with gentle raillery. "You told them how she would go up to baby Mary
and smooth down the baby's dress with her beak, and make kissing
sounds, and say, "She looks like you, Bill. Damned if she don't." I
heard you telling them. She's heard Don say that, every time he comes
here. Your _guests_ begged to have her brought in----"
"Yes, and what did she _do_?" Doris was almost in tears; but ladies
with carefully powdered cheeks cannot afford tears, so Doris pressed a
twenty-five-dollar handkerchief to her lips and controlled herself.
"I'll tell you what she did! I brought the baby and held her down for
the parrot to talk to. And what did she _say_? 'What the hell! You
damned huzzy, git outa here!' _That's_ what she said, to _your own
baby_! Now those women will go home and say that's the way you talk to
your family."
Bill's chuckle did not soothe her appreciably. She stood looking at
him as if she wanted to box his ears. Bill in cream colored Palm Beach
coat and trousers, soft silk shirt, white canvas shoes, was the
handsomest man in Parowan,--or in all Esmeralda County, for that
matter. The women guests of Doris recognized that fact, if Doris
herself overlooked it. Wherefore, when he yielded the point and
returned to the midst of the assembly, he saw eyes that brightened as
he looked into them, lips that smiled, a subdued little flutter at his
coming.
In the wide arch that Bill had designed to give Doris the long "vista"
which she so admired in other houses, Luella was pigeon-toeing back
and forth, her tail spread slightly, her eyes swift-flashing bits of
amber. She was peeved at something, in Bill's opinion. She paused and
tilted her head at him.
"Look who's here! Well, I'll be damned!"
Ladies laughed titteringly behind their fingers, and looked at one
another. Bill, feeling himself an elephant at a doll's tea-party,
stooped and let Luella step upon his hand.
"Hell of a note! I just can't _stand_ this place! Not a soul worth
knowing. Ignorant----"
Bill mercifully squelched her with his hand pressing down her head
hard. He bit his lip, trying hard not to laugh right out in meeting,
and turned to make a dignified retreat of it, when a pair of
human-looking eyes in the crowd met his, and one lid drooped a bit.
Bill stopped short, took the second look to make sure, and turned
toward the wives and daughters of Parowan's leading citizens. He
grinned,--the old, Bill Dale smile in the face of discouragement, the
smile and the twinkle that had gone far to win him his nickname of
Hopeful Bill.
"Aw, shucks! You've all raised children that were brought out to act
pretty before company, I guess." His voice wheedled them. "They
generally wound up with a spanking after the company was gone, didn't
they? Well, we're in that fix right now. Luella's been and gone and
done it, just like any other kid. That's what I get for leaving her
with a--gentleman that keeps a saloon, while we were in California for
about a year. And--you've caught me with the goods, I guess. I do
cuss, now and then. Every time the baby tries to say something else,
I'm apt to holler, 'Doris, for so-and-so listen!' Luella's got it down
pat." He looked around at them with his Hopeful Bill smile. "I hope I
shut her off before she told that on me," he said.
They laughed, much relieved, glad of his example so that they dared be
human for a minute. Doris, with her perfect social manner, had kept
them stiff-backed and guarding their tongues. One old lady who had
been the wife of a governor and could afford to be herself on that
account, waved half a wafer at Bill imperiously.
"Don't take her away, whatever you do," she cried. "That would be a
confession of guilt. I wouldn't have a parrot that couldn't swear--or
a monkey that wouldn't steal the guests' earrings. Put her down and
let her cuss. It's about the only chance we'll ever get to hear how
men talk when we're not around."
Bill hesitated, until he caught the eye of Doris, over by the door.
Then he shook his head.
"My wife's trying to reform me before the baby's old enough to repeat
things," he said. "Luella's influence is considered bad enough as it
is. It would never do to encourage her. The custom is to shut her in a
dark closet whenever she speaks in an unrefined manner. We hope to
purify her speech before little Mary is old enough to copy it."
He gave them all an endearing smile and carried Luella off. The
awkwardness of the situation was considerably relieved, and Doris did
her careful best to efface the memory of those last interrupted
remarks of Luella's. She hoped that no one had noticed how the
parrot's voice had changed, imitating her own tones. Luella never
learned that in the saloon, at least; there was enough to set the
ladies of Parowan thinking.
The ladies of Parowan did think--and they talked, as well. They had
felt all along, they said, that Bill Dale's wife held herself above
the rest of the town; though why she should was beyond their powers of
imagination. Everybody knew she was Don Hunter's girl,--respectable
enough, but nobody in particular, and certainly not rich. Don had made
some money out of Parowan, but they still ate in the kitchen, and Mrs.
Hunter didn't even keep a hired girl. And here was Doris, trailing
silken gowns over the polished floors, the Persian rugs of the mansion
on the hill, and speaking loftily of this servant and that
servant--by their last names--and bewailing the hardships of living in
Parowan and trying to entertain with no caterer in town and cut
flowers a practical impossibility on short notice or if the trains
happened to be late.
The ladies of Parowan descended to the satisfying luxury of speaking
their minds. Some of the minds harbored spite and malice and envy, at
that, and the things they said were not pleasant. It was fortunate
that the series of "at homes" which Doris had condescended to give to
the ladies in Parowan ended with what Bill unfeelingly dubbed
"Luella's party."
Five afternoons had been devoted to that memorable series. Twenty-five
women to an afternoon, and the house decorated differently each day,
and the prizes for the card games real, costly trifles such as Mrs.
Baker Cole and her set always gave. Parowan society would have been
content with a china plate or a doily for first prize, even at the
bridge table,--which was new to Parowan. Plain whist and five hundred
were the games usually played by the ladies of Parowan, and Doris had
overawed them, intimidated them even, with her "bridge tables" ever
since her arrival.
Her house-party from Santa Barbara and San Francisco, arriving in a
private car, twittering through the "camp" for a week and departing
as they had come, had impressed even the ex-governor's wife. There had
been a grand, house-warming ball, and the very elect of Parowan had
been permitted to attend it; but the house-party of wealthy strangers
had held themselves a bit aloof, and one woman had been overheard to
express her surprise and disappointment because the natives had
neglected to appear in red shirts and high boots, with six-shooters
dangling at their hips. Parowan hadn't quite forgiven that, even yet.
But Doris had responded to the involuntary deference which Parowan
showed to the wife of Bill Dale. She had glowed secretly with pride in
the house Bill had built on the hillside. It was a beautiful house;
even her critical eye could find no flaw in its design, in its perfect
appointments. Bill had been building a dream into the house. Love had
gone into it, and a wistful longing for a home that should dumbly
express his love for Doris and for his child. Hope had gone into the
building of that house; the hope that Doris would love it and would
want to call it home.
He had visioned her standing at the great window that was set like the
frame of a picture into the west end of the long drawing-room. The
scene it framed each day was the sunset,--glorious sunsets such as
only the desert may know. A great window of flawless plate glass,
framing the far peaks that flamed each night anew.
In the eastern wall the mate to that window was set cunningly so that
it should frame a glory which Bill called dawn. Doris had never seen
that picture, though Bill seldom missed it. But he had dreamed of her
standing before the west window, looking upon the sunset. He had
dreamed of other pictures of Doris in that house. Once or twice his
heart had beat faster, believing that his dream was coming true. For
Doris had been stimulated by the praise of her guests of the
house-party. She had read in their faces a delight in this house set
upon the edge of the wilderness. A few had asked if they might come
back. So Doris was lingering in Parowan and playing great lady to the
town,--and dramatizing herself to herself, with her California
acquaintances for an imaginary audience. She had seen that they
expected her to love the desert. Wherefore, she was professing to love
the desert and the town, and to dread tearing herself away at the
first frost. She meant to have her friends over again, she declared.
She had thought of a perfectly original bit of fun for them. She would
dress them all in miners' clothes and lead them right down into the
mine, and let each one dig some gold for a souvenir. She wrote of
this to Mrs. Baker Cole, who told her it was a wonderful idea.
And now, here were the Parowan women gossiping about that wretched
parrot. Doris did not need to hear what they were saying, in order to
be sure that they were talking. She felt a difference in their
attitude; thinly veiled resentment--and some sentiments which were not
veiled at all. She would have left Parowan then, spurning it
contemptuously as an impossible place to live in, but for one thing.
Doris Hunter, born in the desert, knew desert ways and desert people.
Though she would not admit it, she knew what would have been her own
attitude, three or four years ago, toward a woman of wealth who lived
in a mansion and patronized her friends. She knew that she would have
resented the woman intensely, would have hated everything the woman
said or did. And if the woman bungled her patronage and then left the
place, Doris would have curled her lip and would have said that the
woman left because she discovered that even in the desert people had
their own ideas and refused to run after snobs.
Knowing all that, Doris stayed, holding her head up proudly, as was
her privilege. She had her house-party, and could be seen merrymaking
on the broad porches, with colored lights and music and dancing, on
cool nights after the days had been hot. Parowan was not invited to
those frolics, but must view the colored lights and listen to the
music from a distance.
She returned with the party to Los Angeles and the beaches there, and
was gone for a month or more. But she returned, quite unexpectedly to
Bill and to the town, and made some pretense at being glad to be at
home.
And all the while gossip was flowing, a turgid underground stream fed
by some unknown source. All the while it was taking to itself a bitter
flavor which had not been there when it had been merely a thin trickle
of feminine resentment. Men were talking,--in confidential undertones
at first, later with an uneasy hope that certain rumors would be
proven false; rumors that held an ugly meaning for the town.
And Bill, keeping pretty much to himself when Doris was not at home,
and devoting himself to her whims and her service when she was with
him, leaving suddenly for short trips and returning more imperturbable
than he had been before, never heard the gossip, or dreamed of what
would happen when the whisperings grew into shouts.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BILL AND THE TAME BANDITS
Bill stood on the top step of the front porch, looking down into the
scowling faces of a committee of workmen from the mine. Seamed, not
too clean some of them, hard-eyed every one, they stood looking up at
him, measuring as they were being measured. He had seen them coming up
the hill, had thought some accident had happened, had come to meet
them. There he stopped short, on guard. He had seen miners' committees
before now. They needed no banner to announce their kind and purpose.
"Come in, boys," he said, when the silence became marked. "You seem to
have something on your chests."
He turned to the door, and they followed him, saying nothing. That in
itself was of unfriendly portent. Many of these men he knew by sight,
a few had speaking acquaintance with him. He had returned the evening
before from the Coast, and he felt a swift desire for a full record of
the day since he had left Parowan. Something must have happened, some
grievance of which he was wholly in ignorance must have arisen in his
absence.
Bill saw how they stared around at the beautiful room, and looked at
one another afterwards with a grim significance. He stiffened
mentally.
"All right, now, let's have it--since you are here. But the office is
the proper place for business, you know. Why didn't you go there?"
"It's you we want to see this morning, Mr. Dale," a small,
shrewd-faced man said quietly. "Mr. Rayfield and Mr. Emmett have done
all they can for us. We'll have to talk straight from the shoulder,
now, so we came to the man who's responsible."
"All right." Bill sat down and crossed one leg over the other,--a
habit of which Doris did not approve. "Responsible for what?"
"For getting away with the money, so our wages haven't been paid this
month. And so the company can't go ahead and find the ore again. The
boss has done his best. He's proved that. When the Company failed to
meet the payroll, Mr. Rayfield and Mr. Emmett lent a lot of the boys
money out of their own pockets to tide things over. And we had just
stood a cut in wages----"
"If you'll excuse me just a minute," said Bill in his best city
manner, "I'll call the office."
They seemed to suspect some trick, even in that. But the small man did
nothing to prevent Bill from leaving the room, so no one else did
anything. But Bill had only reached the door when he swung back.
"We'll go down to the office together," he said quietly. "You fellows
aren't here just to pass the time away, I take it. And I just got back
last night. I don't know what's happened while I was away, so we'll
just go down where I can find out the truth of the matter."
They were a taciturn lot. They said nothing whatever to that, but rose
and followed him out, skidding a little on the polished floor. Bill
was thankful for their silence. He wanted to think, and he needed to
think swiftly.
For two months, a new rule at the mine had shut him out almost
entirely from the works. Rayfield had explained that it was because
some one had tampered with the safety of the men,--had in fact set
fire to a section of timbering. The effect was that no man was
permitted on the works without a special, written permit from the
general manager.
Bill had run into that restriction unawares. The superintendent had
been sorry, but firm. Rayfield, he said, would not excuse any
violation of the rule. Bill must go to him for a permit. Bill had
gone and had received the permit, which was good only for one visit.
Rayfield could not risk the misuses of a pass, he said. He had too
much on his shoulders.
Bill had taken the permit and had torn it in two before Walter's eyes.
"And who writes the permit for _you_?" he had asked contemptuously and
had stalked out. Rayfield had attempted to make light of the affront,
but he had not recalled the order.
Bill would not run to him for permission when he wanted to go into his
own mine, so he had kept away from the works, and as far as possible
he had kept away from the office as well. Who was he to butt in? he
had asked himself resentfully. _He_ was only the president of the
Company. And, having matters of his own to occupy his mind and his
time, he had not concerned himself further with the management of the
mine.
Two or three men whom he met on the street looked at them strangely,
but the group continued to the office without being questioned by
any,--though Bill fancied that he could read anxiety in more than one
pair of eyes that met him on the street. The silence of the mine
machinery was noticeable and depressing. Bill was bracing himself for
the worst.
The worst met him in the office of Parowan Consolidated, and it met
him with a soothing pat on the shoulder--which did not soothe--and a
deprecatory shake of Walter Rayfield's head. Emmett was in the room,
also, standing by the window with his hands in his pockets as if he
were out of a job. Which he was, as a matter of fact.
"I was going to send for you, Bill," said Walter. "I wasn't sure you
came home last night, however."
Bill passed the civilities by as of no moment.
"What's all this about the mine being on the rocks?" He did not mince
matters. He was past that.
Walter looked at him reproachfully with his good eye and pursed his
lips.
"You saw it coming," he said mildly. "I kept preaching retrenchment,
you know, when our ore began to pinch out. Hopeful Bill wouldn't
listen." He glanced swiftly at the committee of six. "So the result
that I warned you of has come to pass. We have no ore, no money, and
some debts. The boys haven't had their wages this payday, Bill." His
tone was maddeningly reproachful. It implied that Bill was to blame
for all this. Bill accepted the challenge.
"How do you blame _me_ for that?" Again he was clenching his hands in
his pockets, holding his temper rigidly under control. He wanted to
get to the bottom of this amazing state of affairs. He _had_ to get to
the bottom of it.
"Wel-l----" Walter fiddled with a pencil on the desk, "----of course
we know it costs money to build fine houses, and dividends must be
paid promptly to meet the needs of--the occasion. But one can't go on
paying dividends unless there is some income to warrant it. I admit
that I erred in my judgment in one respect. I was in hopes that the
ore would hold out longer than it did. We might have carried things
along until the first of the year, at least. Then, John and I intended
to resign and let you take the load on your own shoulders. We have
done the best we could but----" he shook his head regretfully "----we
couldn't keep the dollars rolling in quite fast enough. Not--quite."
Bill stared at him stupidly. He looked at John Emmett, who had turned
and was facing them, his hard eyes fixed on Bill.
"I should like," said Bill, "to bring in an auditor to go over the
books. How you've worked it I don't pretend to know--but I see you've
done it. I don't suppose the books will show it either. I reckon
you've been too cute for that--since you've been working out a plan
from the start. But we'll go through the motions of getting at the
bottom of this. And before we go any farther, I'll admit that I know
almost exactly how much of a damned fool I've been. But you're slick,
you two. It took me so long to figure you out that you got away with
it before I was in a position to stop you. There's nothing," he
sneered, "like the friendship game to skin a man with. It beats a
knife in the dark, any time. John, let's see the cash balance--if
there is any; or did you two dig out the corners?"
Rayfield sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Emmett lifted his lip at
Bill like a wolf and did not move.
"No use trying to put up any bluff," he snarled. "You're the president
of this Company--you sign all the checks, don't you? If you don't know
where the Company stands, who would?"
The small, shrewd-faced man interrupted, standing a bit forward from
the group.
"All this is interesting," he said, "but it don't get us fellows
anywhere. We came to find out about the payroll. We've been stood off
now for ten days. We want to know where we stand."
Bill turned his head and studied the men briefly, the small man
longest.
"You stand in line, along with the rest of the bunch," he said, with a
heartening grin. "Go back and tell the men to mosey down here to the
office. They'll get their pay, all right."
They looked at him, and from him their eyes went to the other two. The
small man turned to the door.
"They'll be here, Mr. Dale," he said. Bill never could decide
afterwards just what lay behind the little man's words. They had
sounded somewhat like a threat.
"Get out the payroll, John," he said crisply. "And the nice, big check
book I've kept signed up for you. The men will be here, and they'll
have to be paid."
"There's not enough money in the bank to pay them." Emmett's voice was
surly.
"Get the books, I said. The men are going to be paid."
Perhaps Emmett thought it would not be worth while to oppose him.
Perhaps he knew the temper the men would be in. He brought the books,
slapping them down on Rayfield's desk ill-naturedly.
"They've waited ten days," said Bill. "You begin figuring their time
up to and including to-day."
Rayfield ceased for a moment to drum his fingers. "They've been out
for two days, Bill," he said. "Quit of their own accord."
"Up to and including to-day," Bill repeated distinctly. He picked up
the telephone and called the bank, asked for the Company's balance and
got it. The modesty of that balance astonished him, even now.
"Send up a messenger for a deposit," he said easily and put down the
'phone. "Now, what's the payroll?"
"Including our salaries, which have not been paid for the last three
months----"
Bill reached out a long arm and got him by the front, pulling him
close. "I'd love to smash every bone in your body, you tame bandit,"
he gritted. "But we won't add any rough stuff to this--yet. I want to
find out, first, just how rough to make it."
He let John go with a savage push that slammed him against the wall.
"I want you two crooks to know just where I stand," he said between
his teeth. "You've raided and wrecked my Company, deliberately, and as
completely as you could. You've squeezed the lemon dry, and you've
been peddling lies about me and mine, to cover up your dirty work. I
don't need to be knocked down with a club, once my eyes are open.
You've asked me to accept paper for my dividends, all summer, so there
would be a decent cut for the rest. I did it,--and don't you reckon I
can't _prove_ it?
"Now, you're going to come clean. It won't get you anything but whole
bones, because I mean to send you to the pen for this, if I can prove
it on you. I fight for my own. And now, how much will it take to cover
the payroll? The messenger's outside."
Emmett growled the amount, and Bill wrote a check, asked for the bank
book and got it just as the messenger rapped on the door.
"Wait a minute, sonny," he called, when the boy was leaving. "I want
you to do an errand for me, if you will."
"Yes, sir, Mr. Dale." Boys must worship heroes, and Bill was the man
this youngster had chosen for his own. One read it in his eyes, in his
voice, in his glowing eagerness to serve.
Bill scribbled a short note to Tommy, and held it out with a dollar.
The boy shook his head at the money, took the note and bowed himself
out with a quaint courtesy that would have amused Bill at any other
time.
"Now, you'll write the checks, John. And you'll say no word to the
men--that goes for both. Stay right where you are, Walter."
There was a heavy trampling on the stairs, and Bill threw open the
door into the outer office.
"You can go," he said to the girl, sitting wide-eyed behind her
typewriting desk. "Or, rather, come in here. I may need you later
on." He raised his voice. "Come on in, boys. A's come first into the
private office, B's follow, and so on. And as you get your checks,
please go right on out. Saves crowding."
He needn't have worried about their going right out. The first A
headed straight down to the bank, and the second A was presently at
his heels. The workmen of Parowan Consolidated had listened to ugly
rumors too long to take chances.
A late comer squeezed past and into the private office, accompanied by
inquiries as to how he spelled his name. Bill turned his head and
nodded at Tommy.
"All right--you sit over there by the window," he said carelessly, and
went on with his work of watching Emmett write the pay checks, taking
each one damp from his fingers, calling out the name of the man to
whom it belonged and placing a pen in his fingers for the signing of
the payroll.