecute him for stealing
our outfit--he claims that we arranged for him to steal it so that we
could board with Bill!" He threw back his head suddenly and laughed,
his sides and rounded front shaking with mirth.
"A fine tribute to your cooking, Bill! You should have given him a
dollar or two for that!"
"I thought you two ought to know what he's saying," Bill replied
soberly. He had no heart for joking, that morning. "He was telling it
in Tommy's Place, and Tommy overheard him and made him come to me and
repeat what he had said to others. I thought it was no more than right
to let you know."
"We appreciate your spirit, Bill, but I can't seem to understand his
object. Did he give you any valid reason for concocting such a yarn?"
"He said that you hadn't played fair with him. He said you had paid
him some money, but not what you had promised." Bill sighed,--a purely
physical incident caused by his general depression and the ache in his
heart for Doris. This conspiracy tale did not seem important, now that
he had told it to Walter and John. The sunny, well-regulated offices,
the sight of John and Walter on the job, busy with Parowan affairs,
reassured and shamed him--though he reflected that he had not really
doubted them, even in his midnight musings when a man's faith burns
weakest.
"I told him you'd have paid enough to keep his mouth shut," he added.
"And I wouldn't make enough of the yarn to bring him to you. I told
Tommy to take him out and dump him outside the city limits."
"In that case," said John in a tone of displeasure, "I don't see just
what you can expect us to do about it; or why you came to us with it
during office hours. Walter may have all the time in the world to
gossip--but I happen to have work to do. When you decide what you're
going to do about it, let me know and I'll stand any investigation you
may want to start. But I can't stand here discussing a crazy yarn like
that unless it's of some importance to the Company."
Bill rose and picked up his hat.
"I came and told you the yarn so you'll know what to do if Al Freeman
shows up again in Parowan. I won't be here for a week or two, maybe.
I'm taking the noon train. You can get me at the Palace Hotel in
Frisco, any time it's necessary."
"Going to bring the Missus back with you?" Rayfield pursed his lips
good-humoredly. "Hope you mean to give a house-warming when you move
into that mansion. I'd like to have some of these Parowan folks see
what you've got there. Well, so-long, old man. And after all, I guess
we're both grateful to you for warning us about Al Freeman. I'll put
the Chief of Police on his trail. If he shows up we'll land him in the
penitentiary for that robbery of our camp outfit. A man like that's
dangerous, left running at large and slandering his betters."
Bill agreed with him and went down the stairs wondering just how much
of a fool he had made of himself. But that thought was presently
swallowed up in his anticipation of seeing Doris and little Baby Mary
within twenty-four hours. He had not intended to leave so soon. He had
meant to write Doris that the house was finished and furnished, and to
invite her, in a purely joking way, to invite her to come and inspect
his job. But up in the office he had suddenly sickened of the town,
and of Walter and John. He had a fierce desire to look into one pair
of eyes that he knew was loyal. Doris might not agree with him always,
she might fall short of his ideal as a wife, but at least their
interests were identical and she could never be guilty of treachery.
He was not so sure of the rest of the world.
He hurried to camp and got Luella, taking her to Tommy's Place. He
wanted Tommy to sleep up in the new house for safety's sake, and he
wanted to know what had become of Al.
He found Tommy in a rather difficult mood and did not stay to explain
his reasons for turning Al out with so little thought of his
importance. It seemed to Tommy that Bill was playing into the hands of
crooks, and as plainly as he dared Tommy told Bill so.
"Al's gone, Mr. Dale--but there'll be more to come of it," he said
carpingly. "Kape wan eye open, is my advice to yuh. For I tell yuh
plain that Al was not lyin', though yuh might think it. He c'uldn't
look yuh in the eye, Mr. Dale--an' when he's tellin' one of his lies
he has that way of lookin' at yuh, he puts the school books t' shame
that says a liar cannot look a man in the eye. So I know----"
"Train's whistling, Tommy. Keep your own eyes open and look after the
new house." It disturbed Bill to have Tommy voice something which Bill
himself would not concede to his consciousness. He did not believe
Al's story, because he refused to doubt the integrity of his partners.
He refused to doubt them, because to do so would pull down his faith
in the stability of Parowan, which he had chosen for Mary's home. It
was a round-about way to fight a doubt, but it was the best Bill could
do at that time. For, as is well known, nothing ever thrives quite so
luxuriantly as the seeds of suspicion.
* * * * *
Doris was glad to see Bill, though she was not enthusiastic over the
invitation to Parowan. She had thought that they might take a trip
east, now that the baby was old enough to travel, and had cut her
first two teeth. Of course, Doris would like to see her mother and
dad, but Parowan----
"Well, you've got a hundred-thousand-dollar house to step into, honey,
if you want to go." Bill looked at her wistfully. "I've heard several
women wishing they could visit a real mining camp, and I thought maybe
you'd like to take a party over for a week or two, and give a sort of
house-warming. Mrs. Baker Cole helped me choose the furnishings, and
she thought the plan of the house was perfect. You won't be ashamed to
have your friends see it. And there are some nice folks in Parowan
now."
Doris considered the matter. If Sophy Cole had helped Bill, of course,
that was different. The nice folks in Parowan, of course, did not
appeal to her in the slightest degree; but the house-party idea was
not a bad one. And she did want to see the old home again, she
discovered.
"We'd have to take servants from here, Bill--and you know I positively
couldn't think of staying longer than a couple of weeks or so. And I'd
have to see the place first, before I could ask any one over. You're a
dear, and all that, but a man simply _can't_ know about the little
things that count when one is giving a party. And besides, I'd have to
arrange for amusements for the guests. There is so little that one can
do in the desert for entertainment."
"I'd like to have you go with me alone," Bill confessed. "I'd like to
have you all to myself for a little while in the new home. Has it ever
struck you, Doris, that we have lived before the public ever since we
were married?"
"I don't see how you can call this public," Doris retorted, glancing
around the room. "And until you went back to Nevada on this wild
scheme of yours, I'm sure we were together all the time--and by
ourselves too, an awful lot."
Bill extended an arm and tapped lightly against the wall. "Six or
eight inches between us and our neighbors. I call that living in
public. Well, shall we go over there together, just us two and the
baby?"
"I'll see," said Doris lightly. "Perhaps--with servants, of course.
I'm rather curious to see what kind of a house you and Sophy Cole
would build, anyway."
"Next week, then, let's go." Bill drew her toward him and kissed her.
"It would be to-morrow, but I've got something to look after, first.
Honey, don't think me a fool just because I love you so; and don't
laugh at me for wanting to see my wife and my baby under our own roof.
I can't help it. I'm human."
"You're extravagant," Doris corrected, patting him on the shoulder
with a slight condescension which Bill did not miss. "Think of
spending all that money on a house in the desert! I never heard of
such a thing. I'll bet folks over there are calling it Dale's Folly,
this minute."
Bill's eyebrows drew together. He looked down at her somberly.
"They're sure mistaken, then," he said grimly. "_That's_ not Dale's
folly."
"You don't mean me, I hope?" A sparkle came into her eyes.
But Bill took his hat and left the room without even remembering that
he should ask to be excused, or make some courteous explanation of his
sudden departure.
CHAPTER TWENTY
LUELLA ENTERTAINS
Bill stood on the south veranda and looked down upon the town, where
smoke was rising lazily from bent stovepipe and brick chimney--the
supper fires of Parowan's inhabitants--and away across the desert
beyond, where the Funeral Mountains stood shoulder deep in purple
shadows, the peaks smiling yet in rosetinted afterglow.
"Home!" he said between his teeth. "I made a mistake. I've only built
a house. I'm a damned fool. It takes two to make a home."
Behind him came faint murmurs of talk, high-keyed laughter, little
silences shattered suddenly by the refined babel of several women
exclaiming in unison. The clink of china punctuating the pauses. Then,
frank, uncompromising, came the voice of Luella, speaking with awful
distinctness.
"What the hell! Damned bunch of gossips. Won't you ever settle down?
Doris, for God sake listen."
A pause, then voices exclaiming once more. Slippered feet came
tack-tack across polished floors, muffled on the rugs, clicking when
the rug was passed. A ripple, rustle, quite close. Then silence.
Without turning his head Bill knew that Doris was standing in the open
doorway, looking at him in hot anger. Unconsciously he braced himself,
his face setting into forced serenity.
It came.
"Bill, I wish to heaven you'd come and get that parrot! She's in
there, walking up and down, looking at the floor and saying the most
awful things! You'll have to explain it somehow to my guests--her
calling them a bunch of damned gossips. It's beyond human endurance.
She's talking something _awful_. I'll call a servant to take her out
and wring her neck, if you don't come and get her. I mean that, Bill."
Bill clicked his teeth together and faced her, smiling. But in the
pockets of his Palm Beach coat his hands were clenched, so that
trimmed nails dug into flesh.